Tim was sitting at the kitchen table cleaning his sniper rifle, one ear cocked for the sound of the school bus. From the moment he heard its distinctive rumble, he then counted down how long it took to get from the curb to the front door and he exhaled a breath when the door slammed shut. It would have been nicer if the door had closed politely, but this was one of those ‘work in progress’ situations.
Thump!
“Willa Givens,” Tim drawled out the child’s name, waited a moment and then nodded when the backpack, that had been haphazardly dumped on the entry way floor, was picked up and set on the shelf under the coats. He glanced up when six-year-old Willa Givens came skipping into the kitchen, looking too adorable to be Winona’s daughter and too tidy to be Raylan’s daughter.
“Hello, Tim!” She chirped with delight, crawling up onto one of the kitchen chairs and settling with her knees in the seat so she could get enough height to have her elbows on the table. It was not ladylike in the least, but the sniper left her too it.
“How was school?” He dutifully inquired and then sat quietly as Willa was off to the races in relaying her day. She was still at the point of her school career where school was fun!
As she talked, Tim cleaned. The first time Winona had caught him cleaning his weapons on the kitchen table with Willa in her booster seat making a mess of a banana, she had gone off the deep end. The explosion had started Willa crying, brought Raylan dashing down the stairs -the older marshal had been asleep after a three-day stakeout- and made a hell of a scene. Usually, Tim gave ground to Winona in matters like these, apologized profusely and made a note to never repeat the behavior, but this time he held his ground.
His argument, when he finally got a word in edgewise, was that pretending guns did not exist in her father’s house would only lead to curiosity in time and the risk of unsafe behavior out of ignorance. He held firm that Willa would learn gun safety, gun discipline and most of all that guns were boring because she would see them, know about them, and they would cease to hold any sort of mysterious appeal. It had taken some discussion with Art Mullen before Winona had accepted that Tim’s logic was sound and relented.
Tim’s approach had proven out. Willa sat close to all the bits and pieces of the big sniper rifle, but she did not try to touch any of them, and she ignored them with the air of boring adult things. There were still multiple gun and rifle safes in the house, but they were of no interest to the child. She knew what was in there, she knew they were off limits, but she also knew that if she asked her father or Tim would talk to her honestly about them. Curiosity satisfied.
“…oh! I need cupcakes for the bake sale tomorrow!” Willa’s chirp on this last sentence drew the younger marshal out of the mental wanderings he’d been traveling while the child rattled off about swing set etiquette and he paused and blinked.
“Come again?”
“I signed up for cupcakes for the bake sale and the sale is tomorrow?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow,” duh, Tim pay attention.
“No, no. I mean when did you sign up?”
“Two weeks ago!”
Tim turned his head and looked at the calendar that they tried to keep updated with the various comings and goings of the household. Tim and Willa were mostly successful; things were still hit or miss with Raylan.
“It’s not on the calendar.” Point point.
“I told Daddy.”
Fuck. Daddy was currently on a prisoner transport detail from Florida to California. Tim rubbed his fingers over his eyes, immediately regretting that action as he got gun oil in his eyes. Ow ow ow ow! “How many cupcakes are we in for?”
“Three dozen,” Willa sounded so pleased that Tim swallowed his groan of dismay.
“Alright,” he said reaching to swiftly reassembled the cleaned rifle. “Let me put this away and change, then we’ll go down to the store and pick up some cupcakes.”
Silence.
Lingering silence.
Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me Tim glanced up from where he was deftly snapping gun parts together and hit the full force of woeful hazel eyes.
Not just woeful hazel eyes. Large, woeful hazel eyes with a hint of shine in them that went along with the perfect moue of sadness that Willa had perfected from her mother. On Winona it was just a bitchy, pouty look. On Willa it brought grown men to their knees.
“What.” He stated, already suspecting where this was going and feeling dread crawl down his spine.
“Becky was boasting about how her mom was going to bake cakes, and Amber said her mom was going to do a hundred dozen cookies, and Elsie said her mom was making fudge and …”
“Enough,” Tim said, raising his hand. “What has your Daddy told you about wanting to do what everybody else does?”
“That it’s stupid and I wouldn’t jump off a bridge if everybody else did,” Willa repeated the words dutifully. And continued to look at Tim woefully.
“Exactly. We do not measure ourselves against the accomplishment of others, only against…” he was reciting Raylan’s words and watching as one single, solitary tear escaped and tracked down Willa’s cheek. “Fuck.”
