By Leslie Pietrzyk

“It’s a red bird,” Cassie shouts, pointing at a bush ten feet ahead as the startled bird swoops to higher tree branches. Cassie’s constantly shouting or thrashing or bouncing around. Adam wants to appreciate that his daughter’s active and noisy, tries to understand she’ll do well in boardrooms and on teams if she can impose presence. He, himself, started out a quiet boy, an observer, prone to silent, secretive rages. Not until college did he force himself to learn to speak up. Life got better. 

“Yes, a cardinal,” he says. 

“No,” she says. “It was bright red. Like a crayon.” She turned seven last week, and now she’s an expert on everything. That’s what she announced at the party thrown by Beth, her mom, where a dozen squealing girls tore through pizza and a bouncy house shaped like a castle. Before blowing out the candles on her rainbow drip cake, wall-to-walled with pastel frosting roses, Cassie said, “Announcement please! I’m exactly seven years old now, so I’m sure I know everything there is to know.” Boisterous applause from the little girls, but Adam laughed, along with the two moral-support moms dragged in to help. Beth radiated simmering anger at him, scooping Cassie into her arms. “My sweet and smart little beanie-bean,” she said, holding the pose for pictures, which Adam dutifully took with Beth’s phone. 

“Yes,” he repeats. “A red bird is called a cardinal. Want to know why?” 

She shakes her head wildly, defiantly, like a horse hating a pen. “Not now. Later. Never. It’s a red bird.” She gazes into the bush a moment more, perhaps willing the bird’s return, then abruptly barrels along the path toward the parking lot. Adam lets her lead, or maybe it’s more that she lets him follow. Her pace is unexpectedly torrid. 

He’s only recently moved to Winston-Salem, a city in the central-west stretch of North Carolina no friends back in DC have heard of, not like Asheville where they all dream of living, someday. His daughter and her mother have been here for six years or so. Beth grew up in the area, returning to her childhood home to transition her grandmother into memory care at Arbor Acres. He could have fought, but he imagined Beth pleading with the judge: “I’m the girl’s mother,” and the judge peering at him, barking, “Well, then, just exactly who are you?” Under oath, he’d have to admit the truth: “I’m the guy on a stool, drinking Jameson, who she met at Ireland’s Four Courts on Saint Paddy’s Day weekend in Arlington when she was twenty-one. We hooked up a couple times.” Putting it that way, “father” can’t be the exact word for his role. “Define ‘a couple of times,’” the judge would press. “Three,” he’d whisper, knowing Beth claims four.  

After the fuss about paternity and all that ugliness, when Beth said she wanted to leave DC, he didn’t feel locked into a good position to fight, and for sure he was uninterested in forking out more money to more lawyers, especially with child support now tacked next to student loan obligations. The first lawyer, a friend’s sister, he hired immediately after learning about the pregnancy, which his DC buddies assured him was the thing to do. “Protect your interests,” they consistently urged, start to finish. Once Beth and the baby left for Carolina, well. Poof. No more frenzied brain-spins keeping him awake till four a.m. He found himself forgetting both when he was out or at parties. No need to allude to their presence in dating apps or situationships. Nothing but ghosts, nothing but a money thing he could manage until maybe something turned serious, which he wasn’t going to allow to happen anyway. 

Until.  

Until a nasty, lingering bout of Covid late in the pandemic, which seemed unfair. Federal government cuts meant the abrupt end of his grant-writing job, also unfair. Rent was unreal, and the city wasn’t bouncing back from the pandemic, and every coffee shop was shit. But the killer? His dog ate chocolate and died. Truly unfair. 

Why fight every signal the broken world sent to hammer him down? Thirty-three could be time for a change. Maybe stop thinking only about himself and primarily with his dick. Also, somehow his baby sister back in Nebraska found out about Cassie and wouldn’t let up on harassing him to be involved; nagging about time being precious and he didn’t want to be sorry one day; that that “girls need daddies” (her refrain because their father died a week after she was born). “You’re right,” he said, surprising her and himself, suddenly envisioning who he could be as a little girl’s daddy, teaching her to score baseball games, letting her coat his fingernails in glitter polish. Cheesy, but to celebrate his decision to leave DC, he got a straight arrow tattoo, and so did his sister in solidarity. <direction!> his sister texted with the photo of the underside of her forearm. <about time> he texted back, showing off his calf. Moving. Choosing his daughter. This had to be the first adult life decision he’d made. Beth was astonished but willing, as long as they moved slowly. “Earn it,” she said in her sharp little voice. “You’re not automatically a hero for showing up.” 

