Chapter Text
Wilbur had been home from his latest twelve hour shift for only fifteen minutes when his doorbell rang. It startled him— he’d only heard the sound once or twice, too broke for delivery and too isolated for visitors. The nice family two doors down had baked him a casserole when he’d moved in, something he hadn’t realized Americans actually did outside of TV shows. Other than that, and the odd solicitor, no one had visited.
He sighed, pushing himself off the couch, and got ready to tell whoever was on the other side to fuck off in a way that wouldn’t make him feel guilty for the next week.
A glance through the door’s peephole made Wilbur do a double-take. There was a kid on the other side, a girl with a backpack and a beanie that was so big on her it almost covered her eyes.
Wilbur wasn’t a total asshole, so he opened the door.
“Uh, can I help you?” he asked.
The kid looked up at him, and Wilbur was acutely aware of his height in a way he hadn’t been before. She barely came up to his waist, and she had to tilt her head back so far it looked like it hurt to look into his eyes. Her beanie slid off her head and landed on her backpack, but she didn't seem to notice.
“Hello,” the child said, “are you my papá?”
Wilbur’s heart stuttered with a feeling he couldn't describe. “What?”
“My papá lives here,” the girl said, and Wilbur noted the spanish accent lacing her words.
“Sorry, I’m the only person here. Maybe you have the wrong apartment?” Wilbur wondered how she even got into the complex, much less picked out his door from the others. Was she even old enough to read? He wasn’t sure when kids were supposed to be able to read but she looked small.
“No!” she shouted and stomped her foot, making her beanie fall to the ground. With another scream, she picked it up and gripped it close to her chest like she was expecting Wilbur to rip it out of her hands. “My papá is here!”
“Okay, okay,” Wilbur said, feeling so much out of his depth he didn’t even know where to start, “Do you— do you want to come inside?” He stepped back, and the girl shuffled her way into his apartment.
Wilbur cringed, seeing the food and random items strewn about his apartment in a new light, but the kid just stepped around the piles and took a seat in the corner of his couch. She tucked her knees up to her chin, drawing Wilbur’s attention to the ratty tennis shoes on her feet. There was a giant hole in the left shoe’s tip, big enough for Wilbur to spot the flower-patterned socks inside, and the other looked like it was growing a hole of its own.
Wilbur felt the cold of his floors through the holes in his socks, the ones he couldn’t replace because he was barely making enough for groceries, and winced in sympathy.
He took a seat in front of the couch, crossing his legs and hoping he didn’t look like a weird man that snatched kids. Oh fuck, could he get arrested with kidnapping for this?
“Okay, kid, do you know your papá’s name?” he asked.
The girl shook her head. She lifted her shirt up, giving Wilbur a heart attack for a second, but all it revealed was a plastic bag wrapped around her torso with a belt. She loosened it with movements laced with muscle memory, and stuck her hand in the bag. When she pulled it out she was holding a photo.
She didn’t hand it to Wilbur so he leaned forward, hoping she showed him one of the few faces he recognized from passing them in the hallways.
Instead, Wilbur’s own face looked back at him.
He knew this photo— it was probably still on his MySpace account. It was a chaotic scene of a party, shadows of bodies filling the background, but two people were lit up by flash lighting. One was himself, roughly six years younger and absolutely wasted, and the other was Wilbur’s ex, a girl he’d had a short but intense fling with during those whirlwind months before he’d moved out. She had been studying abroad in the UK, and it had been easy to be with her knowing she needed to leave by spring.
The girl flipped the photo over. On the back was Wilbur’s address scribbled in handwriting he didn’t recognize.
“Room four, three-oh-three prom-in-aid,” she said like she was reciting from memory, “Hah-van-ah, ill-noise. That’s where papá is.”
Wilbur’s world had just been thrown into a blender with little ceremony and all he could say was, “It’s pronounced Ill-ah-noy.”
The girl— his daughter?— wrinkled her nose. “Are you my papá?”
Wilbur reached for the photo, going slowly so he didn't spook the kid, and turned it back over. “Is that your mamá?” He asked, tapping on his ex’s face.
The girl nodded.
“How old are you?”
