Page 11 of Joker

I draw in a slow breath and set the mug on the side table before I end up dropping it.

My father said this room was temporary.

Temporary has become one of those words that means less every time I hear it.

We’ll stay here for a little while, baby.

This is temporary, Raven.

Just until things calm down.

Just until I figure something out.

Just until we know where he’s looking.

Everything is temporary when you’re running from a man who has made it his mission to turn your life into a map of exits.

Lexi holds up her paper. “Mama, look.”

I blink myself back into the room and lean forward. “What’ve you got there?”

“A house.” She points proudly to a crooked square with a triangle roof and smoke curling out of a chimney in thick red lines. The smoke is red because she likes red best, because she’s three and because it doesn’t occur to her yet that smoke is supposed to look like anything but whatever color she feels like using.

“That’s a beautiful house,” I tell her.

“It has flowers.”

It does. They are giant purple circles with green stems taller than the front door.

“It’s beautiful.”

She beams, satisfied, and goes back to coloring.

My chest tightens in that familiar, painful way it has lately whenever I look at her too long. Lexi adapts faster than I do. She settles wherever I put her, takes comfort where she can find it, and trusts that as long as I am there, things will be okay. That trust feels holy and impossible and terrifying. There are moments when I look at her and wonder how much she remembers, how much she understands, how much she has absorbed without having words for any of it. Children always know more than adults like to pretend they do.

There’s a knock on the door, two short taps and then one harder one, the rhythm my father has used my whole life. I stiffen anyway. The reaction is instant, ugly, and so deeply ingrained I can’t stop it. By the time I get to the door, my heart is already beating too fast.

I open it to find him standing there in his cut, big and broad and grayer than he used to be, the lines around his eyes cut a little deeper than I remember from before all of this. Grinder. President of the Louisiana chapter. My father to everyone who matters. He looks like solidity. Like the kind of man men move aside for. He also looks like he hasn’t slept much either.

His gaze flicks over my face, probably cataloging the tired I can’t hide, then moves past me to Lexi on the floor. He softens instantly for her. “There’s my best girl.”

Lexi launches up from the carpet with her bunny clutched to her chest and runs the few steps to him. He bends, scoops her up one-handed like she weighs nothing, and kisses the top of her head. She grins and wraps her arms around his neck.

“Papa.”

That word still nearly undoes me every time. He makes a low sound in his throat and carries her inside, shutting the door behind him with his boot. I watch him cross to the couch and settle with Lexi on his knee like the room isn’t too small for a man like him, like he isn’t carrying the weight of an entire chapter on his shoulders along with me and the mess I brought home.

“You colorin’ in here?” he asks her.

She nods and holds up the picture. “House.”

He studies it with a seriousness that makes her light up. “That’s real nice, sugar.”

“It has flowers.”

“I can see that.”

Purple circles and red smoke. My father treats the drawing like it belongs in a frame.