Daddy Issues

by Evangeline Anderson

He frowned. “You want to hear in Rus­sian?”

  “Yes.” I smiled at him. “I like to hear you speak it. It’s very…strong. Very gut­tural and mas­cu­line. I don’t know…I like the sound of it.”

  “Very well.” Salt looked pleased. “Then listen, mishka. I will read to you the story of the Frog Prin­cess.”

  “Don’t you mean the Prin­cess and the Frog?” I asked drowsily.

  He shook his head. “Is Rus­sian fairy tale, re­mem­ber? Now listen…”

  Listen­ing to the sound of his deep bari­tone voice read­ing in his nat­ive lan­guage, I fell asleep …

  *

  And woke up scream­ing.

  I tore my­self from the grip of the night­mare, the scream of ter­ror filling my throat.

  The mon­ster! The one with long teeth and sharp claws—it’s com­ing for me! It’s go­ing to get me! No—just a night­mare. Only a bad dream…

  I looked around wildly. It was the middle of the night—so black in the room I couldn’t see any­thing. Where was the night­light my daddy al­ways left on for me? Then I re­membered…

  It burned out. The bulb burned out and mom never got a new one. She said I was a big girl now, that I didn’t need one.

  But I did need a night­light. And I needed my big, strong daddy to com­fort me. To come in and chase away the mon­sters like he al­ways did when I had one of my bad dreams. But he was gone…gone for good…

  My screams were re­placed by sobs. I reached for someone—reached for my daddy—but I was all alone in the big room. All alone and no one would ever come to save me again. Mom was prob­ably deep asleep like she al­ways was when she drank her spe­cial medi­cine. She wouldn’t come…no one would come. I was alone. All alone…

  I drew my knees up to my chest and sobbed harder. Daddy…Daddy, I miss you so much! Why did you leave me?

  Sud­denly feet were pound­ing across the car­peted floor and the door to the bed­room swung open. I saw a big, fa­mil­iar shape sil­hou­et­ted in the door­way, lit from be­hind so his face was in shad­ows. But I knew who it was at once.

  “Daddy!” I held out my arms to him and he came to me at once and gathered me close.

  “Andi?” His deep voice was un­cer­tain but just hav­ing him near made me feel bet­ter.

  “Daddy,” I sobbed, press­ing close to him. “I had a night­mare. I woke up and you weren’t there. I thought…thought you were gone for good.”

  “Andi…” For a mo­ment he didn’t seem to know what to do. Then he gathered me into his arms and lif­ted me, cradling me like a baby against his broad, bare chest. He took me to the rock­ing chair and settled into it, still hold­ing me in his lap. Then he began to rock and stroke my hair sooth­ingly. “Is all right, little girl,” he mur­mured. “Is all right.”

  “Why did you leave me?” I whispered against his chest. He smelled so good—so spicy and warm and the sound of his heart pound­ing just un­der my ear was won­der­ful. But I still had ques­tions. “What did I do wrong to make you go? Please, tell me,” I begged through my tears. “And I swear I’ll never do it again. I swear.”

  “Noth­ing. You did noth­ing. Oh, Andi…” He held me even closer and bent down to press his lips ten­derly to my wet cheeks, kiss­ing my tears away. “I’m so sorry,” he mur­mured. “So sorry you were hurt.”

  “You prom­ised not to leave me and then you left any­way,” I said ac­cus­ingly. I gave a little sob. “Prom­ise not to leave me again. Prom­ise.”

  “I prom­ise,” he as­sured me, still hold­ing me close. “I will never aban­don you. This I swear, my little mishka.”

  Mishka? I frowned. What was that word? My daddy never called me that be­fore. He al­ways called me “sweet­heart” or “pun’kin.” In fact, the only man I knew who had called me that name was…

  “Oh my God!” I sat up, the strange dream-state I had some­how fallen into com­pletely shattered.

  “Andi…” Salt tried to draw me back down on his lap but I struggled out of his arms.

  “Salt? What did you…why did you…?”

  He switched on the bed­side lamp and in its dim, golden glow I could see that his face was troubled.

  “I heard you cry out. You had a bad dream—a night­mare I think.”

  “I used to have them a lot as a kid.” I ran a shak­ing hand through my tangled hair. “But I haven’t had one in years. And then I woke up and I thought…I thought you were…” I looked at him, un­able to fin­ish the sen­tence.

  “Is all right,” he said quietly.