Tim hung his head and put the now assembled rifle back into its tactical bag and pushed up from the table.
“What flavors are you thinking for these three dozen cupcakes?” He asked as he headed towards the main bedroom where the gun locker was stashed. Willa gave a whoop of delight and scrambled after him.
“Chocolate,” as if that were a given. “And Funfetti, and salted caramel, and grasshopper, and Red velvet, and…”
In the end Tim did put his foot down and held the line at three flavors. Army Ranger and child had stood in the middle of the baking supplies aisle for a good twenty minutes debating this fact and debating which flavors would make the cut. In the end they agreed on Red Velvet (since that was just hyped-up chocolate), Key Lime (they were in FL after all) and Salted Caramel with Sea Salt! With the mission accepted Tim Gutterson did not do anything by halves. They walked past the premade cake/cupcake mix, snorted with derision at the canned frostings and proceeded to the raw ingredients.
When they were elbow deep in measuring out flour, the kitchen slowly becoming a disaster area, Tim decided that this was not the worst set of circumstances in the world. Raylan was out on the job, but Winona had fucked off on an impromptu vacation with her latest to salvage the relationship. Tim knew it wasn’t going to work, Willa knew it wasn’t going to work and baking cupcakes was a good distraction. Military discipline came to the fore and Tim made the project into a learning experience as well as a baking one. He challenged Willa on converting measurements, stretching her exposure to mathematics as they scratch made the cupcakes through the evening and all the way up to bedtime.
Willa needed a bath, an act the young lady was capable of on her own, Tim needed a bath -there was frosting in his hair and he had flour down the back of his shirt- and the kitchen needed a deep clean. These last two would happen once the child was in bed and asleep.
“Tim?” Willa began as she climbed into her bed and began to settle down in her nest of stuffed animals. “Do you think it would be okay to save one of each cupcake for Daddy?”
Tim was over by the window, making sure it was locked and the lock bar was in place. Raylan had enough enemies that a couple extra layers of protection were not unwarranted.
“Maybe not save,” Tim said as he pulled the curtains. “But how about we buy him one of each kind?”
Willa smiled. “That’d be good!” She had successfully shifted all her stuffies around and slithered under her blankets, practically disappearing into the collection of fuzzy faces. Tim sighed and walked over to move a few to different locations.
“I swear you are going to smoother yourself, child.” He groused as he picked up a lime green frog that he was absolutely certain had not been there the last time Willa had stayed with them. He held it up and looked at her with raised eyebrows. Willa grinned and reached for the frog.
“This is Tolstoy,” she announced. Winona’s current was an English professor at one of the local colleges who liked to boast about his reading accomplishments. Given that he tended to rattle off the big names in literature, Tim suspected the man had gotten his PhD from the bottom of a box of Cracker Jacks and did not know Tolstoy from Dostoyevsky. Regardless Willa had picked up on naming her stuffed animals after famous authors, in the never-ending effort to please her mother and try to keep one of her ‘step-fathers’ happy.
Tim was reminded once again that he wanted to discuss suing Winona for primary custody of the child. For now, he gave his patented look of resignation, which made Willa giggle as she watched him expectantly. Tim exhaled and introduced himself to the stuffed animal.
“Hello, Tolstoy.” He shook one of the frog’s little arms and then dropped the stuffy on Willa’s face, making the child giggle harder as she gathered it close and rolled onto her side to get comfortable for sleep.
“Will Daddy be home in the morning?” She asked hopefully.
Tim hunkered down beside the bed, he did not want to leave flour all over her sheets, and he did a mental calculation of Raylan’s travel plans. In the end he had to shake his head.
“I don’t know, Willa.” He gave the honest answer and reached to take a lock of her hair and tickle her nose with it. She grinned, though he could tell his answer made her sad, but she also accepted the answer with good grace. Tim considered the situation for a moment and then he smiled knowingly and let go of her hair. “How about ice cream for breakfast?” He didn’t doubt that Willa wanted her father, but he also knew that Willa enjoyed the mornings when Raylan snuck her ice cream for breakfast.
Willa grinned. She lifted her hand and kissed her fingers before reaching out to touch the side of Tim’s cheek. Tim groaned and fell back. “Girl, cooties!” He exclaimed writhing around on the floor, while Willa laughed. His wriggling took him towards the door, so that when he climbed to his feet, he was close enough to turn off the light.
“Goodnight, Tim!”
