Chapter 5 - Peanut Butter Pancakes and the Park Bench
The check-in table was just inside the gym doors. A mom with a clipboard smiled and asked our names.
"Ella," Ella said, holding my hand tight. "And this is my borrowed daddy Daniel."
The woman's smile held a second too long. "Welcome, Daniel and Ella."
Inside, the gym smelled like floor wax and coffee. There were low tables with white butcher paper and crayons, a face-painter, and a photo backdrop with balloons. Dads sat cross-legged on the floor trying not to look too big for the tiny chairs. Ella pulled me to a table where a half-finished drawing waited with her name on it.
"I made this for you," she said. It was a crayon drawing of two stick figures holding hands, one tall in black, one small in cream, and a bunny between them. Above it in wobbly letters: ELLA + DADDY DAY.
I sat. The chair creaked. "You knew I'd come?"
"I hoped," she said, and slid the crayons toward me. "You color the sky."
So I colored the sky blue, staying inside the lines because it mattered. Other dads glanced over. One leaned to another and whispered. I felt the heat on my neck but kept coloring. Ella watched my hand move.
After twenty minutes, the principal announced sack races outside. Ella wanted to go, but first she whispered, "I'm hungry."
We left the gym a little early, which felt like a relief. At the diner on Main, the waitress seated us in a booth and gave Ella a kids menu and crayons again. Ella ordered peanut butter pancakes, then remembered Helen's note and looked at me panicked.
"No peanuts for you, remember," I said gently. "How about chocolate chip?"
She nodded, disappointed but quick to recover. I ordered coffee and the same. When the pancakes came, she cut nothing and waited. I realized.
"May I?" I asked, and she pushed the plate toward me. I cut them into small squares, the way my dad had for me. She ate with her bunny propped against the syrup bottle, watching me.
"You do it like a real daddy," she said between bites.
The question behind it sat there. I didn't fill it with a lie.
At the park after, the school picnic had moved there. There were dads pushing swings and throwing softballs. I pushed Ella on the swings, counting pushes. After a while a man near us said, "How old is yours?"
"She's five," I said, then looked down at Ella to check. She nodded.
"First time here?" he asked.
"First time as her dad," I said, and it was the truest thing I could say without explaining.
He nodded and pushed his own daughter higher.
Around three, Ella got quiet on the bench. She swung her legs and held the bunny's ear.
"Daniel," she said, not borrowed daddy this time, "can the coupon be longer? Like till bedtime? Or tomorrow too?"
My chest tightened. The coupon in my pocket had a clear end time, Helen's careful handwriting on the back: 9am-7pm. I had promised that.
"The coupon says seven," I said softly. "We still have dinner and ice cream before then."
She looked down. "But if you are already borrowed, could you be borrowed again next Saturday?"
I didn't have an answer that wouldn't be a promise I couldn't keep yet. I put my arm lightly around the back of the bench, not quite touching her.
May you like
"Let's have the best rest of today we can," I said. "And then we'll talk to your grandma about next time, okay?"
She leaned, just slightly, into the space my arm made. "Okay," she whispered. And we sat while the afternoon light moved across the grass, both knowing the clock was moving too.
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