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Call him an out-of-touch old coot, but Goldlewis didn’t think any place needed as many boutiques as downtown Illyria had.
Now, don’t go writing him off when it comes to fashion. He liked to think he could be dapper when he liked. He could appreciate a nice accessory or a quality pair of boots to complete an outfit, and he took more than a little pride in the immaculate coif of his hair. He’d patronized a few of these shops in the past, but he hadn’t realized just how many of the darn things there were until he was actually looking for them.
“Ooh, mister Goldlewis, look at that one!”
A chirpy little voice and a hand directed his attention to another window display. Behind the pane of glass, a mannequin was frozen in a half-curtsy, showing off the lace and ruffles that adorned the pale pink skirt it wore. Not his kind of thing, though the brass pocket watch it had been accessorized with did catch his eye.
“Don’t go puttin’ yer hands on the glass, cowgirl, it’ll leave marks.”
“Right! Right, sorry.” Bridget sheepishly stuffed her hands into her pockets, twirling around to face him. “Can we go in and look at it? Maybe try it on?”
“Lead the way, kiddo.”
That’s how it had been for the better part of the morning. His young charge led the adventure with the overeager enthusiasm typically only found in children and puppies, while he moseyed along behind. The shop’s bell chimed as she flung the door open, pausing last-second to hold it open for him, too.
“Much obliged.” He placed a hand on his head to make sure it wouldn’t bump against the doorframe. Bridget scampered off towards the mannequin in the window display. “Wanna start a pile?”
“Maybe later! I wanna try this one on first!”
“Alright, alright, whatever you say.” After glancing around, he spotted an attendant. “‘Scuse me, miss?”
“Mm? Ah-” She greeted him with a smile. “Good morning, sir! Welcome! Anything I can help you with today?”
“You got a changing room?”
The woman nodded. “Certainly! I believe most of them are open right now. Would you like me to set one up for you?”
“Look! They’ve got it in my size!” Bridget hurried back with the dress draped over one shoulder.
“Room’s fer this lil’ rascal right here.” He reached down to playfully muss her hair. “Sounds like they can take ya right now, kid.”
“I see, I see.” With another nod, the shop lady gestured to the back of the store. “Of course, honey, right this way!”
She led the two of them into a long room littered with doors. The third one down clicked open as she inserted a key into the lock. “Would you like to have your father wait outside while you change, sweetheart?”
Father? Now wasn’t that something. Goldlewis could see the rationale in it. Old-timer chaperoning a little girl, ruffling her hair and giving her nicknames? It wasn’t a difficult assumption to make.
Bridget looked equally surprised, but rolled with it. “Do you mind? I’ll try to go fast.”
“‘Course not. I’ll be on the bench, lemme know when you’re ready.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Be right outside.”
“Feel free to call me if you need help with anything. I’ll just be in the other room.” The shop lady smiled and departed. Bridget watched her go, turning back to her chaperone with a mischievous grin.
“I’ll be done in a minute, Dad.”
“Wh-” Goldlewis held back a laugh. “Go on, kid, git.”
“Yeah, yeah, old man,” she playfully stuck out her tongue. “It’ll just be a sec!”
The door clicked shut behind her, before he could even think to react. Even then, all he found himself doing was laughing more. ‘Old man,’ kid didn’t know how to quit, did she? Ah well, no use getting wound up about it, that’d just make her do it more. He remembered pulling a similar stunt as a boy, and all it had gotten him was a clap on the ear and night of dish duty.
He paused, mouth pursing. He had to be right around her age at the time. He couldn’t even think of doing that to…anyone, really, but especially not her. Had he been that small, too?
“Man, it didn’t look like there were this many zippers when it was on the display!” Bridget called out. “Guess it’s probably easier when it isn’t on you.”
“Holdin’ up okay in there?”
Goldlewis could hear the fabric rustling as Bridget struggled with it. “I’m all done! I think- hold on, just gotta get this bit zipped…there!”
She flung open the door with gusto and burst out in a cloud of tulle. It took a moment to find her in the center of it. Her eyes were shimmering in utter glee, either in pride at her own appearance or pride at managing to not get tangled in the overly-elaborate garment.
“Whatcha think, then?” Goldlewis asked, craning his neck to look inside the changing room. “Got a mirror in there, right?”
“Nope! But I saw the one out here when we were coming in. I wanna see- !”
He could make out the exact moment that Bridget saw herself in the mirror. Her sense of bravado immediately withered and vanished. The squared confidence in her shoulders drooped and folded inwards.
