Exclusive - "Fooled" - Part 2 (Patreon)

TWO

Father and daughter stand in the elevator, waiting for the doors to close. 

“Why aren’t they closing?”

“Takes a second.”

“You need to press the button.”

“I did.”

“I wanna do it.” Anne stands on tip-toes and reaches with her fingers. 

“Stop.” Dave swats at her hand. The doors begin to close. “See?” He shakes his head at her. “I’ve got this, okay?”

Anne feels the downward motion of the elevator car. She lets the pink deer fall to the floor. She folds her arms and wrinkles her nose. 

Dave says, “You can’t keep double-guessing me, especially if we’re around other people. You need to act more like a…well, like a 4T.”

Anne blinks up at him. “How about you act like someone who knows what they’re doing, and I’ll act more like a child.”

The elevators stops with a light jiggle, and then the doors open. 

“Come on.” Dave takes Anne’s hand. “Don’t forget your deer.”

Anne picks up the stuffie and they walk down a hallway and to the restaurant. A thirty-something hostess with curly brown  greets them. 

“Good morning!” She beams at Anne and then raises her eyebrows. “Party of three?”

Anne frowns and looks up for Dave to correct the hostess. He also looks confused, until he glances back at Anne and then he nods. “Oh. Sure.” He points at the fuzzy animal in Anne’s hand. “What do deers like for breakfast, do you think?”

Anne manages not to roll her eyes. Instead, she pipes up sweetly, “She eats waffles, Daddy.”

The hostess nods in theatrical relief. “Phew! We have a waffle-maker.” Then she changes her tone and asks Dave, “Booster?”

Dave blinks. “Excuse me?”

Anne squeezes his hand. “I need a booster, Daddy,” she says, in a syrupy-sweet voice she finds increasingly easy. “’Cause I’m little!”

Dave nods. “Booster. Right. Absolutely.” 

Anne swings Dave’s hand back and forth, as if doesn’t have a problem in the world. “Deer wants waffles, Daddy!”

The hostess laughs. She has a name badge, and Anne reads ‘Kelsey.’ Does Kelsey believe in Anne’s disguise? 

She must do. People don’t just get younger with the help of a spiked cup of coffee. Even if Anne starts quoting Dostoevsky, that doesn’t mean people will think that she’s really an adult. She’ll just seem like a really, really odd child. 

Anne smiles up at the hostess. “What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?”

No. She doesn’t say it. She likes the quote, but she’ll save it for when they’ve landed in Zurich. 

Because Dave is bad at all this, they go to the waffle bar together. 

“I wanna do it,” Anne says, even though she can’t reach the waffle maker by herself, even though it’s definitely not something for little girls. How tall is she, anyway? She touches the top of her head; she’s a little above Dave’s belt buckle. What does that make her? Three feet? The numbers are dizzying for a moment, they won’t cooperate. But three feet sounds about right. For a munchkin. 

“Daddy makes the waffles,” Dave replies. “You can pour the syrup.”

“And the powdered sugar,” says Anne, warming to the negotiation. She wants to do everything, now that she’s small. She wants to prove that she’s big. That she’s a big girl. 

“Look at you, still in your jammies,” says a old woman. She pats Anne’s head on her way past. 

“Keep your dirty fingers off me,” is something else Anne manages not to say, but she thinks it in her head, and that feels almost as rude. To make up for her unspoken discourtesy, she grins at the old woman and says, “You wanna waffle?”

The woman chuckles. “No thank you, honey, I better stick with my raisin bran.” She taps the empty bowl in her hand. “You like pink, huh?”

Anne opens her mouth to disagree, and then she remembers what’s she’s wearing. True to her disguise, she nods and says, “My stuffie’s pink too!” She points over at their table. “Lookit!”

The woman indulges her, making a show of peering in that direction. “Oh my, how adorable. What’s that? Is it a horsie?”

Anne shakes her head violently. “A deer!” She tugs on Dave’s waffle-making hands. “It’s a deer, isn’t it Daddy.”

Dave blinks down at her. “Sure is.”

Anne tries to get a better view of the counter. “Is the waffles done?”

“Gotta wait for the beep.”

“Beep?”

“Mmm-hmm. The waffle-maker beeps when it’s ready.”

The old woman turns, about to make her way to the cereals, but Anne doesn’t want to see her go. She likes old ladies. Or rather, her disguise does. “I’m gonna pour the syrup!” she declares, much more loudly than is necessary. 

The woman raises her eyebrows and nods, theatrically impressed. “Is that so?”

Anne nods, feeling encouraged. Her disguise is perfect, but it’s not just her body that’s fooling everyone. Anne knows what to say, she’s always been a natural at getting into character. “I’m gonna pour the sugar too.”

“Sprinkle,” Dave says. He rubs his thumb and finger together. “Not too much, right?”

Anne gives another nod. “Not too much,” she says, just as loud as before, “’cause we don’t wanna make a mess.” She sighs happily; not about the waffles, but at how perfect her intonation is. 