  “It’s not all right,” I said an­grily, swip­ing at my wet eyes. “You should have tried harder to wake me up. You shouldn’t have played along like that. I was cry­ing like a little girl! You let me em­bar­rass my­self.”

  He spread his hands. “Of what do you have to be em­bar­rassed? You were hurt—I held you. Why is this so bad?”

  “Be­cause I’m not a little girl—not any­more,” I snapped.

  “Part of you is, per­haps,” he said quietly. “Part is still hurt­ing. It is as Dr. Stevens said—this place is bring­ing out ‘is­sues.’”

  “No, it’s not!” I denied vehe­mently. “It’s bring­ing back memor­ies but that is not the same thing. Not at all.”

  “How is dif­fer­ent?” Salt asked, rais­ing an eye­brow.

  “It’s…it’s…just not the same thing,” I said lamely. “Look, I just need to get back to sleep. We have a long day to­mor­row.”

  “Do you want me to stay with you? Rock you some more to keep away night­mares?”

  At first I thought he was teas­ing me or mak­ing fun of me. But then I looked at his face and saw that he was ab­so­lutely ser­i­ous—he was of­fer­ing to take me in his arms and rock me like a baby un­til I fell asleep again.

  Just like Daddy used to do, whispered a voice in my head. I pushed it away.

  “No, thank you,” I said as coolly as I could. “I can get to sleep just fine on my own.”

  “Very well.” Salt star­ted to get up. But as he was pre­par­ing to leave, I thought of ly­ing in the dark­ness again, all alone in the big room and the strange, chilly bed. The night pressed in around me, cold and lonely and scary and I couldn’t help shiv­er­ing.

  Are you…” I cleared my throat and looked away. “Are you com­ing to bed any time soon?”

  “Do you want me to come to bed, mishka?” he asked softly.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him not to call me that but some­how I couldn’t say the words.

  “Well, I mean you don’t have to but it is get­ting late,” I hedged. “And we need to be on our game to­mor­row. You should prob­ably get some rest.”

  “Very well.” Salt nod­ded and went to close the bed­room door. “I will come to bed.”

  He slid un­der the cov­ers and pat­ted the bed be­side him.

  “Come. Little girls need their sleep.”

  “I’m not a little girl,” I re­minded him. But I slid un­der the cov­ers any­way be­side him, though I took care to leave some space between us.

  The bed had cooled again and the sheets were chilly against my skin. I shivered and tucked my knees up to my chest—my hands and feet were freez­ing.

  “Come here.” I felt Salt’s long arm wrap around me and then he was pulling me close.

  “Salt…” I pro­tested half­heartedly. But he was already tuck­ing me against his side, one arm wrapped pro­tect­ively around my shak­ing shoulders.

  “Hush,” he mur­mured sternly. “Go to sleep.”

  “But—”

  “Go to sleep,” he re­peated.

  There didn’t seem to be any­thing else to do. It seemed strange and wrong to be pressed from chest to thigh against my part­ner—strange and wrong but also com­fort­ing. The spicy scent of his af­ter­shave and the warmth of his bare chest against me felt won­der­ful. I could hear his heart­beat again, as I had while he held me in his lap. It was slow and steady in my ear as I p
ressed my cheek to his chest. Lub-dub, lub-dub…

  The soft rhythm lulled me into re­lax­ing against him. I liked the feel of the big, male body pressed against mine, liked the feel­ing of safety and se­cur­ity I felt when Salt held me close like this. I liked feel­ing pro­tec­ted…cher­ished…cared for.

  These were feel­ings I hadn’t had for a very, very long time. Not since child­hood. I had for­got­ten how good it felt to be held in the arms of a man who would kill or die to pro­tect me, as Stevens had said. For­got­ten how much I liked feel­ing cared for and safe.

  But I shouldn’t feel like this, I ar­gued with my­self. It’s wrong…dan­ger­ous. It feels great now but you’re not a kid any­more, Andi. This is go­ing to lead to other things if you’re not very, very care­ful.

  Though I knew it was true, I still couldn’t move away. Still ar­guing with my­self over my new and dis­turb­ing feel­ings for my part­ner, I fi­nally drif­ted off into a dream­less sleep.

  Chapter Six

  “So who is this Dr. Ne­w­house, do you think?” I muttered to Salt as we sat on the bench out­side her private of­fice. It was down the long hall­way I had no­ticed earlier and it was the only door I saw there—so much for find­ing a hid­den Please lab.