She held out her hand with all five fingers spread. “I’m this many!”
Wilbur’s brain did the math, but he was so caught up with looking at the kid that it barely even registered. She had brown eyes and brown hair, lighter than her mom’s but darker than his. It was hard to tell thanks to her age, but Wilbur thought he could see some of his features in her. He glanced at her hands, the ones that held the beanie, and noted her tanner skin under the dirt dusting her fingers. His ex was Latina, and Wilbur wanted to smack himself when he couldn’t remember much more than that.
He had a daughter, and he barely knew anything about her.
Oh god, he had a daughter.
He was a dad.
Those fingers tightened around the weave of the beanie, and Wilbur looked at it with more than a glance for the first time. It was red, faded with time and darkened with use, and there was a small stain on the front that Wilbur knew was from a nosebleed he’d given himself after drunk-walking into a lamppost. He had wondered where it had ended up.
That, more than the photo and the memories and everything else, was what drew him back to reality. This kid may have been biologically his but Wilbur was in no way fit to be a dad. Those weeks spent with his ex had been a last ditch effort to convince himself his life hadn’t been falling apart, and he had done it with partying and drinking and, well, with sex. And sure, maybe he wasn’t getting blackout every weekend anymore, but he never left his house for anything other than work and he forgot to eat even when his stomach groaned with hunger.
He was barely keeping himself alive, he couldn’t take care of a five year old at the same time.
Wilbur took a breath in and blinked the tears out of his eyes. He needed to keep his shit together for his daughter, at least until she was back with her mother and life could return to normal.
“Where’s your mom right now?”
His daughter frowned and played with a loose thread in the beanie. “Mamá is going on a trip and I stayed like— like she said but it was a long time.”
“How long?” Wilbur asked.
The girl pulled her backpack into her lap and pulled out a calendar. It was big, one of those ones with pictures of kittens in the top half, and well worn. One corner of it was warped with what looked like water damage.
She held it out and pointed to the box marked as the 12th. It was marked through with a shaky X.
“She left and I make the pictures like she said.”
There were Xs through the days following the 12th until the 23rd. Wilbur pointed to it. “What happened here?”
His daughter tucked her face into her knees and mumbled something.
“Could you say that again, please?”
“I got hungry and mamá always says that papá should give us food.”
Wilbur glanced down at the calendar. The 23rd, twelve days after his daughter’s mother left. A glance at Wilbur’s phone told him it was the 25th.
He sucked in a breath. “Is that when you left your house?”
“Mamá calls it the hotel.”
Wilbur’s head spun. There were two Xs at the beginning of the month, so he flipped backwards through the calendar. The page revealed more patches of Xs, two to five at a time. He kept flipping. The months were filled with them.
With shaky fingers, Wilbur flipped back to the current month. He needed to focus.
“So mamá left then—” he pointed again, “and you came looking for me then—” another point, “what happened these days?”
“There was a big bus!” She held her arms out wide like she could show Wilbur its size. “And mamá says when I’m lost to ask a nice person for help so I did.”
“Do you still have the bus ticket?”
She stuck her hand in the backpack, fishing around for a moment before handing Wilbur a few scraps of paper.
One was a ticket for a bus from Chicago to Springfield. The next was a receipt that Wilbur had to read a few times before he realized it was just for some food from a McDonalds in Springfield. The last was a little pamphlet. Wilbur opened it. A wall of text and a pixelated graphic of a church greeted him, some shitty brochure that street preachers liked to hand out.
Wilbur thought he might throw up. His daughter, after being left alone in a hotel for almost two weeks, somehow had managed to get a bus halfway across the state and then had gotten from Springfield to Havana. He had no clue how she did that part, and with her limited conversational skills, he didn’t think he’d learn anytime soon.
He really, really wanted to crawl into his bed and cry until the next morning. The fact that his child— a kid barely old enough to read, had been left to take care of herself and he’d had no idea… the guilt swallowed him and Wilbur wanted to do something stupid.
But his daughter looked at him expectedly, and Wilbur realized this wasn’t going to be an easy fix, and if he broke down now, he’d miss his first chance to be something better than a deadbeat dad.
