THE QUARTERBACKS UNTOUCHABLE GIRL

STORM DAY TWO

The second day of snow was quieter than the first.

Not the house... the house was the same as always. The heater kept clicking on and off. Willa narrated her own private business to nobody in particular. It was quieter in us. Like yesterday's flour fight had used up some kind of nervous energy and what was left underneath it was calmer. Slower.

By afternoon Willa had worn herself out completely. She'd been up since six, through two diaper changes, a flour incident, lunch, and what could only be described as an aggressive campaign against the couch cushions. Somewhere around two she just stopped, climbed onto Dax's chest while he was lying on the couch half-watching something on his phone, and went out like someone had flipped a switch.

He didn't move her.

I came in from the kitchen with two mugs of the hot chocolate Rosa kept stocked for exactly this kind of day and found him just lying there. One hand resting flat on Willa's back. He wasn't even looking at his phone anymore, just looking at the ceiling.

"She's out?" I said. Quiet, so I wouldn't wake her.

"Hard out." He shifted, careful, making room. "Sit. If you want."

I sat. Not too close, but close enough that the couch dipped a little under both our weight. Close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him even through the space we'd left.

We didn't say anything for a while. Outside the snow kept doing its slow, endless thing, and the only sounds in the room were Willa's small even breaths and the occasional creak of the house settling against the cold.

"Can I ask you something," I said eventually.

"Depends what it is."

"Your dad."

His whole body went a little still. Not dramatic. Just... a stillness, like something tensing under the surface before it decides whether to let go again.

"What about him."

"You never talk about him. At all, not even once."

He was quiet for a long moment. I thought maybe he wasn't going to answer, that I'd asked the wrong thing on a day that had been going so well, and I almost said never mind, forget it. But then he started talking, slow, like each word had to be pulled up from somewhere deep.

"He left when I was eleven," he said. "No fight, no warning. Just... gone one day." He looked at the ceiling, not at me. "There was a note, on the kitchen table. I still remember exactly where it was sitting. Right next to the fruit bowl."

"What did it say?"

"I don't actually remember most of it." A small, humorless laugh. "Isn't that messed up? The most important piece of paper in my life and I can't even tell you what it said. I remember it was short, I remember it didn't have my name in it anywhere. Just my mom's."

I didn't say anything. I'd learned, somewhere in the last two months, that some things needed room more than they needed a response.

"I went to school that day," he said. "I didn't tell anyone, didn't tell my mom I knew, even, not for like three days, because I kept thinking if I didn't say it out loud maybe it wouldn't be true yet." He shifted Willa slightly, adjusted his arm under her. "I used to go to the bathroom between classes and just... cry. For like a week straight, locked in a stall so nobody would hear it."

"For a week?"

"Every day, same stall. The one furthest from the door, nobody really used it." He said it so plainly, like he was reading off a grocery list, but his jaw had gone tight in that specific way. "I got really good at making my eyes look normal by the time the bell rang. Cold water counting to thirty. I had a whole system."

"You were eleven."

"Yeah."

"That's not... " I stopped myself, because I could hear where I was about to go, the soft place, the that's so sad place, and I didn't think that's what he needed right now. "That's a lot to figure out by yourself."

He looked at me then, first time since he'd started talking.

"Yeah," he said again, quieter. "It was."

The room sat in its quiet for a while. Willa made a small sound in her sleep, something between a sigh and a word, and settled deeper into his chest.

"After that," he said, "I just decided I wasn't going to be somebody people could do that to again. If nobody gets close, nobody leaves. That was the whole plan. Worked pretty well, actually. Up until..."

He didn't finish that sentence.

I didn't make him.

"My mom left when I was five," I said, after a while.

He turned his head toward me.

"I don't remember much, that's the worst part, almost. I don't remember her leaving, not really. I just remember one day she was there and then I have this memory of asking my dad where she was and him not really answering. Just... distracting me. Pancakes for dinner, that kind of thing." I wrapped both hands around my mug, even though it had gone lukewarm a while ago. "I think I made up most of what I think I remember about her. Like, I'm not even sure the memories are real or if I just built them out of nothing because five-year-olds need a story."

"That makes sense."

"My dad never really explained it. Not properly. I think he didn't know how, or he didn't want to make it worse, I don't know. He just... kept going. Like the hole where she used to be was just a thing we worked around now." I looked at the snow outside the window instead of at him. "He died when I was thirteen."

Dax didn't say anything right away, I felt him go still beside me, the way I'd gone still earlier, except this time it was him bracing for what I might say next.

"Heart thing," I said. "Nobody knew, he just didn't wake up one morning." My voice did something strange on that sentence, went thin in a place I hadn't expected. "I found him."

"Astrid."

"I'm not... I'm okay. I just don't usually say that part out loud." I cleared my throat. "Anyway, after that I went to live with Veronica. She wasn't even really my stepmom yet, not officially, they'd only been married like two years, and she just... tolerated me. For four years. Like I was something she'd inherited along with the house and didn't have the energy to deal with but couldn't quite throw out yet either."

"Until she could."

"Until she could." I said it flat, no real weight behind it anymore, because I'd had two months to get used to the shape of that sentence. "The second I turned old enough that it wouldn't look completely terrible, she did."

He was quiet for a second.

"I'm sorry," he said. Simple. No performance in it.

"You don't have to be sorry, it's not your fault."

"I know. I'm still sorry."

I looked at him.

"Nobody's ever said that to me before," I said. "Not like that. Most people just kind of... change the subject. Like it's contagious or something."

"I'm not most people."

"No," I said, quiet. "I'm starting to figure that out."

Willa shifted again, one small fist curling against Dax's shirt, completely unaware that the two people on either side of her had just handed each other the heaviest things either of them owned, out loud, for the first time, to anyone.

Outside the snow kept coming down, soft and steady, covering everything it touched.

And neither of us moved for a long time.