Goldlewis tried to think of what to say. “Kid-”
“I dunno…” He caught her frown in the reflection. The gleeful glimmer in her eyes had dimmed. “It always looks nicer on the models. My shoulders are kinda broad. Do the straps make ‘em more obvious?” Bridget turned back and forth, scrutinizing herself from every angle.
“‘s easy to overthink it when you’re used to seein’ yourself all the time. I prolly wouldn't've noticed if you hadn’t said nothin’.”
She continued looking at herself, looking no more happy the longer she did so. “When I wear my jacket, it’s baggy enough that it’s harder to see. I keep thinking about wearing stuff like this more often, but then I actually try it on…” Bridget sighed. “I just don’t know. I wanted it to feel right. Why doesn’t it feel right?”
It felt like he should have had something useful to say. He wanted to support her, but didn’t know how. “I think it’s fine, but you gotta be the one to like wearin’ it.” He got up and approached her. “If you wanna, you can give it a think-over. Can always come back ‘n decide later. We got all afternoon.”
“Yeah, I…I guess you’re right.” Still downcast, Bridget retreated back into the changing stall, curled in on herself like a wounded animal. “I’m gonna put my stuff back on.”
“Take as long as ya need.”
When she finally came back out, her hood was pulled all the way up to the point where it mussed her hair and pushed the bangs over her eyes. He chose not to comment on it. “I’m thinkin’ lunch. I know I have an easier time making decisions without an empty stomach. Let’s hit the road, cowgirl.”
“...Okay.”
“Hello again, sir!” The shopgirl hurried to greet them as soon as they left the changing rooms. “Goodness, you were quick! Is everything alright?
Bridget slouched further out of sight, so Goldlewis took it upon himself to do the talking. “Yep, everything was nice ‘n lovely. Think we’re done fer now, though, gotta get goin’. Left the dress in the stall, sorry fer not cleaning up.”
His hasty reply earned him an odd look, but she didn’t move to stop them leaving. “Oh. Uh, alrighty, you and your daughter have a nice day!”
What a shame he wasn’t in good enough spirits to enjoy her saying that now.
While they made their way down the market street, he did his best not to brush against her. He wasn’t sure if she was comfortable with being touched right now, and he sure as heck didn’t want to figure it out the hard way. Just follow not too close, not too far, try to offer some encouragement, and shut the hell up, nobody wants to listen to you whine-
He blinked. That definitely didn’t sound right. Definitely didn’t sound helpful, either. He hadn’t heard that voice in a while.
Goldlewis chose to ignore it. There were more important things to occupy his thoughts with. Further down the road, the path opened into a large, brick-paved dotted with food stalls. They found a hot dog cart in the plaza and bought a small feast for themselves.
“What kinda food you want, cowgirl?”
“I dunno. I guess I’ll get what you’re getting.”
He looked between her and the cart vendor. “C’mon, it’s alright. Might as well get something you wanna eat.”
“A real man sits down and eats what’s put in front of him! You don’t hear your brother whining, do you? Hey, hon, how long have we been raising a little girl?”
Goldlewis wondered how that thought had gotten out. He dropped the window-shutter on the memory and banished it. “Really, I wanna make sure you get some decent food in ya. ‘Sides, I always get mine with spicy cheese and too much chili sauce, if it don’t get on your clothes you’ll end up needin’ a whole thing of milk for the spice. Speakin’ from experience. Least it finally got my coworkers to stop pickin’ through my lunch.”
That earned him a little indulgent giggle. “Okay, okay. Onions and relish, please.”
Bridget thankfully perked upon sitting down and getting to eat. Not at the level she had been before, but at least enough to talk. He would take whatever victories he could.
“ -I guess it’d be fun to have co-workers, but I never thought about if they’d try to take my stuff.”
“Most ain’t too bad, honestly, it’s just the bad apples that make the whole thing sour. You’ve only ever done bounty work before, right? Never really had any co-workers, then, didja?”
Bridget shook her head. “The closest thing I’ve ever had to a ‘co-worker’ is Roger, but he doesn’t really count.”
“Where’d you get that thing, anyway? Heckuva toy for a little thing like you.”
Something about that made her laugh again. “He was a present from my dad. My parents gave me my yoyo, too.” She pulled the toy from her pocket and unspooled it in demonstration, snapping her wrist to make it flick back up into her grip.
Goldlewis gave a little whistle of approval at the trick. “Never could get the hang of those things. You handled it like some kinda pro, though, when I saw ya back in Illyria. Ain’t seen one with a blade in it before…you seriously tellin’ me your old man gave ya a toy with a knife strapped to it?”
