Forever Pappy
The full moon hung high in the dark black sky and shone through the nursery room window. The sound of a creaking rocking chair sounded throughout the large room. Jarrod, who was rocking his eight month old niece, Hope, knew he was going to have to get the rocker fixed in order to get the noise to stop. Only, at the moment, it was the last thing on his mind as Hope finally began to quieten down.
Jarrod couldn't help but sigh. He shouldn't be the one rocking his niece in the middle of the night or singing her lullabies. He shouldn't have had to hire a governess for the young child-which he'd done just that morning. The young woman-a red headed twenty year old-was to start working for his family in the morning. He shouldn't have to only he was.
Jarrod remembered how he'd help raise Audra and Eugene when their father was killed. He remembered how he'd been shocked to learn that he'd been named as guardian to his late friend's daughter, Laura. Okay, she lived in a boarding school-still he'd had legal responsibility for her even if she hadn't liked it. Time and time again he'd found himself proving there was a reason his family had nicknamed him Pappy.
He looked at the precious bundle in his arms and sighed. When he'd married Beth he'd had visions of having his own children, only to have that dream shattered the day Beth was killed by Hyatt's bullet. After all his siblings had married, Jarrod thought his role of "Pappy" was over. He was wrong.
Looking at Hope, he wondered what the child would think as she grew older and learned her biological father had been killed in a freak mining accident. What would she do when she learned that her mother, sick with grief, had been unable to muster her strength after an extremely hard delivery and passed on to the other side only hours after Hope was born? How would she feel when she learned that the man raising her wasn't her father but her uncle? When the door to the nursery opened, Jarrod turned his head and saw his mother entering the room.
"You have court in the morning. I could have sat with her." Victoria smiled sympathetically upon her oldest, knowing that-once again-he was shouldering what should have been someone else's responsibility. Right or wrong, if she could, she would have asked Hope's father and mother what on earth they were thinking naming such a busy man like Jarrod and herself as guardians for Hope. It's not like she'd only had two children.
"It's okay." Jarrod said as he stood up and looked at his now sleeping niece. "I was awake anyway." He then went and lay his niece in her bed, smiling as he did so. The child looked so much like an angel when she was asleep. He couldn't help but chuckle softly as he remembered how his siblings had nicknamed him Pappy. I've been Pappy for years; guess I'll be Pappy forever. He thought as he turned away from the crib and followed his mother out of the room hoping for the best in the years to come.
A/N No, I haven't come right out and said who Hope's parents were. I don't think it's really necessary. This is about Jarrod not them.