These Dreams of You

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She’s sitting on the bathroom floor. Because he’s still only half conscious and his brain is full of vodka, Viv, Molly, J. Willkie Brown and Ronnie Jack Flowers, he belatedly registers that this is something new, the four-year-old sitting on the bathroom floor crying, and that this is not crying for attention, this is crying in private, the way grown-ups do when they want no one to know. She looks up at him. “You don’t love me as much as Parker,” she says simply.

“Sheba,” he says.

“You can’t.” It’s not even an accusation. It’s worse, what the girl considers a realization.

“That’s not true,” Zan says.

“You can’t,” she repeats, as though begging him just to confirm it.

“It’s not true,” he says firmly, and bends down to pick her up.