She nodded along, moving to tuck her yoyo away. “I was pretty su-”
In her distraction, part of her sleeve snagged the tray holding her half-eaten hotdog. When she pulled her arm back to put the toy back in her pocket, the whole thing went with it, swiftly toppling off the picnic table and falling toppings-first into her lap.
Both made a noise of shock, but after the initial moment, Bridget sighed in dismay, scraping the remainder of her food back into the dish and shoving it away. She blotted at her shirt with a napkin, chuckling unhappily. “Well, they’d hate to see me eating this with my hands instead of a fork, I know that for sure.”
“Hey, it’s alright, cowgirl. Accidents happen.” Goldlewis offered her another fistful of clean ones. “It’ll wash out.”
“I know, I know, it’s just…” Her fingers clenched around the cloth, before going slack.
“What’s up?”
Bridget shook her head. “I can’t stop thinking about home, even now. I try so hard not to waste time with ‘what-ifs’ and stuff like that, but sometimes I wish you’d lived nearby when I was growing up, Mister Goldlewis.”
“Heh, prolly good I didn’t.” He replied. “Woulda’ slugged your old man in the face at some point for what he put ya through.”
She forced a smile, but he could tell it wasn’t genuine, and it dropped fast. “I know they just did what they thought was right. They didn’t want me to die. They didn’t hate me. They gave me so many things that most people wouldn’t be able to afford. Going out of their way like that to make sure I was allowed to grow up, even if it was different from my brother…maybe it’s selfish of me to not be grateful.”
“-But it’s hard to not feel like ya got the short end of the stick.”
“Mmhm.” Nodding, she tucked away the rumped napkin and put it aside. “My brother got to live a normal life. Why did they choose him and not me? Why was it my burden and not his? I feel bad thinking about it, but I can’t keep myself from thinking it.”
Goldlewis shook his head. “Nothin’ wrong with just thinkin’.”
“I know. I still feel guilty, though. You said you had a brother too, right? I think you mentioned him. What’s he like?”
He blinked in silence, confused by the sudden turn in topic. “Oh, nice kid. Kinda headstrong, bit of a troublemaker. Eh, not like I wasn’t, either. Works over in Neo New York, you mighta’ run into him if you were ever heading through there, guy’s real hard to miss. Definitely the family favorite, but we both got into trouble a lot with our mom ‘n pop.”
Her eyes went wide. “But- but you’re like the boss of the government! You’re around the president all the time! That’s really cool and special, how are you not the favorite?”
He shrugged. “Eh, families are complicated. Figured you’d know that better than anyone.”
Did they even know that he’d finally gotten the position? They must have seen something in the papers. Maybe someone else in town had seen it and told them. The thought hadn’t crossed his mind before. He hadn’t wanted to think about it.
“Point’s supposed t’ be that you’re happy with yerself. If your parents don’t like it, but you’re happy, ‘n too bad for them.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I mean- I mean that’s one of those things I know, but it’s easier to say than it is to do.”
“Mmm, yeah, that’s fair. I see what’cha mean.” Goldlewis reached for his drink.
“So what are your parents like?”
He did a good job of hiding it as he choked on the liquid in his mouth. “Jus- jus’ normal folks, y’know?”
The girl laughed, but her expression didn’t change. “I don’t really, actually. What’s ‘normal’ like?”
”Answer the damn question, Goldlewis, and look me in the eyes when I’m talking to you!”
Once again, he tried shoving the voice away, but it didn’t want to leave. The longer he tried to kick it back into the corner, the louder it seemed to get. He looked away. Something about Bridget’s gaze felt like it was boring into him, and he couldn’t bear to look back.
“Huh?” She asked. “What’s-”
Her words were little more than numb prods against the harsh buzzing in his ears. The sudden sensation of free-falling in his own skin was one he knew wasn’t going to leave easily now, but he was still desperate to try and shoo it away. Don’t think about it, don’t acknowledge it at all, find something, anything else that would let him think about another topic. The overgrown flower bushes he could spot over her shoulders, the balloons tied to one of the carts, a fat honeybee bobbing along, the other people in the plaza. Most sat at the tables, but a few scattered strangers perched on the walls around the hedges to use them as impromptu benches.
A pair of boys, no more than elementary-aged were squished so close together they were practically in each other’s laps. Goldlewis wasn’t sure if he would be able to understand anything they said even without the buzzing, or if the crowd sounds would drown them out, anyway. It didn’t matter. He could see enough. Their faces were alight with glee, one prodding the other while his companion held something out of sight in his cupped hands.
