"Daddy, can you tell me a bedtime story?"
Pleading, hopeful brown eyes met his as Tony tucked his daughter into bed that night.
"Sure, baby girl." He pulled the covers over her and joined her on the bed. "Which one did you want to hear?"
"A new one! Not one I've heard a zillion times before."
"A new one, huh? A'right..." He scratched the side of his face thoughtfully as his mind worked to conjure up a tale on the spot for the little girl. His Madelyn loved her fairytales; he just loved the smile on her face when he told them to her. His life at the moment was better than any fairytale he could attempt to dream up, really. "Let's see... Once upon a time, there was a very beautiful princess... and a... knight."
"I think I know this one."
He shook his head, a smirk forming on his face. "Nah, I don't think you do. See, the princess and the knight, their jobs were to protect the kingdom."
"Princesses do that?"
He nodded. "This one did. But one day, the bad guys captured the princess."
"Oh no! Did the knight save her?"
"Yeah. Yeah, he did." Tony paused. "But he had to do some bad things to get her back."
"What bad things?"
It wasn't the knight's finest moment any more than it was Tony's favorite part of
the story to tell. "He... He had to lie to people. Good guys."
"That's not nice."
"No. It's not. He didn't want to... He just didn't have another choice." He decided to omit the part where the bad guys point a sword at the princess and threaten to take her eye out for this age-appropriate version.
Maddie looked thoughtful. "Why didn't he just ask the good guys to help him get her back?"
Every now and then, he found himself caught off guard by the perceptiveness of his only daughter—especially when she came to the same conclusions her mother did. Through and through, she was his little Michelle, and that was never made more clear than in these moments.
"Well... What if they said no?" he reasoned. "I think he was too afraid of losing her to trust anybody else."
She seemed to accept his logic. "So then what happened?"
"They locked him up in the dungeon."
"The good guys?"
"Yeah."
Her little eyebrows furrowed, showing her obvious disapproval of the decision. "Did he escape?"
"Nah, he was let out after a little while."
"By who?"
He was seriously starting to doubt his ability to tell the story in simple terms. "By, uh, by the king."
"The princess's dad?"
"No, no. Different king. He..." Was honorable, just, stoic, courageous, had essentially freed him from hell and was unarguably his favorite president in history, with an essence that was impossible to sum up in a tale this simplistic. He stripped this down to the basics. "This king had special powers."
"Like a wizard?"
"Yeah... Yeah, something like that."
Her attention quickly shifted back to the love story element. "Was the princess waiting for the knight when they let him out of the dungeon?"
He grinned. "Yeah, she was. She was there."
"Did she kiss him 'cause he was her hero and then they lived happily ever after?"
"Almost."
Only then did Maddie's bright smile wane. "Why almost?"
He sighed. "Because the knight was... sad."
"Why was he sad? The dungeon wasn't very fun?"
"Right. And he wasn't allowed to defend the kingdom anymore. He had to go find a different job."
"What job?"
"Nothing, he didn't get one. He was too busy feeling sorry for himself."
"Oh." Her face fell. "Poor knight. What about the princess?"
"She still had her job."
"She was fighting bad guys without him?"
"Uh-huh."
"That musta made him sad. He prob'ly felt left out," she suspected. "Then what happened?"
"She went away."
"The princess? Did the bad guys take her again?"
He shook his head. "No, it wasn't like that. Not this time."
"Was the sad knight making her sad, too? So she ran away?"
He chuckled softly at her desperation for answers and his own difficulty to get a word in edgewise. "Yeah, you could say that."
"How did he get her to come back?"
His Maddie. The eternal optimist.
"How do you know she came back?"
"Because she loves him," she answered matter-of-factly. "That's how fairytales work."
"Ahh. So it wouldn't be a very good fairytale if they just left each other alone?"
"'Course not, silly, they belong together," she giggled. "So what did he do?"
"Actually, one of the good guys called the knight for help—"
"Didn't they throw him in the dungeon?"
"The good guys? Yeah, they did. But the one that called him for help was his friend," Tony explained. "He talked the wizard into letting the knight out of the dungeon."
"Oh. Was his friend a knight, too?"
"Yeah. The best knight there was, really. So then the first knight—"
"The hero."
"Sure, the hero-knight, had to work with the princess again to protect the kingdom after he hadn't seen her in a long time."
"How long?"
"Too long. But this time the bad guys got the knight instead."
"Didn't he have a sword?"
"Yeah, he did, but he gave it to the bad guy to save one of the good guys."
She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "He shouldn't have done that. Never give swords to bad guys."
"You know what, you're right. That was a bad idea. Anyway, the bad guy tied up the knight and..." He searched his brain for ways to make the whole story less complicated. "The bad guy told the princess to do what she said or she would hurt the knight."
"The bad guy was a she?"
"Oh, yeah. I guess she was a bad girl, then, huh?"
"I hope she got a time-out for that."
He laughed. "She got a long one, don't worry. So now the princess wanted to save the knight like he saved her, but she was too good to lie to the good guys. So she told the good guys what happened..." He explained the story slowly, making sure she understood, "and they helped her save the knight."
"And the bad girl didn't hurt him?"
"Nah, not too bad."
"So the princess was a hero, too."
"Yeah," he agreed. "She was."
"And they both weren't sad anymore. Then what?"
"And then they lived happily ever after."
"Did they get married?" she asked eagerly.
He smiled wider. "Yes they did."
"Did they have a baby?"
He chuckled. "Uh-huh, they did that too."
"A baby princess?"
"Mm, first they had a prince, I guess, and then they had a princess."
She squealed softly before remembering her baby brother was asleep across the hall. She lowered her voice. "Was she pretty?"
He was sincere in his answer. "The prettiest of all."
"And when she grew up, she saved the kingdom, too?"
"Story doesn't go that far," he said simply, dropping a quick kiss on her nose. "But I think she'll do whatever she wants to do."
Maddie yawned and tucked herself back under the covers. "So that's the end of the story?"
"Nope." He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see his wife smiling at them from the doorway. "Just the beginning."