  “Dr. Ne­w­house is em­in­ent psy­cho­lo­gist with many ac­col­ades to her name,” Salt answered promptly.

  “I don’t care how freak­ing ‘em­in­ent’ she is, I just can’t be­lieve we have to be psy­cho­ana­lyzed again,” I grumbled. I was still sting­ing from Pro­fessor Stevens’ opin­ion that send­ing me to the In­sti­tute was like throw­ing a lamb to the wolves. I didn’t need to hear the same thing from someone else. I looked up at my part­ner. “How do you know so much about her, any­way?”

  He gave me an arch look.

  “Easy. I looked her up while you were still sleep­ing.”

  “Yeah, you did a lot of things while I was sleep­ing.” I looked down at the new little girl dress Salt had pro­cured for me at the cos­tume shop. He’d got­ten me new shoes as well—little girl san­dals with shiny gold straps that matched the dress and gave my toes plenty of room to breathe.

  I hated the whole out­fit but I didn’t feel like I had much right to com­plain. Salt had let me sleep in and had even brought me up a break­fast tray along with the new clothes. It was very sweet of him but I wanted to tell him to stop cut­ting me slack. I was an adult, God­dam­nit, even if I was dressed like a nine year old—I could carry my own weight on this case.

  “Are you up­set I did not wake you?” Salt raised an eye­brow at me. “Or be­cause you do not like out­fit I picked for you?” He him­self, of course, was dressed in an­other ex­pens­ive suit with a crisp white shirt and a dark blue tie that brought out his eyes. I found my­self ir­rit­ated all over again that he got to dress like an adult while I was re­leg­ated to stu­pid, child­ish dresses.

  “Both.” I sighed. “Look, Salt, you know I ap­pre­ci­ate everything you did for me. This morn­ing and…and last night.” We still hadn’t dis­cussed my mini-break­down the night be­fore and I was hop­ing we never would. I pre­ferred to try and for­get about it. “But I’m just never go­ing to like dress­ing like this.” I stroked the silky fab­ric of the dress again—it was white lace em­broidered all over with in­no­cent pink rose­buds. Ugh.

  “I am sorry you do not like,” Salt said. “It was the best I could find.”

  “In this age range, maybe,” I said. “But what about older? Did they have any­thing like that?”

  “You mean like ‘slutty school girl’ uni­form?” Salt’s face darkened. “I thought we de­cided this is not for you, Andi.”

  “You mean you de­cided,” I said ac­cus­ingly. Salt had point-blank re­fused to let me put on the other out­fit I had brought with me. He’d said that it was im­port­ant that I keep play­ing the age I had star­ted at. And though I didn’t com­pletely agree, he was so adam­ant about it that I had re­luct­antly put on the new white dress and fol­lowed him to our ap­point­ment with Dr. Ne­w­house.

  “Is bet­ter this way,” Salt said. “For many reas­ons.”

  “For your reas­ons, maybe,” I said. “But I hate this, Salt! Play­ing this age is really mess­ing with my head. You saw what happened to me last night—I haven’t had a night­mare like that in years.”

  Salt sighed. “For­give me. It’s just…I like you this age. Not for sexual reas­ons,” he said hast­ily. “But be­cause you are softer…easier to reach some­how.”

  “Weaker,” I said darkly. “More vul­ner­able. Is that what you want? For me to be vul­ner­able for you? To be a help­less little girl you can dom­in­ate and con­trol?”

  “Of course not,” he said softly. “I want for you to be someone I can com­fort…someone to hold in my arms and cher­ish as I did last night, my little mishka.”

  I stared at him, un­able to take in what he was say­ing. Salt had never ex­pressed any feel­ings like this to­wards me be­fore. One of the things I val­ued about my part­ner was that, des­pite my di­min­ut­ive size, he had never tried to pick me up or treat me like a doll as other big guys I had known some­times had.

  There’s a cer­tain kind of man who finds a pocket-sized girl like me ir­res­ist­ible but I had al­ways strenu­ously avoided them. It’s hard enough to be re­spec­ted when you’re no big­ger than a large child, as Salt had put it the night be­fore. If you start act­ing like a child or let­ting people treat you like a child, you’re go­ing to get nowhere pro­fes­sion­ally.

  And now here was my part­ner, ad­mit­ting that he wanted to treat me like that. That he wanted to pick me up and hold me, just as he had the night be­fore when I cried my eyes out against his broad chest.

  Was that really so bad though? whispered a little voice in my head. It was kind of nice to be held in his arms and com­for­ted, don’t you think?