“You have reached Tim’s answering service. Tim can’t come to the phone right now, he’s been felled by girl cooties,” the sniper responded as he turned off the light and closed the door on another set of giggles.
Me: I have work to do. My Brain: Yeah but how about ...
Thump!
“Willa Givens,” Tim drawled out the child’s name, waited a moment and then nodded when the backpack, that had been haphazardly dumped on the entry way floor, was picked up and set on the shelf under the coats. He glanced up when six-year-old Willa Givens came skipping into the kitchen, looking too adorable to be Winona’s daughter and too tidy to be Raylan’s daughter.
“Hello, Tim!” She chirped with delight, crawling up onto one of the kitchen chairs and settling with her knees in the seat so she could get enough height to have her elbows on the table. It was not ladylike in the least, but the sniper left her too it.
“How was school?” He dutifully inquired and then sat quietly as Willa was off to the races in relaying her day. She was still at the point of her school career where school was fun!
As she talked, Tim cleaned. The first time Winona had caught him cleaning his weapons on the kitchen table with Willa in her booster seat making a mess of a banana, she had gone off the deep end. The explosion had started Willa crying, brought Raylan dashing down the stairs -the older marshal had been asleep after a three-day stakeout- and made a hell of a scene. Usually, Tim gave ground to Winona in matters like these, apologized profusely and made a note to never repeat the behavior, but this time he held his ground.
His argument, when he finally got a word in edgewise, was that pretending guns did not exist in her father’s house would only lead to curiosity in time and the risk of unsafe behavior out of ignorance. He held firm that Willa would learn gun safety, gun discipline and most of all that guns were boring because she would see them, know about them, and they would cease to hold any sort of mysterious appeal. It had taken some discussion with Art Mullen before Winona had accepted that Tim’s logic was sound and relented.
Tim’s approach had proven out. Willa sat close to all the bits and pieces of the big sniper rifle, but she did not try to touch any of them, and she ignored them with the air of boring adult things. There were still multiple gun and rifle safes in the house, but they were of no interest to the child. She knew what was in there, she knew they were off limits, but she also knew that if she asked her father or Tim would talk to her honestly about them. Curiosity satisfied.
“…oh! I need cupcakes for the bake sale tomorrow!” Willa’s chirp on this last sentence drew the younger marshal out of the mental wanderings he’d been traveling while the child rattled off about swing set etiquette and he paused and blinked.
“Come again?”
“I signed up for cupcakes for the bake sale and the sale is tomorrow?”
“When?”
“Tomorrow,” duh, Tim pay attention.
“No, no. I mean when did you sign up?”
“Two weeks ago!”
Tim turned his head and looked at the calendar that they tried to keep updated with the various comings and goings of the household. Tim and Willa were mostly successful; things were still hit or miss with Raylan.
“It’s not on the calendar.” Point point.
“I told Daddy.”
Fuck. Daddy was currently on a prisoner transport detail from Florida to California. Tim rubbed his fingers over his eyes, immediately regretting that action as he got gun oil in his eyes. Ow ow ow ow! “How many cupcakes are we in for?”
“Three dozen,” Willa sounded so pleased that Tim swallowed his groan of dismay.
“Alright,” he said reaching to swiftly reassembled the cleaned rifle. “Let me put this away and change, then we’ll go down to the store and pick up some cupcakes.”
Silence.
Lingering silence.
Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me Tim glanced up from where he was deftly snapping gun parts together and hit the full force of woeful hazel eyes.
Not just woeful hazel eyes. Large, woeful hazel eyes with a hint of shine in them that went along with the perfect moue of sadness that Willa had perfected from her mother. On Winona it was just a bitchy, pouty look. On Willa it brought grown men to their knees.
“What.” He stated, already suspecting where this was going and feeling dread crawl down his spine.
“Becky was boasting about how her mom was going to bake cakes, and Amber said her mom was going to do a hundred dozen cookies, and Elsie said her mom was making fudge and …”
“Enough,” Tim said, raising his hand. “What has your Daddy told you about wanting to do what everybody else does?”
“That it’s stupid and I wouldn’t jump off a bridge if everybody else did,” Willa repeated the words dutifully. And continued to look at Tim woefully.
“Exactly. We do not measure ourselves against the accomplishment of others, only against…” he was reciting Raylan’s words and watching as one single, solitary tear escaped and tracked down Willa’s cheek. “Fuck.”
Tim hung his head and put the now assembled rifle back into its tactical bag and pushed up from the table.