We doh wanna may-ka meth. 

And there it is. The old woman is clearly charmed. She gives Dave a warm smile. “She’s such a cutie.”

Dave laughs. “She’s something, alright.” The waffle-maker beeps.

“Beeeep!” parrots Anne, jumping up and down.

Dave lights the top of the waffle-maker and Anne reaches up eagerly.

“Hey!” Dave says sharply, “not for you. Way too hot. You’re gonna burn yourself!”

Anne feels a sting that feels close to hurt feelings. “I dint…I didn’t do it on purpose…”

The old woman says, “It’s okay, sweetie, that things only for daddies.” She puts her bowl on the counter and crouches down and says sweetly, “You look like a pretty pink princess in those jammies.”

Anne’s mouth drops open in surprise. “Huh?”

The woman laughs. “Look at you! All pink and fuzzy!” She puts her hands on Anne’s shoulders and Anne manages not to squirm away. In truth, she doesn’t want to squirm away. Because the lady has such a kind, nice look on her face. 

“What do you think?” asks the woman. 

“Umm…huh?” Her mind is a blank. What was the question?

“Are you a pink princess?” The woman tilts her face at Anne. “Or maybe you’re a deer, like your friend over there.”

Anne doesn’t have an answer. All she feels is a bubbling confusion in her head. She looks up at Dave for help, but he’s busy transferring their hard-won waffles to a plate. 

She takes a guess. “Princess?”

The woman nods and smiles. “Of course you are!” And she kisses the top of Anne’s head, as if she has the right to do such thing. 

Anne nods dizzily. “But I don’t got a dress,” she says. She points at Dave. “Daddy taking me to Walmart.”

“Oh,” the woman says. “Daddy gonna buy you a princess dress?”

Anne smiles. Yes, that’s the plan. Something to get her out of these silly pajamas. Something like a pretty princess dress. 

“Wonderful.” The woman winks at her and then she’s gone, away to get her cereal. Because she doesn’t eat waffles. And why on earth doesn’t she eat waff-

“Come on,” Dave says, carrying the plate of waffles with one hand and escorting Anne with the other. 

Back at their table, Anne sits on her booster and does an excellent job of pouring syrup and sprinkling powdered sugar on the waffles. An excellent 4-year-old job. 

She picks up the finished product with her fingers. 

“No,” Dave says. He points at the silverware. “Use your fork.” When Anne looks at it dubiously, Dave says sweetly, “You want Daddy to cut it up.”

Immediate, Anne pushes her plate towards him. 

Dave nods. “You’re doing a lot better,” he says softly. “Reckon that old lady wanted to adopt you.”

Anne nods, barely listening. She forks a piece of waffle, that despite Dave’s slicing efforts, is still much too big for her mouth. 

Dave groans. “Should’ve got you a bib.”

“Huh?”

He points. “Syrup on your PJs.” He groans again. “You got it everywhere.” He laughs. “Might just need to give you a bath after breakfast.”

“Dress,” Anne says, her diction garbled by her full mouth. Deff.

“Excuse me?”

She swallows and says, “Princess dress, Daddy.” The old woman would think she’s even more adorable then. Of course, she’s not Anne’s grandma. But still. 

Dave leans over the table and whispers, “Are you still acting?”

Anne blushes. Acting. Like a disguise. She nods. “Of course.” And now, she’s lost her appetite. She has lied to the old lady. She is not who she pretends to be. 

She looks at Dave. “We’ll do some good deeds, won’t we?”

“What are you talking about?”

“When we get there. All that money. We can do good things.”

Dave shrugs. “Sure. You can start a charity or something.” 

Anne smiles. A charity with her name on it. A charity for…she looks at her pink stuffy sitting on the free chair. She can save all the deers! She puts a thoughtful and sticky finger to her chin. Does Switzerland have deer? 

And then a bigger, much more significant question comes to her. 

Anne’s eyes widen and she waves her hands at Dave. “I forgot it!”

Dave makes an urgent, hushing motion. “Quiet down! What are you talking about?”

“The code,” says Anne, hanging her head. “I can’t remember it. And now we don’t got…” Her voice is filled with anguish. 

Dave chuckles. “It’s okay.”

Anne lifts her head, stares at him. How can it be okay? All that money. And what about the deer? Who’ll save the deer?

“I already know the code.”

“Huh?”

Dave reaches over and strokes her hair. “Before you lost consciousness last night, you went a little loopy. Told me the code, told me about your childhood, went on about some high school boyfriend-“

“Chad,” says Anne grimly, a vision of the fifteen-year-old liar arriving in her head. She whispers, “Dumb jerk.”

“Right. Jerky Chad.” Dave smiles. “Anyway, you got all kinds of chatty. So, I got the code, you don’t need to worry.”

Just like that, Anne is reassured. She reaches up and pats Dave’s hand with her sticky fingers. “You’re so smart,” she says affectionately. 

And she’s right about that.