  I pushed the idea away. That way lay weak­ness…vul­ner­ab­il­ity…and even­tu­ally aban­don­ment and pain. I knew that—knew it to my bones. Which meant I had to steer clear of this kind of feel­ing…the feel­ing that made me want to climb in Salt’s lap and cuddle up against him, trust­ing him to keep me safe and se­cure in­stead of stand­ing on my own two feet and act­ing like an adult.

  “Andi? Mishka?” Salt looked at me with a hint of plead­ing in his pale blue eyes. “Please, do not mis­un­der­stand me. I am not try­ing to make you weak, you are one of the strongest people I know. I just—”

  “Save it.” I put up a hand to stop him. “I don’t care why you said what you said—I can’t go there with you. I can’t even think about—”

  “Well, well—it seems the ther­apy ses­sion has already star­ted out here without me.”

  The new voice brought me up short. Salt and I had been lean­ing to­wards each other, talk­ing in­tently. Now we both jumped and looked up to see a blonde wo­man in an ex­pens­ive look­ing gray twill busi­ness suit. Her hair was pulled into a loose but pretty chignon at the back of her neck and her heels were sens­ibly low, though still styl­ish. She was hold­ing a tab­let in one hand.

  “Hello,” she said, smil­ing at my part­ner and me. “I’m Doc­tor Lucy Ne­w­house but you can just call me Doc­tor Lucy. Please, come in.”

  She stepped to one side and held out a hand, in­dic­at­ing that we should go into her of­fice. I have to con­fess that I dragged my feet—I really wasn’t look­ing for­ward to this at all.

  Dr. Lucy seemed to sense that I wasn’t happy to be there. She shut her of­fice door and fol­lowed us into a room that held a love­seat, two arm chairs, and one straight backed wooden chair with a plump red cush­ion on it. Dr. Lucy took this last chair for her­self and then mo­tioned to us.

  “Please, have a seat.”

  Salt settled him­self on the love­seat and I took one of the arm­chairs. Then we looked at the doc­tor and waited.

  “Hmm…” She was look­ing at some­thing on her tab­let�
��ap­par­ently read­ing through some notes. Fi­nally, she looked up at me. “So, niska, is it?”

  “Mishka,” Salt cor­rec­ted her at once. “Is pet nick­name which means ‘little mouse.’”

  “I see.” She made a note on her tab­let with a jeweled stylus. “All right then, mishka. So it seems you had a prob­lem when you wit­nessed a plug in­ser­tion yes­ter­day when you first came here.”

  Plug in­ser­tion—ugh! I shivered in­vol­un­tar­ily.

  “If by ‘had a prob­lem’ you mean was hor­ri­fied and trau­mat­ized, then yes, I had a prob­lem,” I said blandly.

  “Trau­mat­ized,” she mused. “Now there’s an in­ter­est­ing word choice. Tell me, mishka, what was it about what you wit­nessed that made you feel like that?”

  “Well he…she…” I groped for words for a minute. There was so much, where did I even be­gin? “She was let­ting him—her mas­ter—”

  “Her Daddy,” Dr. Lucy sup­plied.

  I waved a hand dis­missively. “Yeah, right, whatever. She was let­ting him do things to her that were…that nobody should do to any­body else.”

  “Shouldn’t they? Why not?”

  I stared at her.

  “Ser­i­ously?”

  “Yes, ser­i­ously,” she said. “They are two con­sent­ing adults, after all. So I really want to know why it up­set you. Was it the loss of con­trol—or the sexual as­pect of the scene you wit­nessed?”

  “I don’t know—pick one,” I said un­com­fort­ably.

  She leaned for­ward. “Was it that you were pic­tur­ing your­self in Patty’s place, al­low­ing your own Daddy to pen­et­rate you the way she was be­ing pen­et­rated?”

  “Ugh!” I ex­claimed in­vol­un­tar­ily. “How can you say that with a straight face? That’s dis­gust­ing! She was dressed up like a little girl!” I knew I wasn’t help­ing our case any but I couldn’t help my­self—her word­ing just pushed my but­tons.

  “As are you,” Dr. Lucy poin­ted out. “But if you’re con­cerned or dis­turbed by that, let me as­sure you of some­thing. Though we at the In­sti­tute are cer­tainly not ig­nor­ant of those in­di­vidu­als that prefer to in­volve ac­tual chil­dren in a sexual way, they are not wel­come here. They have no place in our world.”