So he’s here to earn it, an adult. With some under-the-table freelance gigs, severance, unemployment, and cashing out his 401K if necessary, he’s got enough to last six months without stressing, eight if he stresses. Life down here’s cheaper than DC, which helps. He’s put in applications at Wake Forest, UNCG, and some other colleges and non-profits. Pretty good for six weeks here, he tells himself. 

As for Cassie, the first thing he did was put together a list of places to take her on his Saturday afternoons. Beth insisted he run the list by her, and she immediately nixed several ideas as “dangerous” and “bone-headed,” including today’s, walking through Quarry Park, an apparently newish park established by the city, with woods, simple walking paths, picnic shelters, and a playground that won an award for innovation and creative play. Sure, there’s an abandoned granite quarry now filled in with 175 feet of water. But it’s not like the walking paths skirt the quarry; in fact, it’s about impossible to reach the edge of the quarry given the dense foliage. Not to mention that the cut-stone cliffs towering above the water would feel menacing even to daredevils. He’s studied every picture on the website. There’s an overlook—a cement walkway enclosed by more steel bars and fencing than a prison—leading to an observation pier for standing and gazing down into the clear depths of the quarry, and up, to admire the downtown skyline and, on clear days, several mountains beyond. “Don’t you think lawyers examined this place tooth and nail?” he pleaded. “Cities aren’t stupid.” Beth said no—not even, I don’t know, just a blunt no—seeming proud of her stance. He tried again: “We’ll stick to the playground and the woods. She won’t even know the quarry’s there.”  

She scoffed. “Oh, right. Kids always find the exact thing you don’t want them to, I promise you that. But you wouldn’t—” An old-ladyish harumph of superiority. 

Know that, he filled in, getting more pissed at her assumption that he’s some kind of it-takes-a-village village idiot. So he said, “You know, lovers attach locks to the fence, like in Paris and Italy. So they’ll stay bonded together forever.” The website showed a photo of the dangling locks, but he won’t be sorry if Beth imagines him standing next to a gorgeous woman, snapping a lock in place. 

“So? Is this Paris or Italy?” 

“So I didn’t know if you knew,” he said. “It’s something to see, bunches of locks.” 

“Locks, diamond ring, whatever,” she said. “None of it matters.” 

“Got something against love?” he asks. “Cassie will be into it. It’s romantic.” 

“She’s a child, who isn’t thinking about romance and shouldn’t be,” Beth said. “No. No to Quarry Park. Besides, that boy disappeared there last month. They still haven’t found his body. I just know it’s down in that creepy water. Quarries are filled with the absolute worst things. There’s probably a dozen bodies in there, at least.” 

“That was just a drug dealer, deal gone wrong,” he said. “Or just some teen runaway creating drama. Someone missing. Not a girl hanging out with her dad. No one’s dead.” 

The look on her face right then, like fifteen farts in a library. “Do I have to say it again? No,” she repeated, and finally he agreed, no Quarry Park, but then she insisted that he promise, as if he were the child. “Cross my heart,” he said, to emphasize how ludicrous the whole thing was, but she thanked him. It was the forced promise tipping him into a mental, fuck it, a decision to bring Cassie to Quarry Park on Saturday. Now here they are, playground first, followed by an easy stroll through the woods which he imagined would be hand-in-hand, but whatever. He’s the father, and Beth’s not the only who gets to decide. 

The day’s as simple, happy, and peaceful as he envisioned. Cassie adored the playground, constructed from industrial metal twisted and curved into spirals and unusual shapes, and she climbed and slid and dangled and monkey-walked every which way, shouting, “Watch me, Adam! Watch this!” 

(She calls him Adam, not Dad or Daddy—likely Beth’s doing.)  

“We can’t tell Mama about this,” he said at one point, as she hung upside-down off a metal bar.  

“We won’t, but I might,” she sings. “But we might, and you won’t, and I will, will, will.” 

“You’re so silly,” he said, wanting to tickle her but suddenly afraid she’d crash to the ground. Should he grab her? He crossed his arms instead.  

Anyway, Cassie doesn’t fall, doesn’t bleed; they encounter zero snakes, spiders, ticks. Packs of feral dogs don’t chase them through the woods. No lightning strikes. Safe as safe can be. He’d Googled about the missing kid while Cassie was on the swings: Cops and bloodhounds worked the area for two days, searching the grounds, and divers went in, everyone looking for sixteen-year-old Amari Carter, whose battered Corolla was found in the parking lot, door and trunk gaping open. Not Adam’s problem, and no evidence his murdered body ended up in the quarry. All of that’s as far as possible from this sunny June day. He’s still not sure if Beth’s serious with her nitpick concerns, or annoying, or malicious. Now that he’s here in North Carolina, he recognizes she’s basically a stranger. Embarrassing to think back on that night in the bar, though not his fault she lied about her age, claiming to be twenty-four. 