“What flavors are you thinking for these three dozen cupcakes?” He asked as he headed towards the main bedroom where the gun locker was stashed. Willa gave a whoop of delight and scrambled after him.
“Chocolate,” as if that were a given. “And Funfetti, and salted caramel, and grasshopper, and Red velvet, and…”
In the end Tim did put his foot down and held the line at three flavors. Army Ranger and child had stood in the middle of the baking supplies aisle for a good twenty minutes debating this fact and debating which flavors would make the cut. In the end they agreed on Red Velvet (since that was just hyped-up chocolate), Key Lime (they were in FL after all) and Salted Caramel with Sea Salt! With the mission accepted Tim Gutterson did not do anything by halves. They walked past the premade cake/cupcake mix, snorted with derision at the canned frostings and proceeded to the raw ingredients.
When they were elbow deep in measuring out flour, the kitchen slowly becoming a disaster area, Tim decided that this was not the worst set of circumstances in the world. Raylan was out on the job, but Winona had fucked off on an impromptu vacation with her latest to salvage the relationship. Tim knew it wasn’t going to work, Willa knew it wasn’t going to work and baking cupcakes was a good distraction. Military discipline came to the fore and Tim made the project into a learning experience as well as a baking one. He challenged Willa on converting measurements, stretching her exposure to mathematics as they scratch made the cupcakes through the evening and all the way up to bedtime.
Willa needed a bath, an act the young lady was capable of on her own, Tim needed a bath -there was frosting in his hair and he had flour down the back of his shirt- and the kitchen needed a deep clean. These last two would happen once the child was in bed and asleep.
“Tim?” Willa began as she climbed into her bed and began to settle down in her nest of stuffed animals. “Do you think it would be okay to save one of each cupcake for Daddy?”
Tim was over by the window, making sure it was locked and the lock bar was in place. Raylan had enough enemies that a couple extra layers of protection were not unwarranted.
“Maybe not save,” Tim said as he pulled the curtains. “But how about we buy him one of each kind?”
Willa smiled. “That’d be good!” She had successfully shifted all her stuffies around and slithered under her blankets, practically disappearing into the collection of fuzzy faces. Tim sighed and walked over to move a few to different locations.
“I swear you are going to smoother yourself, child.” He groused as he picked up a lime green frog that he was absolutely certain had not been there the last time Willa had stayed with them. He held it up and looked at her with raised eyebrows. Willa grinned and reached for the frog.
“This is Tolstoy,” she announced. Winona’s current was an English professor at one of the local colleges who liked to boast about his reading accomplishments. Given that he tended to rattle off the big names in literature, Tim suspected the man had gotten his PhD from the bottom of a box of Cracker Jacks and did not know Tolstoy from Dostoyevsky. Regardless Willa had picked up on naming her stuffed animals after famous authors, in the never-ending effort to please her mother and try to keep one of her ‘step-fathers’ happy.
Tim was reminded once again that he wanted to discuss suing Winona for primary custody of the child. For now, he gave his patented look of resignation, which made Willa giggle as she watched him expectantly. Tim exhaled and introduced himself to the stuffed animal.
“Hello, Tolstoy.” He shook one of the frog’s little arms and then dropped the stuffy on Willa’s face, making the child giggle harder as she gathered it close and rolled onto her side to get comfortable for sleep.
“Will Daddy be home in the morning?” She asked hopefully.
Tim hunkered down beside the bed, he did not want to leave flour all over her sheets, and he did a mental calculation of Raylan’s travel plans. In the end he had to shake his head.
“I don’t know, Willa.” He gave the honest answer and reached to take a lock of her hair and tickle her nose with it. She grinned, though he could tell his answer made her sad, but she also accepted the answer with good grace. Tim considered the situation for a moment and then he smiled knowingly and let go of her hair. “How about ice cream for breakfast?” He didn’t doubt that Willa wanted her father, but he also knew that Willa enjoyed the mornings when Raylan snuck her ice cream for breakfast.
Willa grinned. She lifted her hand and kissed her fingers before reaching out to touch the side of Tim’s cheek. Tim groaned and fell back. “Girl, cooties!” He exclaimed writhing around on the floor, while Willa laughed. His wriggling took him towards the door, so that when he climbed to his feet, he was close enough to turn off the light.
“Goodnight, Tim!”
“You have reached Tim’s answering service. Tim can’t come to the phone right now, he’s been felled by girl cooties,” the sniper responded as he turned off the light and closed the door on another set of giggles.