Page 23 of Falling For You

Birdie hopped off the step stool and walked to her cabinet to pick out which purse she was carrying today. I watched her pull one out, hold it up, put it back, reach for another.

I tried not to think about it. But she'd asked for something this morning that another girl's mother probably did in three minutes, and I turned it into a knot. She was six. She thought it was funny. She wouldn't think it was funny forever. Someday she'd stop laughing about the ponytail and start needing what she actually asked for, and I still wouldn't know how to do it.

I put the comb down, walked over to her, and crouched down to kiss the top of her head. "Let's go."

The bookstore a few blocks over was one of our Saturday spots. Birdie liked the children's section.

She pulled me by the hand through the door, past the front display, past the YA shelves, and straight to the back corner where the chapter books lived. She already knew where she was going.

"These ones, Daddy." She pointed at a row of books with white spines and pastel details. "These are the ones Suzie has."

Nancy Drew Notebooks. I pulled one off the shelf and turned it over. Girl detective. Mysteries.

"Suzie said there's one where Nancy Drew catches a real thief. And one where she finds a lost dog. And one where there's a mystery at a birthday party." Birdie was pulling books off the shelf two at a time, stacking them in my arms. "Can I get them all?"

"How about we start with three?"

"Five?"

"Three."

"Four?"

I looked at her. She looked at me with the wide eyes that had been ending negotiations since she was two.

"Four."

She sat down on the carpet right there in the aisle and started flipping through the first one, telling me about each chapter title before she'd read a single page. Nancy Drew was apparently eight years old, solved real crimes, and had a best friend named George, which Birdie thought was hilarious because George was a boy's name and George was a girl.

"Daddy, do you think Nancy Drew is real?"

"I think she's a character in a book."

"But someone could do that, right? Solve mysteries? A girl could do that?"

"Absolutely."

She picked her four and talked me through every one: Suzie's recommendation, a cool cover, the birthday mystery because she needed to know what happened, and the ballet one because she liked the outfits. Then she carried them to the register herself.

I watched her walk up to the counter with her stack, barely able to see over the top, telling the cashier which one she was going to read first. She was explaining the entire plot of a book she hadn't opened yet, based entirely on what Suzie told her at lunch on Thursday.

My daughter was becoming her own person. She had opinions I didn't give her, interests that started in conversations I wasn't part of, a best friend whose mother could send her daughter to school looking like a princess. Every week she came home with something new. A fact, a preference, a word she learned from someone who wasn't me. The world she was building had rooms I'd never been inside.

It was beautiful to watch. It terrified me in equal measure.

We walked home the long way, past Daphne's shop.

"Can we get flowers, Daddy?"

This was our routine. Every time we passed the shop, Birdie stopped. Daphne kept a bucket of small bundles near the door. Stems trimmed from larger arrangements, wrapped in brown paper, priced for six-year-olds with big eyes.

"Hi, Birdie!" Daphne's face appeared over a bucket of gladiolus. "What are we picking today?"

Birdie crouched by the bucket, inspecting her options with the seriousness she gave everything. She pulled out a bundle of yellow daisies, held them up, put them back, and picked up pink ones instead.

"These."

"Good choice." Daphne wrapped them in fresh paper and handed them down. "Those will brighten up any room." She leaned over the counter and pointed. "I love that bow, by the way."