Chapter 3

In the end, I dragged that cast home in the dead of night.

By the time I got there, Rose and my daughter had already crossed over to their ancient world.

I looked at the happy little family on the tablet, and I sank down onto the couch, half-conscious.

In that haze, I dreamed of a lot of things from the past.

Right after we got married, I slipped in the bathroom.

It hadn't hurt at the time, but Rose still couldn't rest easy.

In the middle of the night she held me up and rushed me all the way to the ER.

Only when the doctor laughed at her for overreacting did she finally breathe again.

"Clint, I was so scared. I couldn't live without you."

And there was Toni when she was little.

I'd been away three days on a job, and the moment I opened the door she came crying into my arms.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and kept saying,

"Daddy, don't go. Toni wants to be with Daddy forever."

When the dream jolted me awake, I found my tears had soaked a wide patch into the armrest of the couch.

The room was empty, no warmth of another person in it, only bursts of laughter drifting from the tablet on the armrest.

On the screen, my daughter was holding out a chocolate ice cream bar for her so-called emperor father to eat.

"Emperor Daddy, my teacher says you should share the things you love with the people you love most."

"This is my favorite ice cream, and you're the daddy I love most."

Rose praised her for being so sweet, and everyone gushed about how happy their family was.

Only I sat outside the screen, drifting.

That box of ice cream was forty dollars for five bars.

Because my daughter liked it, I bought a box every week.

I bought it for years.

But I never once tasted it.

I couldn't bring myself to. I wanted to save all the best things for her.

Worried delivery food wasn't clean, I got up at five every morning to make her breakfast.

When the power went out in summer, I'd sit by her bed drenched in sweat, fanning her to sleep.

No matter how late the deliveries ran, I always stayed until she finished her homework before I rested.

I thought I was doing right by her.

But in her eyes none of that was love.

She said some man who never raised her was the daddy she loved most.

I wiped my eyes, pushed myself up, and dug that heavy sledgehammer out of the closet.

If she loved the ancient world so much, then she could stay over there forever.

Just then, the door opened.

My father, soaked through, stumbled over and caught hold of me.

"Clint? Aren't you supposed to be in surgery?"

"Where's Rose? Why isn't she with you?"

I froze.

Only after I pressed him did I learn how it had all happened.

While I was trapped in the rain with my phone drowned and dead,

Rose had used my surgery as an excuse and taken every dollar my father had.

He couldn't get through to me on the phone.

Desperate, he'd even handed his house over to a classmate of Rose's to sell.

Shaking with rage, I picked up my phone and called Rose.

Dozens of calls before I finally got her irritated voice on the line.