On our second date, he asked whether he could meet Kaylee.
“I don’t want to become part of your life unless your daughter feels comfortable with me,” he explained.
That meant more to me than any expensive gift.
When Travis first visited our house, Kaylee interviewed him at the kitchen table.
“Do you have a dog?”
“No.”
“Can you braid hair?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you like the Minnesota Twins?”
“Only when they’re winning.”
She laughed.
That summer, Travis secretly taught himself to braid hair using a length of orange baler twine tied to a cabinet handle in his warehouse.
I discovered him practicing one afternoon.
He blushed when he realized I was watching.
We married the following year.
Kaylee was eight.
She called him Travis then, and she still called him Travis at seventeen.
Neither of them ever made an issue of it.
I assumed that was simply how their relationship worked.
