Pa’s hacking hadn’t stopped since four in the morning, and I wished he’d kick the can so I could get some silence already. I couldn’t get any homework done with the coughs coming like a hammer between every thought, and God knows we’d all been waiting for it. Ma had given up on him years ago, and Daisy was too young to know anything other than love for him.
It was hard to love someone you didn’t really know. The sickness had settled him, so that he was no longer a ghost in a picture frame but rather a corpse biding its time. I preferred the ghost to the pale, wheezing form on the bed, but my opinion never counted for much anyway.
The hacking quieted, and soft murmurings meant Daisy had gone to talk to him. She made it her daily routine after getting back from school. Ma encouraged it, if only so she didn’t have to talk to him herself.
Ma started sleeping on the couch a month ago. Said Pa’s coughing kept her up and she needed to be up early for work. Daisy nodded at that, hugging Ma’s legs and telling her to get more rest. I was old enough to know rest wasn’t going to fix the bags under her eyes.
The soft pitter patter of feet coming down the hallway meant Daisy was done, and sure enough I felt her creep up to my side and grab my papers.
“What’chu doing?” she asked.
“Homework, now give me those,” I said. I made a half-hearted attempt at snatching the papers back, but she scooted away and plopped down on the bed.
“It doesn’t look like homework,” she said, staring hard at the pages.
“Well it will once I get done with them,” I said.
Daisy shrugged, setting the papers down next to her. She started twiddling her thumbs and swinging her feet, getting that look in her eye like when she wanted to ask Ma for candy at the grocery store but was too scared to say anything.
“What is it?” I asked. I took my blank homework back and smoothed it down on the desk.
“Is daddy dying?”
I froze. “What?”
“Is daddy dying?” she repeated, quieter. She looked down at her hands. “I know Ma said he’s real sick and all, but he’s gonna get better right?”
“He is real sick,” I said. “I suppose you’ll have to ask Pa how he’s feeling.”
She knew I wasn’t giving her the whole story. Her little eyebrows came together to form a tiny crease in the middle of her forehead, and her legs stopped kicking.
“Hey, no. You know that even if he’s gone me and Ma will still be here. It’ll be just like Pa went on one of his trips,” I continued.
Daisy’s lips started wobbling and I scooped her into my arms before the waterworks could go off. The room down the hall was silent.
“I don’t want him to leave again.”
Again.
My blood was boiling at the old man for putting her through this. She didn’t deserve it. I guess none of us did, really.
“We’re gonna be alright,” I said.
The coughing started up again.

Pa’s condition never let up, and Daisy stopped smiling. Everyday she’d get home and talk to Pa before passing over her meals and going to her room.
Ma had enough of it. “I worked hard to put food on this table so you best eat it, you hear?”
“Quiet it, Ma, she’s just worried about Pa,” I said.
She softened just a bit, but held strong. “Well he ain’t gonna get any better if you don’t eat.”
I was staring at the blank pages of my English when Daisy came bouncing into my room the next day.
“What’re you so cheerful about?” I asked, smiling.
“Pa’s gonna get better,” she said.
“And how do you know that?”
“He promised me! He said he’s gonna live to at least 100.”
My smile faltered. “That’s...real nice,” I said. Daisy smiled at me, and my heart wept.
“Hey why don’t you go to your room for a bit, huh? I’m gonna go talk to Pa for a bit.”
She nodded and skipped away like it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, like it wasn’t the first time I was heading to his room out my own volition in what must have been at least a year. I waited for the sound of her door closing before stepping into the hall and opening to door to Pa’s bedroom.
“Just what do you think you’re doing, making Daisy promises you aren’t going to keep?” I demanded.
The blinds of Pa’s room were shut tight upon walking in and the room smelled like sickness and decay. I grimaced at the thought of Daisy spending time in there everyday.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” Pa rasped.
“Yeah, well I gotta few things to say to you too. What do you think you’re doing, going and telling Dais-”
“You have to promise me that you’re going to look after Daisy after I’m gone.”
The words stopped in my throat. A strangled laugh escaped.
“Promise you?”
“Promise me,” he repeated, chest heaving but grey eyes dead centered on mine.
“Who do you think takes care of her every time you disappear? Every time Ma works late and comes in at midnight looking like she got hit by a truck?”
Apparently satisfied Pa turned his head away and closed his eyes, end of conversation. My chest still burned. I wanted to tell him to ‘live, damn it’ and I wanted to tell him to die already and stop haunting us but in the end all I could do was snarl at his wilted shape and turn away, slamming the door.

Pa’s funeral was on a cloudy Sunday, three days after Daisy found him dead in his room. Her mouth hadn’t opened since. The house spent the three days in silence, but it didn’t feel like mourning. It felt like shock. And I wouldn’t admit it to Daisy, and neither would Ma, but it felt like relief.
The funeral itself was a tiny affair, over in a blink. The anger in my heart had cooled to calm indifference, only occasionally fueling up when I glanced at Daisy’s pale, expressionless face. I held her tiny hand in mine as the first handfuls of dirt were thrown on the casket by Ma. I smoothed down her combed blonde hair as the gravediggers picked up their shovels.
Daisy spent the drive home staring out the window, hands fixed in her lap and legs motionless. Upon entering the house, Ma broke off to the kitchen and took out the whiskey.
I led Daisy to my room, averting my eyes from the closed door at the end of the hall. I sat her on the mattress, closed the door, and then turned around.
Daisy broke. A low whine escaped from deep in her throat like an injured deer. For a minute I thought she would bolt out the room, but instead she crawled under my covers and shook violently until the mattress frame was banging against the wall.
“He promised,” she screamed into the sheets, the first words I heard from her since Pa died. “He promised, he promised, he promised...” The muffled cries continued to erupt from under the sheets.
I didn’t bother trying to lure her out, instead crawling under the covers right alongside her and curling my body around to hug her.
“I know, I know,” I whispered into her hair as sobs continued to wrack her body.
“It’s going to be okay."
I promise, I didn't say.