I looked at him.
“So?”
“So I can walk her home.”
I laughed.
He raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
“You seriously want to stand outside an elementary school looking like that?”
Travis looked down at his leather vest.
Then at his tattooed arms.
“Fair point.”
He considered it.
“I could wear a tiara.”
I laughed harder than I had all week.
It seemed almost too simple.
But Travis was reliable. He knew Emma. Emma knew him. And the walk from school to our neighborhood took less than fifteen minutes.
We didn’t do anything casually.
I completed the school paperwork.
They made a copy of Travis’s ID.
He was officially added to Emma’s authorized pickup list.
Emma reacted as though I had arranged for a celebrity to collect her every afternoon.
Ryan reacted as though I had invited a stranger into our house.
“I don’t like it,” he said the first evening.
I was washing dishes.
“You don’t like what?”
“Our daughter depending on some biker every day.”
I turned around.
“He isn’t ‘some biker.’ He’s Travis.”
“I know exactly who he is.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
Ryan’s jaw tightened.
“You trust people too easily.”
That irritated me.
But I also understood part of where it came from.
Emma was our only child.
Ryan worried.
He worried about school buses, playground equipment, strangers, allergies, whether the neighborhood kids rode their bicycles too fast.
I had always considered his anxiety part of being a protective father.
So I didn’t push.
That was my mistake.
Because I thought Ryan’s problem was fear.
I didn’t yet understand that it was something else.
Part 3 — Three Weeks That Seemed Perfect
For the next three weeks, the arrangement worked beautifully.
Every afternoon, Travis met Emma outside school and walked her home.
By the time I arrived, she was safe inside.
And Emma loved those walks.
At dinner, we heard about them constantly.
“Travis says crows can remember people’s faces.”
“Did you know motorcycle engines get really hot?”
“Travis can whistle with two fingers.”