He picks up his pace, fearful because he’s lost sight of Cassie, but abruptly she’s right there, plopped cross-legged on the brushy ground adjacent to the path, elbows digging into her knees, hands cupping her chin to balance her head. Like she’s staggered by the weight of the world. The parking lot’s maybe sixty yards ahead. “Hey,” he says. “What’s up here?” To help her stand, he extends a hand that she ignores. 

“Bored,” she says loudly. “Sooooo bored.” 

He points to a welcoming-looking, leafy oak, with some low branches perfect for climbing. Could be a good photo. “Do you know what kind of tree that is?”  

“Tall,” she snaps. “And I’m hungry.” 

He’s got a box of granola bars in the car, but this is the moment he understands they should be with him, on his body; understands why Beth’s always pushing him to take one of her NPR totebags when he picks up Cassie. “I have water,” he says. “Half the time people who think they’re hungry actually are thirsty.” He holds out the Yeti, but she shakes her head no so violently it looks like she’s trying to make her brain rattle. 

“It’s the other half of the time,” she says. “I’m starving. Staarrrrving.” Her face scrunches tight, locks into place, glowers and twitches. A mood, Beth constantly warns, saying, “If she gets in a mood, be careful. Don’t let her hurt herself.” Which seems fairly alarming to Adam, like doctors and experts should be involved, probably a whole team, but, no, Beth says, trust her, she’s taking care of everything, she’s got a handle. Nothing to worry about. “She checks out as normal, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” Beth said, grinding an edge onto her voice. In the three times Adam’s had Cassie alone, he’s not seen this “mood,” and by now, assumes Beth cries wolf to make herself feel necessary and important, while keeping him distant.  

Now he sits down next to Cassie, staying on the mulch path as much as possible since he doubts his ability to identify poison ivy. “Hey, this is pretty sick down here,” he says. “Getting a whole new view.” He cranes his neck backward, gazing up into the rustling leaves, but she doesn’t follow his lead. So he looks down, spots a shiny green beetle the size of his thumbnail, lumbering over mulch. The green’s almost iridescent, a shimmer like the frame of a brand-new bike. “Hey, Cassie, check it out,” he says, pointing. “Wow. I’ve never seen a bug so green. Pretty, right?” 

“That’s just a June bug,” she says, scornfully. “They’re everywhere. So dumb they can’t turn over if you flip them.” She reaches out with her index finger and flicks the bug onto its back. Six tiny legs wave, flail, seem to supplicate; its body rocks and sways. It’s fascinating, but of course awful. A simple bug minding its business, and boom: tragedy. Utterly upended. No idea what happened, only that survival’s suddenly in question. And maybe it’s some nothing-bug here in North Carolina, but that green shell’s unreal, almost eerie, something deserving attention. 

He says, “I think most bugs probably know how to flip over using their wings. Otherwise, they’d all be—” He pauses, unsure if he should use the word “dead,” then continues, “Flipped over, and then no more June bugs.”  

Cassie hunches her knees to her chest, wraps her arms around her shins, cocooning her body into itself. She says, “Well, then you flip them back again and again until they’re too tired. Then they stop. They’re so dumb.”  

She pokes a finger in her mouth, chews it. He hears a cardinal trilling somewhere. He could say that, Listen to the red bird. Distract. She gazes at him, her face impassive, a stony challenge. She’s got his blue-green eyes, his round cheeks. This is a test that he’s not passing. Beth expects them in forty-five minutes. “What’ll you do with your free time?” he asked her. “Deep-clean the kitchen,” she said. 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Let’s get to the car and grab a granola bar then we’ll go out for ice cream and French fries.” She alternates, a bite of one then the other. Won’t consider only ice cream or only fries. Has to be both. He can’t imagine. 

She nods, unclenches, wipes her soggy, gnawed finger on her knee. “Superman double dip,” she says, the horrifically gaudy blue, red, and yellow flavor she always wants at Mayberry’s, a local ice cream shop and diner, her favorite place in the world. “And you get it too,” she commands, scrambling up. 

“Sure,” he says, slower and more awkwardly getting to his feet, shaking out one tingly ankle. And why does he feel nervous about saying this? “Oh, hey, better flip back over our little bug friend.” 