“Okay,” he said, sucking in a breath, “okay. Do you have anything with you? Your mom’s phone number? Your hotel name?”
The kid reached for the bag under her shirt again, but this time, after a moment of hesitation, she pulled it free and handed it to Wilbur.
“Mamá said those were important and don’t lose them,” she said.
Inside the bag was a folder, one of the cheap paper ones stores sold for back-to-school but fell apart after just a week. It was bent and worn at the edges, but it looked surprisingly intact. Wilbur wondered how often his daughter kept it strapped to her chest for safekeeping.
The folder was filled with documents. The first was a birth certificate for the state of California. Wilbur’s ex’s name was listed as the mother and his own as the father. The child’s name was Tallulah Isabel Soot.
Tallulah.
It was hard to remember the time Wilbur had spent with his daughter’s mother (considering half of the nights he had been drunk), but they had been close. Close enough for her to know that name was what he would have been named if he were a girl.
He didn’t remember if he’d told her it was what he wanted to name his daughter, if he ever had one.
The next document was Tallulah’s social security card. Wilbur took a picture of them both, already thinking of a worst-case scenario.
The third was one he didn’t recognize. Its title was “Acknowledgement of Paternity (AOP) Form.” It was partially filled out in the same handwriting as Wilbur’s address on the back of the photo. Missing was Wilbur’s signature and the date of filing. It was folded into thirds as if to be put into an envelope.
The last was Tallulah’s passport. The picture inside was one of a baby, probably not more than a year old. Wilbur brushed his thumb over the photo like he could wipe away the watermarks that obscured his daughter’s face. The only stamp was for the UK, the ink smeared enough that Wilbur couldn’t make out the date.
Wilbur took pictures of the important pages. Tallulah sat nice and still while she waited, only moving to adjust her grip on the beanie.
“Hi, Tallulah, it’s very nice to meet you.” Wilbur hoped the smile on his face looked normal enough to not scare her. “Look, I… I think I’m your papá, but I can’t let you stay here, okay?”
Tallulah snatched the folder back. “Why not?”
Wilbur glanced around the apartment as if there was something he could grab and show her how much of a dumpster fire his life was. “I wouldn’t be a very good dad to you, and I think you deserve someone that can be. Do you understand that?”
Tallulah shook her head, pouting. “I miss my mom,” she said.
“I know.” Wilbur thought of Tallulah’s last name, Soot, the one he’d inherited from his mother. There had been no father listed on his original birth certificate. His eyes burned. “I miss my mom too.”
He missed his dad as well, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He knew Phil was spending the next week and a half in California with his wife, Kristin, and his son, Chayanne, thanks to his public Facebook profile. Wilbur hadn’t been able to look at the pictures of their happy little family trip yet.
Five years old, Tallulah was. Five years since Wilbur had seen his dad. Five since she’d been without hers. Five years of missing him.
Wilbur couldn’t take Tallulah back to her mother. That calendar had shown months upon months of neglect. Wilbur wasn’t familiar with children, but he was pretty sure Tallulah was small for her age, a sign of malnourishment. For fucks sake, his daughter kept her birth certificate in a bag under her shirt and knew how to take a bus across cities. He needed to get her out of her mom’s custody. He needed a lawyer. He needed money for a lawyer. He needed a lot of things he didn't have.
Phil would’ve known what to do. He had always been good with emergencies, a wall of calm amongst the panic.
Wilbur couldn’t call Phil out of the blue about this, not after years of radio silence. The man deserved better than that. Besides, Wilbur wasn’t even sure if the number he had for Phil still worked. If he tried to call and it gave him an out-of-service tone, Wilbur thought that might kill him. God, what if Phil sent him to voicemail? Wilbur almost laughed at the thought.
Phil was in California right now.
Wilbur pulled up maps on his phone and did a rough navigation to LA. If they took I-70, it’d be 29 hours of driving. He was pretty sure he remembered where Kristin’s family lived.
There was no way he’d be able to keep his job. Finding a new one in time to pay his rent may as well have been impossible. Wilbur could count the amount of open jobs he was qualified for in this town on his hands.
