I'd Say I Love You

a/n: I write way better than this just so you know. Don't flame me even if it is so unbearably terrible that you feel you have to, just tell me if I should rewrite it, because if you do I'll make it better. This is sort of like my first Pearl Harbor story.

Warning: Extremely short.

Review when you're done.

I guess I always thought I could forget there ever really was a Danny. Not Danny the great soldier that always manages to silence a room whenever mentioned, but Danny my father. Danny, once upon a time my mother's lover.

Rafe...he's an alright guy. Honestly. If I had a choice between being a bastard or having Rafe I'd choose Rafe. He loves me I guess and I love him back, but I need to know what they're not telling me.

Who was Danny? Really?

Mama never wants to tell me the truth. She always goes, "Well, honey, he died fighting the Japs." And everytime she says it I feel like screaming, "Don't you think I know that? You tell me all the time, but how 'bout something different? How 'bout something that's going to keep me from hating him for leaving me?"

"He was a good man, Danny-boy," Rafe likes to say, as if it's an after thought. "He was a good soldier."

Mind telling me something you haven't told me before?

"You'd have loved him." Really, Rafe, how so? "He was a loveable guy."

"You took all his good features," Mama tells me. "All the girls are gonna love running their fingers through your hair." Mother please. "They're going to like staring into your pretty brown eyes." Sometimes when she says this, she's cupping my cheek. "Danny would've been proud." I can always catch the tears brimming the edges of her eyes before she turns and goes back to washing the dishes or ironing. "Really proud," she whispers. Then she tells me to leave so she can wash or iron in peace. I always stand in the hall, wait until she stops sobbing, then go outside.

"Why did you do this if you were such a good man?" I ask, the sky. "Why did you abandon me?"

No one ever answers, but it's nice to ask. Tonight I do the same.

"Why did you do this if you were such a good man? I thought you were my father. Father's love their children. Didn't you love me? Or were you just another one of those examples of a deadbeat dad?" I turned to go back inside the house. "Before I go, I want you to know...Mama misses you. She cries." I put my hand on the knob. "Would you even speak to me if you were alive? Would you have even been there for me, since it's obvious you're not now?" I opened the door. "What would you say?" I stepped into the house, but before I closed the door I think I heard someone whisper, "I'd say I love you."