His name was Eli Navarro.
I wrote back: Yes, still available. Come by after 2.
At two-fifteen, a pickup truck pulled into my driveway. It was old and blue, with a dented tailgate and a child’s car seat in the back.
A young man climbed out. Mid-thirties, dark hair, a gray hoodie, and the tired eyes of someone who hadn’t slept well in a while. A friend got out of the passenger side, a bigger guy in a Bengals cap.
And from the back seat, a little girl.
She was maybe five or six, with curly dark hair in two puffs on top of her head and a purple T-shirt with a cartoon unicorn on it. She had a stuffed bunny tucked under one arm.
She marched right past her father, up my porch steps, and into the living room the second I opened the door.
She saw the couch. She climbed onto it. She bounced on the sagging middle.
“Daddy!” she shouted. “We both fit!”
Eli winced.
“Mila,” he said. “We don’t climb on people’s furniture without asking.”
“It’s all right,” I said. And it was. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had laughed in my living room.
He apologized anyway. He explained that he was furnishing an apartment over in Beavercreek after his divorce. He’d moved in two weeks ago. He had a mattress, a kitchen table, two chairs, and not much else.
“So far, we’ve been watching cartoons on the floor,” he said. He laughed a little, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Mila says it’s like camping. But I wanted her to have somewhere to sit when she’s with me.”
He looked at the couch.
“It’s every other weekend,” he said quietly. “I want it to feel like home.”
Mila was lying on Arthur’s cushion now, with her bunny on her chest, looking up at the ceiling.
“This couch is squishy,” she announced. “It hugs you.”
I had to turn around and look out the window for a moment.
