Free If I Let You Go by Kyra Lennon

home. I’m tired now.”
    “I understand,” Jayne replied, with a smile. “But you’ll come round sometime this week, won’t you? It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good natter!”
    “Of course. I’ll give you a ring, and we’ll arrange a time.”
    Jayne gave me another hug, and Dominic said, “Do you need a lift home?”
    “Yes please, if you don’t mind leaving Tilly.”
    “She’ll be fine with mum for a while. I’ll take you.”
     
    The silence in Dominic’s car as he drove me home made me nervous. When he offered me a lift, I assumed he had something he wanted to say. Scratch that. I knew he had something to say by the way he focused so intently on the road. He’d driven these streets a million times, it didn’t need such a high level of concentration. He was thinking. My heart began to pound, slowly at first, but by the time he pulled up outside my parents’ house, it was hammering to the point where I thought I might require a trip to A&E.
    “Thanks for the ride,” I said, trying not to look at him.
    “Thank you for coming over.”
    “No problem. I’m glad Tilly’s feeling better now.”
    I reached down to unclip my seatbelt, but Dominic put his hand over mine, forcing me to look up at him.
    “I realised something tonight,” he said. His voice was shaky, his breath a little ragged. “I realised that I don’t know how to look after my own daughter. I don’t know how to make the nightmares go away, I don’t know how to calm her down. I forgot to pack her monkey.”
    “Dom-”
    “I should know these things, Madison. But I don’t. I don’t know a thing about her.”
    “That’s not true,” I told him. “And the things you don’t know, you can learn.”
    “She’s going to be six next week! I should know them by now!”
    He slammed his hands against the steering wheel, then leaned his head against it.
    A picture of despair.
    “I watched you with her tonight,” he said, after a while. “I saw you holding her hand, stroking her hair. Talking to her about your toy dog, and listening to every word she said, even though it was coming out in a tired jumble. You always know the right things to say to her. I don’t know how to do that.”
    Resting my hand on his shoulder, I said, “It takes time. You can’t just have a kid and expect to know what they’re thinking or how they feel if you’re not always around. They change and grow up so quickly. If you turn away even for a minute, they’ve learned something new.”
    “Everything she learned, she learned from you. She tells me. Every night on the phone, and when I come home, she tells me about the things you’ve done together.”
    “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “And you’re wrong. I don’t agree with you moving to New York, but I know why you do what you do, and it’s not because you’re a bad father. I see you working every hour of every day to give Tilly everything she needs because you think you need to make up for her growing up without a mother. But you don’t need to try so hard. You’ve done it. You’re successful, you can provide for her, and now she needs you. Just you.”
    Slowly, he straightened up. “If there’s one thing I did right for her, it wasn’t working so hard. It was choosing you. Don’t think I haven’t always appreciated you, because I have, but I’m only just starting to realise how much of who she is is down to you.”
    “I think it was a team effort,” I said, softly. “But thank you.”
    Dominic hesitantly raised his hand a little, then lowered it. The move made my heart race again, and when he smiled at me, I felt it. I felt it in every part of me, like the smallest curve of his lips had the power to cause an energy surge in my body.
    The answers to those questions I’d been ignoring began to fall into place.
    “I should go,” I said.
    When he raised his hand again, he didn’t change his mind. His fingertips gently found their way into my hair, only touching