The two passed the object between each other’s cupped hands, giggling at whatever was inside. ‘Laughing like little girls,’ his father would have said. It didn’t matter if they were friends. It didn’t matter if they were just a pair of classmates working on homework together. The way they sat and the trill to their voice itched a spot he had thought long-buried in his brain. From it sprang an illusory figure that stormed across the plaza, placing one meaty hand on either boy’s arm and yanking them away from one another as roughly as it could.
He had known how that hand felt. Even though he didn’t want to think about it, it always came back to him. The red-ringed eyes, the rage-hoarsened vocal cords, the grip that felt like death on his shoulder.
The rest was only remembered in little snippets. He knew the feeling of dewy grass brushing against his knees, wet in the dusk. He knew the feeling of a hand wrapped around his, pulling along with the promise of someplace special hidden out of sight. Eagerly scurrying through the dark. Anxious-excited anticipation. The feeling of another boy’s mouth.
A knock on the shed door.
“You said nobody came here.”
“They don’t! Why would anyone be-”
The darkness had been a comfort, a safety. He had been small enough to fit into the shadows back then.
“Goldlewis! What in god’s name are you doing!? Get away from him right this instant!”
There were the eyes, then. That voice. The hand. Skin dripping with sweat, veins swelling with force, and yet cold. So horribly, horribly cold.
”Ain’t no son of mine is gonna drag the family name through the mud, just ‘cause he’s a pathetic, disgusting, pansy little fa- !”
“Mister Goldlewis?”
He blinked. Bridget was staring at him. Through the confusion in her eyes, he could make out a hint of worry.
“Wha- somethin’ up, cowgirl?”
“I was gonna ask you that…you went really quiet, are you okay?”
He was quick to try and brush it off. “Fine, fine, just got distracted. Nothin’ to worry about.”
Bridget looked unconvinced. Goldlewis watched her shake her head and swipe a few crumbs up with a finger. “Is it okay if I ask you a question? Like, kind of a personal one?”
Everything in him wanted to shout no. He could still feel the echo in the back of his head, getting stuffed back into the shadows where it belonged, but the spot it had hit was still stinging. Instinctively, he wanted nothing more than to put all of his guard up until he was very, very certain everything was safe and secure again, but…
“Sure, what’cha got?”
Something about Bridget was different. He wondered if she had ever slipped out in the middle of the night, fingers locked with someone they shouldn’t have been. If she knew how that thrill felt. If she knew the heaviness that came with it.
“Why do you keep hanging out with me? Not- not that I don’t want you to, I…” He waited for her to think it over and keep going. “I just don’t get it. Don’t you have more important stuff to worry about than hanging out with some dorky teenage girl? You and mister Ky already helped a lot, so I thought you’d both be done with me by now. Why did you stick around?”
Goldlewis thought for a moment. He took a slow breath in. “‘Cause yer a kid tryin’ to figure life out. That’s hard enough to do by yourself, let alone showing it off to the rest of the world. Figured I’d offer a hand. Wasn’t gonna make ya take it, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that there’s always gonna be people who’ll help you. I don’t wanna have you living feeling like you’re all alone, just you against everyone else. I just wanna make sure you know that.”
What a foolish thing to ask. As soon as he had looked her in the eyes for the first time, something in him knew she had felt it before. Maybe not in the same way or at the same time, but he just knew. He wasn’t going to let that feeling tuck itself away somewhere in her mind for who knew how long. It was a slight weight at first, something that could almost be ignored in the best of times. But the longer it sat, the more it drew thoughts and blood like a tick. He’d banished it out of sight and out of mind, but that had taken decades, and even then, there were times when it would come skittering back when he least expected. Even if it healed, it wasn’t something that should have ever happened in the first place. No kid should ever have to be taught to hate themself.
“...Oh.” A single, soft word, but he could pick up on something in her voice that hadn’t been there before. She regarded him with a look of understanding and nodded gently. “I get it.”
It didn’t matter anymore. His own past was something he couldn’t change. All that mattered now was making sure the cycle didn’t go around again. He couldn’t guarantee he would be the perfect father figure for Bridget, but he had every intention to be more of one than his own ever had been.
“Feh, always forget how easy it is to finish when yer not thinkin’!” Goldlewis brushed the bun crumbs off of his shirt and out of his beard. “How you feelin,’ cowgirl? Wanna call it quits?”
“Well, actually,” she replied somewhat sheepishly, twiddling her thumbs. “Could we check out another store? I saw one of them had a cute bag that’d go nice with my skirt! And- and maybe it’d be worth finding a shirt so I don’t have to keep wearing one covered in relish stains.”
He responded with a hearty, baritone chuckle. “‘Course, kid. Lead the way.”