Author's note: Thanks to everyone so much for the reviews! I can't tell you how frickin' awesome I think you all are.
I took this one in a slightly different direction. I actually took a nap today and I think I slept out most of my angst. Hopefully this works. If not, that's what third parts are for :)
Part Two
He wanted to buy her a pony. That was what you bought eight-year-old girls, ponies and dolls, right?
Of course, Mick knew that Beth was not your average seven-going-on-eight-year-old and that was mostly his fault.
She laughed, she danced, she sang and she drove her mother crazy with endless questions by day. She went to school, loved her teacher, got into trouble for telling her wild stories, for smacking a boy on the playground. She hopped on and off the bus with ease now, though her mother still paced the house and met her at the curb the instant the bus pulled up, much to Beth's embarrassment.
But there was a stubborn dark streak in her that wouldn't go away. Despite her mother's vehement refusal, she desperately wanted her father to teach her how to shoot a gun. Her drawings too often had fires and fangs. She never fell asleep before midnight.
Mick was determined to drive it away, by bribery if not sheer force of will.
He'd started out small. He left toys like the ones he had played with as a child, tops, yo-yos, a teddy bear, a cap gun. Mick stashed them in places where only she would find them, under her pillow, inside one small shoe, inside the drawer for her toothbrush.
Sometimes he'd be watching when she found it. Her reactions were calm, no sequels or shrieks. Just a smile and immediate need to master the toy. They would all go into a sticker-covered box, slipped under her bed, behind a tub full of stuffed animals.
He picked up book after book, casually leaning each one in the little white bookshelf. Soon he'd given her a whole library of books he could never read to her.
Mick was having a hard time stopping himself. One of his closets was half-filled with baubles he had bought for her but hadn't managed to slip to her yet. When he finally took a case that meant a week of nightlong stake outs in San Bernadino, he went a week without leaving something for her. At the end of it, he almost ran to her room, clutching a handful of costume jewelry when he realized how far gone he was, how far into her life he'd intruded.
Like an alcoholic determined to finish the bottle before giving it up, Mick made a deal with himself. He would give Beth one last present on her birthday, three days from now, but he could give her anything, one grand gesture. Hence, the pony.
Never having ridden a horse in his entire existence, he'd summoned Josef to come with him to the stable to pick one out.
"You're completely insane," his friend had said as the horses nervously nickered around them.
"Mick, what the hell will a she do with a pony? This kid lives in Long Beach., not Kentucky."
Mick let the nearest horse sniff him, the cool wet nostrils blowing past his skin. The horse stomped and edged to the back of the stall, whinnying with nerves.
Josef reached into his pocket.
"We're not so bad," Josef told the animal. "Besides, you taste nasty, big guy."
A handful of sugar cubes went from Josef's hand to the horse's mouth in a practiced move. A tongue licked his palm, followed by a snout nosed into his jacket, in search of more.
Mick hesitated.
"What kind of present would you get a kid?"
"I wouldn't get her anything," Josef folded his arms. "But seeing how you're crazy enough to consider this whole thing in the first place, I'd just go with cash. Easy, untraceable, completely transferable."
Mick shook his head.
"I want something, something... bright, something that makes her happy. Something that reminds her -" of me. "That life is good."
He left Josef to his busy night of Asian markets and buyouts and headed to Beth's house, searching for ideas. It was after midnight, but the light in her room was still on, the only one in the house. The room seemed empty though, her blankets askew but the bed empty. A trickle of panic cut through Mick. He cut across the yard, still unable to see her.
Mick silently pulled himself into the branches of a nearby tree, getting the height he needed to spot her just below the window, curled up on the floor with her head resting on a copy of "Five Children and It," that he'd tucked into her backpack early one morning.
He dropped from the tree and found himself at her window, watching her little chest breathe in and out, her neck cricked to the side and her little back slumped over. His fingers laid themselves against the cool glass and the unlatched window swung in.
Mick stumbled back, not expecting the movement of the surface and unsure whether he had pushed or it had already been open. Her little girl smell tumbled over him. Soap, dirt, a splash of cream soda, laundered cotton and the indefinable scent of Beth.
It pulled him into the room and it was too late. He was standing over her trying to resist the urge to snatch her up and run.
Instead, he dogeared the book and silently moved it next to her bed. Mick oh-so-carefully wrapped his arms around her. She had gained inches, but few pounds. Beth was as light as she'd been that night more than three years ago. Her blond hair had grown out, cascading down to her shoulders and fly aways tickling his arms.
In a swift movement, he swung her toward the bed, listening to her heartbeat to catch any sign of waking. Nothing. Mick adjusted the pillow and pulled the sheet up, waiting to see if maybe she would happen to crack her eyes open, happen to hear his gentle movements and see him, if just for a moment.
But she didn't. Her eyes stayed shut, her mind far away.
Mick closed and locked window, not that it would stop any true monster. His scent, however, might give them pause.
"Good night, Beth," he slipped out of the house and drove back to his apartment, thrilled and a little terrified.
The next night, early, the window was not just unlocked. It was wide open. Mick saw Beth, laying on the floor with the book, in nearly the same position as before, but this time her heart thudded with the intensity of her consciousness.
He could almost hear her blinking as she waited. He stood outside her window, still as death. One of those precious bits of human knowledge he was forgetting, Mick wondered if her human hearing could detect his feet moving through the grass or the closing of his car door down the road.
His heart, willfully silent for so long, started keening for her sweet face and welcoming gaze, for the chatter he heard from her kitchen, for the steady questions she would produce one by one and the soft touch of a child unafraid.
But he heard a sigh from the little body. She rose and, in a flash, Mick moved far enough away that no one inside could see him.
Beth swung the pane shut, her shoulders hunched and her head heavy. Mick fled into the night.
For Beth's birthday, Mick did not bring a pony. He did clutch a crumpled birthday card from Beth's mother as he left his apartment. The invitation came every year with a school photo, a few other snapshots that Mick memorized, then meticulously filed away in his cabinets as though this had been any other case.
He didn't have a present. All the trinkets, the toys, the flights of fancy weren't what Beth wanted. He knew now what the little girl craved, what kept her eyes open to the moonlight.
Lights flipped on and off throughout the Turner house. Living room out; bathroom on, then off; Beth's light off; a hallway light on; the master bedroom on and off, then Beth's on again. Mick listened to her parents' breathing settle into the depths of sleep before moving into the yard.
In her ballerina pajamas, Beth was carefully organizing new toys into old boxes, pushing aside shorn Barbies for their new long-haired companions and inhaling the scent of Strawberry Shortcake's hair.
Mick was just steps from her window when she froze in place. She was tilted away from the window, but maybe something had reflected, caught her eye.
She didn't try to fool him this time. Beth pivoted in her own dance move, so that she was looking Mick straight on. She saw him and he let himself be seen.
The window was open again. Mick deftly climbed in. A little tinkling laugh came from Beth.
"You're here!" she whispered.
"Yeah, kid," Mick leaned down and ruffled her hair. "Straight from heaven, just for you."
He had a feeling she didn't appreciate his dry tone.
Beth wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. Then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, she pulled him to the floor. A tattered copy of "Where the Wild Things Are" peeked from beneath a pile of toys. With a yank, Beth unearthed it and flipped it open.
"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind..." Mick began as Beth nestled next to him, unperturbed by his perpetual cold.
He finished the book, she read him the next and halfway through the third, he felt her begin to droop. Her head fell against his arm, her slow breathing pumped in and out. He gathered her up, earning a small grunt of resistance. But she willingly tumbled into bed, sleep taking her over with a smile on her face.
"Good night, Beth," he whispered. "Happy Birthday."