She still has nightmares. Still wakes up screaming for her mother. Still asks why her father did what he did. I don’t have answers for those questions. All I can do is hold her. Tell her she’s safe. Tell her she’s loved. Show up every morning like I have for three years.

Her biological father wrote her a letter from prison last month. Mrs. Washington gave it to me, asked what we should do. I read it. Pages of excuses and manipulation. Trying to justify what he did. Trying to make Keisha feel guilty for being happy without him.

I burned it. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe when she’s older she’ll hate me for it. But right now she’s eight years old and healing. She doesn’t need his poison in her life.

She needs stability. Safety. Love. She needs someone to walk her to school every morning. Someone to check for monsters under the bed. Someone to call daddy who won’t hurt her.

I’m not perfect. I’m a fifty-seven-year-old biker who doesn’t know anything about raising little girls. I curse too much. I don’t understand modern math homework. I can’t do her hair as well as her grandmother. I look ridiculous at PTA meetings surrounded by suburban parents.

But I show up. Every single day. Rain or shine. Sick or healthy. Tired or energized. I show up.

This morning, after I walked her to school, her teacher pulled me aside. « Mr. Patterson, I just wanted you to know that Keisha wrote an essay about her hero. She wrote about you. How you saved her. How you chose to be her dad when you didn’t have to. »

She handed me the essay. In Keisha’s careful handwriting:

« My hero is my Daddy Mike. He’s not my real daddy but he’s better than my real daddy because he chooses to love me every day. He has a motorcycle and tattoos and looks scary but he’s really soft. He reads me stories and makes me pancakes and never yells even when I have bad dreams. He adopted me so I’ll never be alone. My real daddy hurt my mommy but my Daddy Mike protects me. He’s the best daddy in the world because he picked me when nobody else wanted me. »

I sat in my truck in the school parking lot and cried for twenty minutes. This little girl who’s been through hell thinks I’m a hero. But she’s the hero. She’s the one who survived the worst night imaginable. She’s the one who chooses to trust again despite having every reason not to.

People judge me. See a rough-looking biker with a little Black girl and make assumptions. Some think I’m her grandfather. Some think worse things. But I don’t care what they think.