Alice knew she was happy. She wasn't very lucky in some parts of her life, but she considered it the best of luck to have the father she did. She was curious about her mother, of course, and she never missed the wince on her papa's face every time she asked about her.
"She's gone, Starfish. But I'm here, and I will be here for as long as you'll want me," was all he would say in different ways. And Alice was curious, very curious even for a ten-year-old, but she'd eventually let go of her questions about her mother. She knew her name was Eloise, so she'd decided to turn her curiosity elsewhere.
It would take her a few years and her first heartbreak to suspect something really dark had happened between her parents, for her papa to act like that whenever he heard of her.
Another thing she probably wasn't that lucky in was her school. Surrounded by classmates with both their parents, and mostly people who wouldn't agree with her imaginations of a future family consisting of kids and two moms instead of a mom and a dad, it made sense that the Fridays before Mother's Day would be awkward for her.
This year she decided to make a difference. Instead of sitting by while her classmates wrote letters and painted pictures for their mothers, Alice picked up her crayons and started painting a view of the sea.
"Who are you painting that for? You don't have a mother!" that idiot, Clayton, said. The rest of her classmates laughed until they were shushed by their mostly indifferent teacher.
"'For papa?'" Charles said, peeking at her letter. "But it's Mother's Day! Why don't you wait for Father's Day to paint him something?"
Because we never do anything for Father's Day, you fool, Alice thought, but instead of fighting - again - she chose to vent her anger on her paper, making the sea a deeper blue than intended and cracking her crayon in half as a result.
But it all went away as soon as she saw her papa outside of the school, waiting to pick her up.
"Hey, Starfish," he said and kissed her head. "How was school today?"
"Good. I didn't get in trouble," she said with a huge grin.
Killian ruffled her hair. "I'm glad."
She was so excited to give him his gift. Since they never made something special for Father's Day - and it was rarely heard of in the first place, she'd resorted to only giving him a small bunch of flowers she'd picked up from the park, only for them to wither a few days later and for her to sadly watch them end up in the trash.
This year she'd give him something more permanent.
On Sunday, she woke up excited and too early for a Sunday. She picked up his present and ran to the kitchen to hug him. He always woke up early, no matter the day.
"Happy Mother's Day!" she said when she drew back, giving him two sheets of paper.
"But I'm..." he started, but his voice faltered when he saw the sheets. One was a painting of a seashore, with beautiful, deep colours and an "I love you Papa" written on the top, along with a tidy "Alice Jones" on the bottom right, and on the other she'd glued dried flowers on around an inscription that said "World's Best Papa".
Tears welled in his eyes and he turned to look at her, smiling wide.
"You're as good a mama as you are a papa," Alice said and hugged him tight. "I love you."
"I love you too, Alice. Very much. Thank you." He kissed her head.
Most of her drawings were fridge door decorations until they were replaced by more recent ones, but those two specially, he kept on top of his drawer to look at every day.