He guessed at what was troubling her. “It’s all right that you chose to go away for a while,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to talk tonight. Actually, I’m very pleasantly surprised that you did, even though it was just here with me. You don’t need to speak to the guests, though. I’m not upset at you for distancing yourself from them.”
Emma nodded, though she still looked mildly perturbed.
“Should we read the book?” he asked her.
She hesitated.
“Is there something else? If you want to say something, you can. I’ll be patient,” he promised. “You can take as long as you need to find the words.”
She hung her head for a moment.
Reeves wanted to prompt her to guess at what it was she might be trying to say. He wanted to help her get the words out. But he held himself back. If it were going to happen, she would have to do it herself. He had promised her that he would wait as long as she needed him to, after all.
And finally, she spoke again, her voice still quiet, but clear. “Are you going to send Bridget away?”
He sighed and tightened his arm around her shoulders. “You’d like her to stay, wouldn’t you?”
Emma nodded fervently.
“Bridget’s been a big help to us," he said. “I’ll never forget that. But we can’t ask her to give up her work at the orphanage. She helps so many children there. I’m so grateful that she was willing to take time away from that work to come be with you for as long as she has—but we do need to be understanding about the fact that she has an important role there. She needs to go back, and we need to let her.”
He saw tears come into his daughter’s eyes and felt like his heart was going to break. “I know you don’t want her to go.”
Emma shook her head.
“I don’t want her to go either,” he admitted. It was the first time he had said that, even to himself. “But we must let her. She only agreed to come with us temporarily—you know that. We wouldn’t want to make her feel as if she has to stay here longer than she intended. She wants to get back to her life. We need to be understanding about that. You see that, don’t you?”
Emma nodded slowly and cuddled into his side, burying her face in his shoulder.
He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “Thank you for speaking to me today,” he murmured.
It took everything he had in him not to ask the million questions that clamored in his mind. More than anything, he wanted those answers. He took a deep breath and picked up the book of fairy tales instead. “Have you chosen a story for us?” he asked.
She flipped the pages of the book and stopped on a familiar image, pointing to it.
“Jack and the Beanstalk?”
She nodded.
“You know, this was always your favorite when you were a little girl,” he recalled. “We must have read it a hundred times. Do you remember that?”
She crawled into his lap and tucked herself under his chin in response, and Reeves was filled with warmth. For the first time since she had come home, he felt a sense of familiarity. Here was the daughter he had known all her life. She might have been hurt by what had happened to her, and he might have a fight to try to bring her back to him, but she was still in there. He could still recognize her. It was a breath of fresh air in the middle of all this turmoil.
He began the story, falling into the familiar cadence. He could have recited it from memory, so many times had they read it together, and he didn’t need to pay strict attention to the pages. He focused instead on the joy of having his daughter close to him. The way she relaxed into his arms—he’d thought that might be lost to him forever, but it wasn’t. She was home, and she was comfortable and knew that she was safe with her father. It meant more to him than he could ever have imagined anything would.
As he read on, he saw her eyelids flutter closed. A moment later, her breathing became deep and even, and Reeves knew that she had fallen asleep.
The warmth that grew within him could have lit the whole house.
He didn’t dare move. He didn’t stop reading. It was so clear that she felt safe tonight, perhaps safer than she had since before her kidnapping, and Reeves would do nothing to spoil that moment. He finished the story and began the next one, turning pages, the words spilling out. He lost track of what he was doing. He forgot to notice how long he had been here with her.
The only thing that mattered was the fact that they were together. Emma was in his arms, and she was still herself.
Bridget had been right all along. The only thing she had really needed was time—time, and a little patience. And now that Reeves knew it was working, he would be able to go on providing those things. It would be no problem at all.
Emma really was going to be all right.
Every muscle in his body seemed to relax at once, and a tremor of sheer relief passed through him, so powerful that he was sure he was going to wake her.
