Fantasy Life Read Free

hadn’t realized how thirsty she would be.
    Her footsteps, knocking down the grass, were the only sound she heard. The air took on a familiar marshy scent, the smell that always made her think of the lake in the summer.
    As she got closer to the patio, she saw that the cabana had been taken down—all that was left was concrete where the floor used to be.
    A shiver went through her even though she wasn’t cold, and she glanced toward the lake to see if Daddy had at least put out the dock.
    He had, and he was sitting on it, cross-legged, staring at the sailboats that looked pure white against the hazy sky. The lake itself was blue-gray, the air so full of water that the sunlight filtering through it almost looked like sun coming through fog.
    Emily had never seen her daddy sit so still. It was almost like he was like those prayer guys she’d seen in Union South one day while she was waiting for her mommy.
    Emily set her towel on the patio stones—which were cracked and weeds had grown through them—and no one had bothered to put out the big glass table with the umbrella and the cushiony green chairs with the white legs, even though it was the middle of the summer.
    She glanced real quick at the patio doors, trying to see inside the house, but it was too dark. She couldn’t even see if anyone was moving around inside, like maybe Daddy had gotten a new housekeeper or something.
    Mommy said to the lawyer lady that toward the end it wasn’t good to sneak up on Daddy, so Emily made as much noise as she could coming down the hard path. She swished the grass and coughed and cleared her throat.
    When she got to the edge of the dock, she jumped on it, so it bounced just like it always had, and the water rippled around it, and her heart lifted. No matter how much changed, this—this, at least, stayed the same.
    Her daddy turned, real slow, like he was at the end of one of those ripples she caused. His hair was too long and it wasn’t black anymore. It had lots of gray in it. And he had lines on his face that she’d never seen before. He was kinda thin and the polo shirt he wore, one of his favorites, seemed like it was made for someone else.
    But he smiled when he realized it was her, and that was Daddy, that big goofy grin that covered most of the lower part of his face.
    Emily grinned back and waved and said, “I missed you,Daddy,” even though she’d promised herself, promised, promised, promised, she wouldn’t say anything like that because she didn’t want him to feel bad.
    He got up and held out his arms and she ran to him, hitting him so hard that she felt his body rock as she wrapped her arms around him.
    “Em,” he said, and his voice sounded a little funny, like it used to when he had a cold or when he talked too much to his classes.
    His hand ran along her short hair. She’d forgot Mommy had done that at the beginning of the summer, made Emily cut her hair so that she’d be cool and no one would have to worry about the tangles like they did in past years. Daddy hated short hair, he always said so, that his girls should look like girls.
    “You’re so tall.” He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back, just a little, so that he could see her face, and she was glad that he didn’t say anything about her hair at all.
    “Mommy didn’t want me to come, but I had to see you, Daddy, so I rode all the way here, and I’m hot and I thought maybe on hot afternoons I could come and we could swim and pretend everything was okay.”
    Daddy’s gray eyes seemed a little glassy, like Mommy’s did when she had just woke up.
    “Yes,” he said, although Emily wasn’t sure what he was agreeing with. “Yes, of course.”
    He crouched, touched the chopped part of her hair again, and smiled at her. Only this wasn’t the goofy grin at all, and Emily’s heart started to pound.
    “Yes,” he said again, “it makes sense that you would come now with the drought and the heat and the dying lake.”
    His hands slid down