If he left, he’d be abandoning what little stability he’d built in the past five years.
Looking at Tallulah, Wilbur could tell she’d had less than him.
The choice wasn’t even one. He’d made up his mind the second he’d realized Tallulah wasn’t going back to her mother.
“What do you think about a road trip, Tallulah?”
***
Wilbur strolled through the corner store aisles and tried not to think too hard about what was happening. Tallulah followed him, her tiny hand in his and barely making a fuss. He was pretty sure kids weren’t supposed to be that quiet or agreeable, and it was setting him on edge. That, and all the other life-changing information he’d gotten that day.
He grabbed a box of peanut butter crackers off the shelf and showed them to Tallulah. “Are you allergic to peanuts?”
She shook her head and made grabby hands for the box.
“Make sure to put it in the cart,” Wilbur said, handing her it.
They were raiding the store for as many child-friendly non-perishables as possible while trying not to drain Wilbur’s bank account. He’d need a lot of gas to get to LA, and it’d only get more expensive as they approached the Rockies.
Wilbur’s gut sank thinking about the call he’d made to his work just before they’d entered the store. His boss had been sympathetic, of course, but Wilbur hadn’t been surprised when they’d said they would have to let him go. At least they’d deposit his last check directly into his bank for him.
Tallulah tugged on his hands. “Can we have fishies?”
“Fishies?” Wilbur asked. He’d spent the past hour or two becoming very familiar with the challenges of talking to a five year old. He’d googled, “What does a kid mean when they say ____,” at least ten times already with varying success.
“Fishies!”
Wilbur scanned the shelves. “Goldfish?” he tried, grabbing the huge box.
“Yes!” Tallulah snatched it from him and shoved it over the lip of the grocery cart where it landed with the rest of the items.
The rest of the shopping trip progressed similarly. Tallulah asked for an item, Wilbur did his best to translate, and Tallulah tossed the item into the cart. She stuck close to Wilbur rather than running off, something he was infinitely grateful for, and seemed to enjoy helping him pick out items.
When they got to the counter, Tallulah whined when she couldn't reach the groceries to help check them out. Wilbur ended up picking her up and letting her stand in the cart so she could hand him every item. The cashier didn’t scream at him for child abuse so Wilbur figured it was probably okay, although he kept a close eye on her and a hand on the cart.
“I wanna pay! I wanna pay!” Tallulah said once they’d finished scanning everything and she was out of the cart, so Wilbur handed her his credit card. She stood on her tippy toes and pushed the card onto the counter. When the cashier took it, she turned around and beamed at Wilbur.
It was the first time he saw his daughter smile.
The realization hit him like an elbow to the throat. His next inhale failed somewhere in his windpipe, spiking pain into his chest. He hoped he was smiling back but he had no clue, too unmoored from his body to tell.
He couldn’t be her father. He wasn’t allowed to get attached to this.
Tallulah rambled about something Wilbur could only understand half of as they loaded the groceries into his car. He wished he could listen, but he was too busy focusing on breathing away his panic attack. Fuck. This was why he couldn't be responsible for her.
Somehow, all the groceries got put away next to the suitcase Wilbur had packed for himself. Tallulah hadn’t had anything other than her folder and backpack which she chose to keep with her in the car.
Wilbur helped Tallulah into the car and buckled her into her car seat that was probably a size too big but only twenty dollars at the thrift store. She hadn’t complained, and with Wilbur’s anxiety, he was probably the safest driver on the road. His hands had shook all the way to the store, and he couldn’t bring himself to drive even a mile above the speed limit.
They’d be fine. It’d be fine.
Wilbur rested his head on the steering wheel once inside. He just needed a moment.
“Papí, can I have a snack?”
Wilbur squeezed his eyes shut for a second before sitting back up and shaking his head. Time to get his shit together and be a dad.
“Sure, can you reach the bags?” he asked.
Tallulah twisted around in her seat, flailing her arms uselessly. “I can’t,” she pouted, still trying to squirm out of the seatbelts.
Wilbur got out of the car and reached into the side, grabbing the closest bag. “Do fruit snacks sound good?”
“Fishies!”
