“Daddy, I want to show you something,” she crows, skipping down the park path.

About ten minutes ago, they’d both gotten cold and decided the splash pad wasn’t as interesting anymore. Her brother is content to sit, hooded in his yellow-striped towel, and watch trains go by, periodically yelling “TRAIN!” to Mommy. But she is too excited. Her shivers are gone, and the muggy weight of late summer is a suitable towel. There is much to explore.

She clambers up the red sandy concrete of the skate park half-pipe. The sign says that the walkway is not for pedestrians, but whoever skated here recently is long gone. My adult mind dismisses any danger and hopes her exploration is meaningful. I trail behind, soaking in the moment and my clothes. The splash pad looked like a lot of fun, what can I say.

She wants to show me how she can climb up all by herself. She is brimming with excitement and fourness. She filled up on the latter yesterday, overflowing with balloons and ribbons and this new purple bike with its white plastic basket. $10 on Craigslist. We’re proud of that.

She got to choose her cake – pink cake with blueberries on top – and helped Mommy make it in the afternoon. That is, after she spent a couple hours working on her bike skills. Bikes are freedom, wild and unrestrained and a little bit dangerous. Wheels to take to places, baskets to carry your treasures, the open road, the wind in your face. Am I that different, in my late 20s, stretching the bonds of my 5-year job, sniffing the wind for the next thing?

But she’s back, and will not be ignored. She slid down the half-pipe against my wishes (she’s four, after all), leaving a wet stripe on the curve. Scratches? None, to be sure, but I ask anyway. She confirms that my concern is silly. I knew it was. I just wanted to be concerned.

She climbs again, and shows me how brave she is, walking back and forth on the foot-wide ledge without my help (she’s four, after all). She is brave. She’ll have to be. She stops and sits and, finding the concrete warm from the day, stretches out. She is cozy in her fourness, wrapped in bravery and good cheer and, I hope, the knowledge that I’m nearby. I stand by her and lean on the half-pipe (“Not too close!”) and we talk about things that little girls talk about with their daddies.

Earlier, some teenage punks – daughters and sons reveling in their sixteenness – swarmed the swings right as she flitted toward them. And she stopped, and considered them. They were foreign, turquoise hair and flat brims and skinny jeans and ill-fitting boots. Did she glimpse something of her future? I was far away when she turned, and my outrage was tempered when she didn’t care. But I wanted her to ask them if she could swing. I wanted them to see her. I wanted them to remember, maybe, what it is to be small in a big world. My guess is, they know, but don’t talk about it often.

She is so old right now, and so young. So taken with her world and her self, squealing at spiders and playing peekaboo with the princess in the mirror. Her name is N---- too, and they both have blue eyes and curls and a smile that stops my heart. She is so tender, breakable at the smallest slight, fierce in her wrath, tempestuous in her sorrow.

She is four.

There are many birth-days ahead, when we celebrate her being zero before this, and one, and two, and three… We count them with thankful hearts for a safe pregnancy and delivery, which is withheld from so many others for reasons impossible to understand. We count them with happy hearts for the life coursing in her veins, overflowing in her laughter, and we celebrate with toys and games and sweets to show her she is worth celebrating.

We count them to remember: the coughing cry, the excitement and surprise at a girl when everyone said boy, the squinched-up eyes that opened dark and sweet and perpetually suspicious. How I hated it when medical punks woke her in the night to poke and prod and test, when we only wanted her to know love, not professional disinterest.

Do these only get harder, days brilliant and sharp-edged and rare, diamonds of summer? I’m collecting them for my winter years, to uncover and admire – will they be as clear then? – to remind her of her summer when her children are in theirs. In our hearts we all need this.

She wants to sit and watch the sun go down, and I do too, so we linger longer. Her brother has since given up sitting and is racing up and down ramps, tripping and colliding into everything and bouncing back with skinned knees, unperturbed. He experiences life differently at two. His sister has time to sit and enjoy sunsets.

All the time in the world. She’s four, after all.

I came with them in their baggage. 

Through the dim slit, I see the place. Terraced, white-marbled, castle on a hillside, just like she likes it. We dreamed of it together, only with different characters playing the parts.

A jingle of keys and crackling gravel. Whistle of wind after a long day of rain. What I used to hear, at least, and what I imagine now.

The dead hear in memoriam. The dead see in shadow. The dead do feel, and remember, and love, and hate.

They carry me, clinging, with them tonight into their marriage nest. There is nothing new here for them. I know now that they were doing each other long before she did me with that ax.

"Hunter Becomes the Hunted"

How clever journalists are. Brains in their mouths, like mine after the blow.

