“I think I did, yes.”
“Then you have to apologize. And then we can all play in the garden together.”
“I’m afraid it is not that simple, Dorothea.”
“Why not?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. Nothing came to his mind. He knew what he’d intended to say, but, now he was overcome with the sudden fear that it was going to sound as foolish out loud as it did in his mind.
So instead, he said, “Tell me what you think about Catriona, Dorothea.”
Dorothea looked at him for a moment, and then she moved to the head of the bed, getting under the covers. Once she was comfortable, she said, “She’s the nicest person I’ve ever met. And she makes me laugh.”
“She makes me laugh too,” he admitted softly.
“And I think she really likes me, even though I’m not her daughter.”
That surprised him. “Did you think she wouldn’t?”
Slowly, Dorothea nodded. “My mother didn’t like me, so I thought she wouldn’t like me either.”
For a long moment, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. The lump in his throat would have made talking difficult anyway. Dorothea only stared at him as if her words hadn’t just reached into his chest and twisted what he called a heart.
“Your mother…” He didn’t know how to navigate this, how to find the right words for a girl as smart as Dorothea. “She was… unwell. It was not that she did not love you.”
“Did you love her?”
“I… had love for her.”
Dorothea nodded at that, clearly not understanding the underlying difference to his relief. He couldn’t even begin to explain any further. “I hope she’s happy now. And I want you to be happy too. I thought you would be when you married Stepmother.”
“That wasn’t the reason I married her,” he said, wondering why he was explaining all of this to a seven-year-old child.
“Then why did you marry her?”
“Because you needed a positive influence in your life.”
Dorothea frowned. “That’s silly. I have you, Daddy.”
It was like a knife in the chest. She didn’t have him. For years, he was just a figure in her life, not a true father. And yet, with all the love and innocence a girl could have for her father, she thought that he was enough. Even when he hadn’t been.
Without thinking twice, he reached out, pulling her in his arms. She was so small against his body and yet her words, as simple as they might have been, had rocked his world.
“I think I made the right choice in marrying her.”
Dorothea nodded against his chest. “Then will you go and apologize to her?”
Joseph huffed a laugh. He stroked her hair. “Yes, I will apologize in the morning. Do you think she will forgive me?”
“Yes. I do. She’s really nice. And I think she would like to garden with you too.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because…” Dorothea yawned. Her body slouched into his. “… she really likes you too.”
Joseph said nothing to that. He let the silence creep in, continuing to stroke her hair until she fell asleep. Her words lingered, however, playing over and over again until he too fell into a deep sleep.
It was the gentle push of hands against his chest that woke him in the morning—rather groggily in fact, and he was mostirritated at the fact that he was being pulled from dreams filled with the laughter of a brown-haired, green-eyed lady.