“Fishies, of course,” Wilbur sighed, and rummaged through the items till he found the box. He cracked it open and handed it to Tallulah who immediately spilled a quarter of them into her lap.
“Well,” he said, taking back the box, “I guess that’s as much as you’re having.”
Tallulah said nothing in protest, digging her fingers into the goldfish pile and shoving them into her mouth. Wilbur cringed, thinking of all the things she’d touched in the store. He’d get some hand sanitizer later.
Wilbur climbed back into the car and started the engine. “Are you ready to go?”
“Mhm!”
He plugged his phone into the radio and set his maps for Kansas City.
***
Forty-five minutes into the thirty hour drive, Tallulah started squirming. She’d exhausted her supply of goldfish just a few minutes prior, leaving her hands empty and wandering.
Wilbur turned down the music and glanced back at her.
“Are you alright?”
Tallulah groaned. “I’m bored,” she said, drawing out the o sound.
Wilbur glanced at his phone. His maps app, set to navigate to Kansas City, had them on the road for another four hours. They weren’t even close to the Missouri border yet.
“Do you, uh,” Wilbur tried to think of what he’d entertained himself with as a kid, “Do you have any games in your backpack?”
Tallulah unzipped her bag and dug her hands around the bottom. Wilbur wasn’t sure exactly what was in there, and he was hesitant to invade what little privacy Tallulah had. He knew what it was like to have all your possessions in your hands.
“Do you wanna hear my flute?” Tallulah asked, pulling out a plastic recorder. It was purple and translucent except for the bell which had white cracks spidering through it.
Wilbur turned the radio off. “Sure.”
Tallulah held the recorder to her lips and carefully positioned her fingers on the holes. She blew a note, a surprisingly clean toot, and then shuffled her fingers around for a few moments before playing a lower note.
Wilbur quickly recognized the song as Hot Cross Buns, one of the first songs he’d learned on piano when Phil had put him in lessons. Considering it took Tallulah a few seconds to play a single note, it wasn’t much of a melody, but it was better than anything he could’ve done at his age.
When Tallulah finished the song, Wilbur tapped the back of his hand in his best imitation of a clap while driving. “That was great! Do you like to play music?”
“Yeah!” Tallulah shouted, “I wanna learn how to play everything!”
“Everything?” Wilbur asked with a little laugh, “What are you gonna start with?”
“Piano! And then guitar! And drums!” She jumped in her car seat with every word, excitement bouncing through her bones.
Wilbur tore his eyes off the rearview mirror where he could see her and focused on the road. “I play guitar,” he said.
Tallulah almost wrenched herself out of her seatbelt with giddiness. “Play! Play!”
“I can’t, sweetheart, I have to drive.”
“I wanna hear the guitar!”
Wilbur shook his head. “You’ll have to wait until we get to the hotel.”
“No!” she screamed, and Wilbur almost jerked the wheel in surprise. “Guitar now!”
“Hey, hey,” Wilbur said, attempting to be soothing and probably missing it by a mile, “it’s alright. I promise I’ll play my guitar in just a few hours.”
Tallulah burst into tears, face red and scrunched up. “No!” she shrieked, and started to wriggle in her car seat. Wilbur had tightened the straps as much as they would go, but it was still big on her, and now he watched in horror as she slipped a leg out.
He slammed his hand on his hazards button and swerved the car over the rumble strips and onto the shoulder. The car had barely stopped before he slammed the gear into park and twisted around to face Tallulah.
She was halfway out of her car seat and tugging on the car door handle which Wilbur had thankfully had the foresight to lock.
“I don’t wanna!” she screamed.
Wilbur scrambled out of the car, fumbling with his own seatbelt, and raced over to Tallulah’s side. He yanked her door open, extracted her from the rest of her car seat, and gathered her in his arms.
She shoved her head into the crook of his neck, crying ugly and messy. Wilbur winced as he felt her little fingernails dig into his skin like splinters.
“It’s okay, Tallulah. I’m sorry, I don’t—” Wilbur cut himself off. I don’t know what to do, he’d almost said. “I don’t know why you’re upset.”