The latch click. The giggle as the keys drop. Some whispers, sweet nothings, worth nothing, mean nothing. I swipe the keys into the bushes. I imagine harsh words splattering into the mud with them. Prick, thorns. Splatter, mud. This night has just begun.

"Unpack. I'll pull the car around."

He closes the door after him against the chill. Jenny turns to the business of putting away  his and hers in the shelves and drawers provided. The simple pleasure of vacationing, knowing the length of time you'll stay and acting accordingly. I am near her, close enough to touch. Shiver, Jenny. The cold is not the wind. Remember, he closed the door?

She crosses to the window and pulls back the curtain. Closed. The perplexed twitch. The narrow suspicion. She checks the door. Closed. She turns and stands, listening. She brushes the thought aside. How many times did she brush it aside before snuffing my life?

I will not be ignored any longer. I touch her eyes.

Her breath catches in her throat, but she holds. I whisper an idea so soft it is only felt on the back of her brain, an inch from the location of the blade in mine. But this is surgical. This is natural, silent death.

I'm coming for you.

She pushes the thought out and it floats heavy to the floor. She shakes her head and frowns. There is a fragment lodged like shrapnel, growing steadily inward as the flesh closes around it. 

I am the effect to the cause.

A knock on the door. She jumps and returns from our thoughts. It's him.

"Well, ma'am. Lovely evening for a brisk ride. Would you care to join me?"

"My, all by ourselves, and in this tiny thing? I'll catch my death of cold!"

If only.

"Don't worry yourself, young lady. I'll keep you mighty warm."

His coat around our shoulders. The blanket, the boots, the little packets of intent in his pockets (how unromantic the necessities are) and the arm in arm in arm...

I am the third wheel in the back. I push my glasses higher on the bridge of my nose. Wait, guys, I forgot my wallet.

They look back upon my exit.

"Hey..."

He leaps out. We sit still in the front seat as he and I circle, gladiators scrutinizing weaknesses. He is a slave to his passions, but that is not his weakness. He is weak because he views this slavery as a strength.

Thanks, guys, I got what I needed. We can go now.

Satisfied of his safety, he closes the door and climbs in the driver's seat. We kiss, long. The car is old and the bench seats spacious. His fingers wander to her leg.

I take hold of their brains and bash them together.

He pulls back and looks at her. They share a tinge of fear, suspicious of the cold but recognizing it. Perhaps I've been too subtle. This is my first time, after all.

A nervous chuckle.

"Um, let's drive up to the overlook. It's turning clear out. We can take the top off."

"It'll be too cold," she says, petulant. 

He revs the engine too many times and we crunch along, out the gate, up the narrow dirt road to the overlook. His right hand will not stay away. She does not want it to, but we do. She pushes it away.

"Watch it, fox. Don't be getting ideas."

"Well, now, I've got quite a few already, young lady. You're the one who got into my car."

Aw, come on guys, get a room.

The drive is short. The brake is set, the lights die. We move to the back. Before long, the top is off. 

I fiddle with things in the front seat. I am the bored kid with his teenage sibling and her date. I roll the window down, but we don't hear. It just gets colder.

I turn and watch them, silently. I lock the doors.

We stop kissing.

"Did you hear that?"

"No, stop stalling." 

"It's cold."

"It won't be for long."

No. It will be.

I release the brake.

"Something's wrong!"

Yes. It is, deeply.

The creep turns into a gentle roll. He fumbles with his pants. How silly, when he could reach for the locks. I hold them down anyway, and perhaps he senses this and only wants to die with his pants on. I can't blame him. I watch us struggle, cry out, the clothes tumble and everything is weightless (how do you like it now?) It flashes across her mind, hot lightning mirrored in reeling clouds, and I see it in our eyes:

We're coming for us.

The lunge, the plunge, the fall, oh God, the fall.

I imagine a creaking silence.

Gravity does not rule me now, so I float beside the jagged window and watch. He is gone, assigned, perhaps, to an effect elsewhere. He never got his pants on, more's the pity. I can't see what good a butt-naked ghost will prove to be. Lacks gravitas. But I don't make those calls.

She is still here, broken in places. Black trickles from her skull, over her eyes, down to the tears. Consciousness ebbs and flows, waves of hot breath against the glass. She will live a life of sorts. 

Her phone hovers in front of her face, but we can't move our arms, so I dial it slowly. 9... 1... 1. I check her pulse. Each wave pushes the terror inward, deeper, increases the fog.

And we write it slowly on the windshield:

I'M HERE.