“He’s not my friend,” she says. 

“Okay, maybe he’s no one’s friend, but let’s be kind and help him out.” The mom podcasts talk about kindness, a theory that basically didn’t exist when he grew up. 

“No,” she says. “Anyway, it’s not a he. It’s a girl bug.” 

“Then flip her over.” 

“No.” She stares at him, an obstinate tilt to her head. “You can’t make me. You’re not my real father. Mama said you didn’t want me to be alive.”  

He towers above her—she’s short for her age, tiny; another thing to worry about? “She’s in the range of normal,” Beth said—but Cassie’s bossy voice jabs at him, feels designed to topple him. “Don’t you want to be a kind person?” he says, hating the lack of confidence he’s conveying, hating the way repeating “kind” turns the word into mush.   

More brain-rattling head shaking. She wraps her arms back around her body, ratchets them tighter, tighter. Her fingertips almost touch behind her back, like a circus freak. “No, not right now,” she says. “Right now inside me is really very mean.”  

“Oh,” he says, thinking how to steer back to the bug, ignore the rest. 

She turns. Her shoulders look miniature, the blade jutting out strangely, as if something’s not quite right with her skeleton, though he instantly imagines Beth haughtily informing him that her skeleton is “normal.” It’s normal not caring about a lousy bug, right? Didn’t he, himself, yank legs off Daddy longlegs one at a time, forcing the hobbled creatures into awkward, awful races against each other? Chop heads off snakes with a hoe to watch their bodies twitch and their severed heads snap furiously at air? Whack butterflies in flight with tennis rackets? It’s who kids are, nasty little creatures. There were threats of military school, but he outgrew it, and so will she. Just a bug.  

“You don’t want to grow up mean, do you?” he asks. 

She huffs a sigh. “I don’t care. Stink-head.” 

He peers down but can’t spot the bug that’s causing the upheaval. Upside-down, that brilliant green on the underside, blends it into the mulch. He lowers into a squat, hearing one knee crack. “There it is.” He points. The bug’s legs haven’t slowed and there’s something heartbreaking about the emptiness of their grasp, the loneliness of its plight. Reaching, praying, hoping. Oh, please. No: simple, biological instinct. For a moment, he feels his own anger rising. Why doesn’t the stupid thing push open its wings and flop right side up? 

She unfolds her arms, bends down, then drops to her knees, peers at where he points. “She’s so dumb,” Cassie says. 

“She just needs a little help,” Adam says. “Like we all do. Can you please be kind and help her?” Is that what he should say, or is this where he’s supposed to say, If you don’t help the bug, there’s no ice cream for you, or is this where he says, Do you want to flip the bug over with your finger or with a leaf, tricking her with the illusion of control? The podcasts blur. 

She lowers her face almost touching the mulch and stage-whispers, “I hate you.” 

After his father died, he hated everyone and everything. But no one wanted to hear about it, so he stuffed it in. He imagines Beth immediately insisting that Cassie’s intense and illogical anger is normal. But really, should kids go around with such brazen hatred?  

He takes a big breath, tries for a soothing tone: “Also, I need you to know I most definitely want you to be alive, and I most certainly am your real father.” 

Then she looks up, points at him, and says, “No.”  

Another breath. He says, “I went to court, and they told me so.”  

“What’s that mean? Who told you?” 

“It means—” He hasn’t found a podcast about paternity tests, probably from lack of effort, since there’s a podcast about everything.  

She’s still pointing right at him, her finger motionless, so he says, “It’s not polite to point. Put your finger down.” 

Her fingers tuck into fists, both of which remain directed at him, and speaks loudly: “I said, what’s that mean?” 

“It means I have a piece of paper,” he says. “Your mom has the same paper. Ask her to show you, if you don’t believe me.” 

She shrugs, uncurls her fingers and fans them wide. “I don’t care.” 

He says, “It’s called an Order of Filiation. I’m sure she’d happily explain it all to you. It’s a very big deal, and a lot of people spent a lot of time working on it, and you should appreciate that.” He’s being a dick to his daughter, possibly the only child he’ll ever have, and yeah. Didn’t want. Is that a sin? Not wanting to force a kid to deal with this shitshow life? He remembers his sister’s impassioned arguments, explaining how she, and every friend she has, is furious at the world, wounded by their parents’ actions or absence, crushed under endless cycles of self-harm, yearning to escape a bottomless pit of ache and need. Honestly, he didn’t want to know all that. He thought his sister was fine, there at college in Lincoln. Accounting major. 

“Order of….?” 