Tallulah simply shook her head, digging it further into WIlbur’s shoulder. Instinctively, he cupped her head with his hand and tilted his face into her hair.
“Are you tired?” he asked.
She shook her head again, but Wilbur had an inkling she was lying or just not aware of it. He remembered Phil telling stories of himself as a kid and how he’d refuse to go to bed just to fall asleep on the couch or floor. Maybe she got it from him.
He sat on the floor of the car, his feet on the pavement, and leaned up against Tallulah’s seat. It was a tight fit and uncomfortable considering her car seat dug into his side, but he simply held her and rocked back and forth.
“It’s okay if you want to take a nap,” he whispered.
Tallulah grumbled something, sniffling as she did, but her cries died down.
Wilbur slipped his phone out of his pocket with one hand and googled, “do five year olds need naps?”
He spent the next few minutes browsing the results— which said probably not but maybe and did nothing to help Wilbur— and by then, Tallulah was making little sleep noises into his shirt.
Wilbur stood up carefully, painstakingly keeping his weight as still as possible, and transferred Tallulah back into her car seat. Her head lolled into her shoulder, and her long brown hair fell into her eyes. Wilbur brushed it back with a gentle hand.
He grabbed a blanket from the back of the car and rested it lightly on Tallulah’s lap. He knew you weren’t supposed to let babies sleep with anything, but he wasn’t sure what age it became safe. And was it alright with her car seat? He frowned, fighting the urge to tuck anything in.
Tallulah didn’t wake up when Wilbur started the car and slept through the rumble strips, much to his relief. And then they were back on the road, four hours still to go, and Wilbur had nothing but his thoughts.
-
Their hotel was a shabby motel on the outskirts of Kansas City with only one vacancy, a single room that cost enough to make Wilbur wince as he tapped his card. Tallulah stuck by his side, quiet and still since she’d woken up an hour ago in the car.
“Room 16,” the desk worker said, handing them a physical key, “Enjoy your stay.”
“Thanks,” Wilbur muttered. The long drive felt like it’d sucked his brain out like a smoothie, and he could tell his hands would be sore the next day from clenching the wheel so much.
The room was small but clean, much to Wilbur’s relief, and the sheets on the bed smelled as if they’d been freshly washed. He fought the urge to collapse on the mattress and not move for the next ten hours.
Tallulah disappeared into the bathroom while Wilbur set their bags down and pulled out everything he would need for the night.
He’d packed his apartment up haphazardly, shoving a few outfits, socks, and underwear into a trash bag. His suitcase was mostly full of personal items: books, pictures, and knick-knacks he couldn’t part with. Another trash bag was stuffed with pillows and blankets. His backpack contained the most important items, his wallet and documents, a toothbrush, medication, pajamas, and his phone charger. Lastly, he’d grabbed his guitar bag.
Everything else he’d had to leave behind. All the apartment essentials that had taken forever to save up for— dishes, furniture, the dinky TV. Wilbur was pretty sure he didn’t have enough money to make it back to Havana, meaning he’d seen the last of his apartment and his stuff. He wasn’t sure how he was gonna start from scratch all over again knowing how difficult it was the last time.
Wilbur sat on the edge of the bed and sighed, pressing the pad of his thumb into his palms. He’d figure it out later, the main priority was getting Tallulah to LA.
The bathroom door creaked open, and Tallulah, clad in hot pink pjs, stuck her head out.
“Papí? Can you help brush my teeth?”
Wilbur smiled. “Of course.”
The bathroom was tiny and short enough that Wilbur could feel his hair brushing the ceiling. In comparison, Tallulah’s head didn’t even reach the top of the sink.
“Okay, how do you want to do this?” he asked.
She reached her arms up, and Wilbur sat her on his hip, one arm around her back. Then she handed him her toothbrush and toothpaste, something Wilbur had forgotten about and was immensely glad she’d packed in her own bag. The toothbrush was purple and glittery with the face of a princess on the side, and the toothpaste was strawberry flavored, something Wilbur didn’t even know existed.
With his free hand, Wilbur got the brush wet and put the toothpaste on it. Tallulah grabbed the brush and he wrapped his hand around hers.
“Open wide,” he said, and started to brush her teeth.
