Firefighter Daddy by Lee McKenzie

she was there at his side, safe and secure.
    “Have you ever been to an art opening, Dad?”
    “No, I haven’t.”
    “Me either. Miss Sunshine said there’d be wine an’ cheese.”
    “You’re a little young to be drinking wine,” Mitch teased.
    Miranda giggled. “I wonder if there’ll be pop. I can have some if there is, right?”
    “Sure. It’s a special occasion. But just a small glass, okay? Or maybe there’ll be juice.” Laura hadn’t wanted their daughter eating a lot of junk food.
    “You already said yes to pop. You can’t change your mind.”
    “I won’t. But just one,” he said, doing his best to sound firm.
    “I hope there’ll be other stuff to eat besides cheese. I only like orange cheese, not the stinky white stuff that Grams buys.”
    He had to agree with that. “They might have orange cheese.”
    “I hope they have cookies.”
    Wine and cookies? He doubted it, but what the heck. Aside from the breakfast cereal he bought, his mother kept the house stocked with health food, most of it organic. Miranda had a healthy diet. How much harm could there be in a glass of pop and a couple of cookies?
    His mother’s boyfriend, Thomas, had picked up Rory and his mother and they’d gone downtown to have dinner with Annie McGaskell and Copper Pennington. He and Miranda had been invited to join them, but he had declined. He wasn’t ready to spend that much time with their new neighbor. He felt a little bit out of control when he was around her, and that scared the hell out of him. Luckily, Miranda hadn’t been around when the dinner invitation was extended. She would have begged to go along, and he had a hard time saying no to her.
    Rory had been living upstairs for less than two weeks, but it felt like much longer. In a good way, mostly. Miranda talked nonstop about her, declaring she was the best teacher ever, his mother claimed she was the best tenant she’d ever had, and he was slowly coming around to agreeing on both counts. Miranda seemed to be behaving at school, which meant no unexpected phone calls from the teacher, and he was grateful for that. He’d also developed the habit of checking to see if her van was parked on the street, and wondering when she’d be home if it wasn’t. In a nonstalkerish way, he hoped.
    For the past year, he’d often tried to figure out how Laura would have handled their daughter in a given situation. Now he also found himself wondering what Rory would do. Although she had insisted she didn’t want a family of her own, she had a natural, comfortable way with children that he envied.
    A cable car jangled past and, as if on cue, Miranda brightened. “Will you ever want to go for a cable-car ride?” she asked.
    “We’ll do it one of these days.”
    “When?”
    He sighed. At least the familiar old sound hadn’t made him feel as though he was suffocating. “I’m not sure.” And that was the truth.
    He had assumed the exhibit would be at the Museum of Modern Art, but it was at a private gallery near Union Square. The place was all windows, and from the sidewalk across the street he could see it was already teeming with art aficionados. He hated crowds.
    “Look,” Miranda said, pointing at the gallery across the street. “I can see Miss Sunshine. And Grams and Thomas and Annie.”
    Mitch squeezed his daughter’s hand. He had already spotted Rory. She stood near a window with the others, but she might as well have been alone. As she laughed and glanced animatedly from one companion to another, her long hair swung around her shoulders and reflected the light. Was she aware that she stood out from the rest of the crowd? In a good way, of course. He was pretty sure she wasn’t. She was definitely the only person he knew who could wear turquoise pants with a lime-green jacket, and make it work. From where he stood, he couldn’t tell what she had on her feet, but he had a hunch he was going to like it.
    His mother had her arm linked with Thomas’s. It had