He sighs. Of course he wants Cassie now. “A court order. A bunch of important people—judges, doctors, lawyers—and we all talked and talked, and there were very definitive tests. DNA, genetics. Words they’ll teach you in science class. Anyway, for sure, yes, I’m absolutely your daddy. And I love you.” 

“They ordered you to love me?” 

What he would love is someone walking by right now to smash apart this conversation. “No, actually the order’s about money,” he says. “And not an order, more like an explanation. The love is, well, I’m giving you that. Like, for free.” That doesn’t sound like enough, and he imagines his sad sister commiserating with her sad friends, so he tacks on: “Forever.”  

“No matter what?” 

“No matter what. Forever. That’s what love is.” His knee’s about to snap, so he straightens up, shakes it out. Beth will kill him if they’re late. But he promised ice cream and French fries. Cassie hates eating in the car—which adds more time, standing in the parking lot letting her eat the granola bar her special way, squirrel nibbles around the perimeter, instead of just, say, biting the damn thing. 

 “Promise?” She stands, tiptoeing closer to him. 

“I promise,” he says. He readies for a big ole hug, maybe sweet tears. Hers, possibly his. This parenting moment, he did it. He passed, practically ready to run his own podcast. Unstoppable. “Remember, you can call me Daddy,” he says. “Or Dad. Doesn’t have to be Adam.” 

She says, “Okay.” He’s eager for the reward of the hug, when she draws up her leg and stomps down, hard, again and again, squashing the bug and any bug with the extremely bad luck to be wandering by. “Dumb bug,” she says. Again and again. And once more that scary whisper, “I hate you.” 

He doesn’t move; it’s as if his limbs are vast weights, his brain a chunk of cement. He’s sinking, sinking. How can he possibly stop all this? 

More, harder, worse, and she’s grunting, eyes focused down, shouting, “Dumb bug! Dumb bug!” until it’s a rhythm to haunt his dreams, and finally, finally—she doesn’t hug him, so much as simply collapse into him, her body sticky, sweaty, almost feverish against his legs. He strokes her hair, so soft and fine, like a puff of dandelion seeds. She was a bald baby. He does remember that. “Normal,” Beth murmured in the car when he picked her up at the hospital after her ride fell through. “I already checked.” 

Cassie says, “I’m hungrier.” 

He’s hollowed out, beat, his insides flailing, yet also oddly ravenous, though the idea of sitting across a Formica table from her, watching her gulp down lurid ice cream carves a pit in his stomach.  

“It was a dumb bug,” she says, reaching for his hand. “And it was mean. Not kind.” 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” Her hand’s limp, wan, the bones as fragile as the balsa wood he and his father glued into model airplanes. He must be clutching too hard because she yanks away suddenly, as if zapped by electricity.  

They walk in silence until they’re at the edge of the parking lot, when she points to the walkway to the observation point extending fifteen yards over the quarry.  “What’s that?” she asks. “What’s over there? We have to see that.” 

“That’s very deep water,” he says. “We’re staying away. We’re steering clear.”  

“There’s things hanging on the fence,” she says.  

“I know,” he says. “I see them too.” He holds his breath, dreading an outburst. She pauses for a moment, stubbing the toe of one sneaker against the asphalt. Then she continues to the car, and he follows.  

Later, at a booth by the window at Mayberry’s, he watches her tongue and lips stain blue-black from that flamboyant ice cream. She clutches three fries in one fist, which she bites into. Then shoves in a spoon of ice cream. Fries. Ice cream. It’s disgusting, it just is. His chocolate chip melts in the dish. He texts Beth: <will be there soon ice cream>. Sits back and waits for her angry return text. He may also have promised no sugar late in the day. Also, who’s he kidding, imagining Cassie won’t tell her mother every single thing about today? He’s in for it. 

He thinks about the quarry, the unspeakable things lurking in those depths. Continues watching his daughter, convincing himself she won’t eat like this forever, that these habits will be outgrown, the way he hasn’t hacked the head off a snake for many, many, many years.  

Rippling through these thoughts, the echo of his own, confident voice prattling assurances to Beth: Just a drug dealer. Just a runaway. 

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Leslie Pietrzyk’s recent collection of linked stories is set in DC, Admit This to No One. This Angel on My Chest won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Short stories/essays in: Ploughshares, Story, Hudson Review, Southern Review, Iowa Review, The Sun, Cincinnati Review, LitHub, Okay Donkey, Pithead Chapel, and Split Lip Magazine. Awards include a Pushcart Prize. She lives in North Carolina.