A glance in the mirror showed a scene Wilbur had never even imagined— a child in his arms, recognizable as his daughter, happy and looking as if she’d been doing this with him for years. She looked like she fit tucked into his side.
Wilbur blinked, and then he was back in the moment.
“Time to spit,” he said, and leaned over the sink so Tallulah could reach. He rinsed the brush, let Tallulah back on the ground, and handed her the toothbrush and toothpaste. She grabbed her bag from the corner and shoved them inside.
Wilbur wiped away toothpaste crust around her mouth, laughing as she fidgeted away from his hands. “Alright, go climb into bed while I brush mine.”
“Will you play me a bedtime song with your guitar?” she asked, brown eyes wide and hopeful.
Wilbur ruffled her hair. “Of course, just give me two minutes.”
“Bedtime song!” Tallulah cheered, and ran out of the bathroom. Wilbur heard the thump of the bed as she jumped on it and stifled a laugh.
As quickly as he could, Wilbur changed, brushed his teeth, and washed his face. Upon entering the bedroom, he saw Tallulah attempting to unzip his guitar bag.
“Lulah,” Wilbur admonished, “you have to be patient.”
She pouted, tugging on the zipper. “But I wanna hear the song now.”
“Then go climb into bed,” Wilbur said, pulling the guitar bag away from her.
Tallulah hopped in, tugging the covers over herself and looking swamped in the big bed. Wilbur climbed in, sitting with his legs crossed and his back against the headboard.
“So you want to hear a song, right?”
“Yeah!”
“Okay then,” Wilbur said, smiling. He strummed a chord, making sure he was in the key he wanted and then took his hands off the guitar. “And if I had been born, 200 years ago, well I would’ve been a sailor, and a’ sailing I would go,” he sang acapella.
Tallulah laughed, clapping her hands and wriggling around in the bed.
“I’d sail around the capes and across the seven seas and then back home, 200 years ago.” Wilbur started strumming, picking the melody up. “And I would know the waters and the waters would know me, and I would cut across the waves and be as happy as can be.”
“I'd be landless, I'd be loveless, I'd be flight and fancy free, cause I would know the waters and the waters would know me.”
“When I think about the place and time where I was born, oh, I wonder if the hands of fate had slipped and placed me wrong, because there are ships I could have sailed and sailor's boots I could have worn— when I think about the place and time where I was born.”
Before the last verse, Wilbur took a second to pause and glance at Tallulah. She was still lying down, thankfully, but she was wide awake and focused entirely on Wilbur. Her eyes were wide, big and brown and so full of wonder Wilbur didn’t know what to do with it.
“But the ocean is still out there, magnificent and wide, she's got open arms to hold me and endless space to hide. And the only things that hold me back are the things I hold inside—
cause the ocean is still out there, magnificent and wide.”
“Oh, oh, oh. Oh, ah, oh. Oh, oh, oh, well a-sailing I should go.”
Tallulah burst into clapping, and Wilbur giggled, not used to the enthusiasm. He did a few fast strums to finish off the song with a bang, and as soon as the guitar was out of his lap Tallulah was there to replace it.
“That was amazing! Papí, you should be a famous singer!”
Wilbur laughed again, settling Tallulah back into bed. “That’s what I wanted to be when I was younger. I wanted to be a musician and tour the world.”
“You should!”
Wilbur smoothed her hair out on the pillow. “I’ll think about it. First, you have to go to bed.”
“Can you play another song?”
“No, it’s bedtime, you can hear another song tomorrow,” Wilbur said.
“Please?”
“Nope, sleepy time!”
Tallulah grumbled but she curled up and closed her eyes. She looked so much smaller like that, still and quiet. Wilbur wondered if he’d have been able to fit her in one hand when she was born.
He put his guitar away, plugged his phone in, and turned off the lights before Tallulah could start fussing again. In the dark, it was easy to crawl under the sheets and forget that his daughter was right next to him. For a moment, he was convinced he’d dreamed the whole thing up.
But then Wilbur heard the quiet sound of snuffles against a pillow, and shifting in the sheets, and he let himself fall asleep, exhausted.