There was a soft knock on the door the next morning. "Could ya get that, babe?" Danny called from the bedroom.

Lindsay sighed. Danny had to go back to work today and she had been hoping to catch a few minutes of sleep before he left. He was probably changing or something, but still. With little Sophie fast asleep in her arms she went to answer the door.

She opened the door and almost dropped the baby when she saw who it was. "Dad? What are you doing here?" she stuttered.

Danny materialized behind her just then. "I called him." he paused. "Multiple times, actually. LeeAnne never let me talk to him so I had ta wait until he answered the phone."

Lindsay looked from her husband to her father and back again. "You gonna invite him in, Montana?" Danny asked, grabbing an arm and gently pulling her out of the way to let Bill Monroe into their apartment. "Come on in," Danny invited.

Bill followed Danny into the living room and awkwardly perched in an easy chair, Lindsay and Danny sitting across from him on the sofa. "So…" Bill said to break the awkward silence.

"So, what?" Lindsay asked icily.

Bill's eyes lost some of their brightness and his shoulders slumped when he heard the hostility in his daughter's voice. "Danny wanted me to see the baby," he explained, even though Lindsay hadn't asked.

"What if I didn't want you to see the baby?" she asked, "It's not like you've been a part of my life since Mom died, anyway."

Bill sighed. "Lindsay, will you just give me a chance?" he asked quietly.

"I've given you 16 years worth of chances," she said, tears brimming in her eyes, "and you haven't taken any of them because you're so wrapped up in Becky," she practically spat out the name of her younger sister. "It's always, Becky this and Becky that. Oh, it's Lindsay's wedding! Too bad we can't go since Becky's birthday is too close. Wouldn't want to ruin the special day for Becky!" Lindsay said hysterically

A tear slid down Bill's face, but Lindsay didn't feel guilty at all. He deserved the pain. She'd had to live with the pain for sixteen years. A few tears were nothing compared to what she'd gone through.

Sophia spit her pacifier out. Bill leaned over to pick it up. "No," Lindsay warned him, "I can do it." She leaned over rather awkwardly, as she was trying not to upset the baby, and picked up Sophie's bright pink pacifier and stuck it back into the baby's mouth.

"Lindsay," Danny said quietly so that only she could hear, "I think you should give him a chance."

Lindsay glared, "And you also told Mac that I needed therapy," she said coldly, conveniently leaving out the fact that it had helped a lot.

Danny wasn't going to let that go. "It helped, though, didn't it?"

Lindsay scowled. "Yes, it did, Montana," Danny answered for her, "See, I'm right sometimes."

"Fine," she said unenthusiastically. "Whatever you want."

"Thank you," he said, standing up. "I think I'll leave you two alone," he said to the two of them. He tried to take Sophie from her.

"No, it's ok, Danny," she said.

"Lindsay," he scolded, "Give her to me."

"No," she replied stubbornly. "She's my baby."

"She's my baby, too," he reminded her. He lifted Sophia out of her arms. "Come on, Fee," he said to the baby, "Let's go get a clean diaper."

Lindsay refused to look her father in the eye. "Just say what you want to say and get out of here," she demanded.

"Lindsay…. I'm sorry." He said lamely.

"For what?" she snapped.

"For everything."

"Everything doesn't quite cover sixteen years of your father hating you."

"I never hated you, Lindsay. You're my daughter and I love you."

"You sure do have a funny way of showing it, Dad."

Bill didn't say anything.

"You know what I want to know?" Lindsay asked, her voice cracking slightly, "Why wasn't I ever good enough for you? Why'd you have to go and marry LeeAnne and have Becky and forget all about me?" a tear slid down her face.

"Lindsay, it's not like that," Bill insisted, "It's not like that at all."

"Then explain it to me, Dad, because I just don't understand."

"You – you reminded me of your mother too much. And it hurt."

Lindsay's lip trembled. "You ignored me for half of my life because my mother died? Why didn't you just kill me along with her! Then you wouldn't have had to remember us at all! You could just start your new happy little family with LeeAnne and everything would be great!"

"I know it's terrible of me, Lindsay - "

Lindsay cut him off. "It's despicable, Dad. Get out." She stood up and pointed to the doorway. "I don't want to see you near me or Danny or my child, do you hear me?"

"Lindsay," he pleaded.

She was beyond angry. Beyond giving in to begging. "OUT!" she screeched, tears streaming down her face, "I don't want to see you ever again! Go home to Montana where you belong! Go home to Becky!"

Bill laid a manila envelope on the table next to the door on the way out. "The phone number to my hotel is in there, if you change your mind." He said sadly and left.

"I won't," she said to the closed door.

Danny came out of the nursery, a now very wide-awake Sophia in his arms. "Well, that went smoothly," he said brightly.

"Just don't," she said, grabbing the manila envelope and the baby and brushing past him. "You need to leave for work," she said before closing the door to the bedroom.

Once in her bedroom Lindsay flopped onto the bed and held Sophia close as she cried. She heard Danny scurrying around outside, getting ready for work. She heard him approach the bedroom. "I love you, Montana," he said without opening the door. He waited to see if she'd respond. When she didn't, he retreated and left the apartment.

It wasn't until an hour later when she was calmer that she even opened the envelope. The first thing she pulled out was her father's business card, the name and number to a hotel scrawled on the back. Sophia had fallen back to sleep in Lindsay's arms, so she transferred the baby to her own crib before dumping the rest of the contents onto the unmade bed. Tears filled her eyes when she saw what the envelope contained. Well over a dozen pictures of Lindsay and her mother spilled all over her mattress. Pictures she hadn't seen since she was a child, some that she'd never seen before in her life. All of the pictures warmed Lindsay's heart, but there was one in particular that softened her feelings towards her father. It was a candid picture of the three of them that had been taken when Lindsay was around five. In the picture, they were playing the "One, Two, Three, Swing Game," a game Lindsay had loved as a child. She stood in-between her parents, holding out her hands on either side. They grabbed her hands, said 'one, two, thee, swing' and then would swing her into the air. Lindsay was mid air when her grandfather had taken that picture. Her parents were both looking in at her grinning like mad.

Before Lindsay could stop herself, she reached over and grabbed the phone. She dialed a number. "Daddy?" she wailed, "I'm sorry!"

The first thing that Danny heard when he entered the apartment after a long, hard shift was booming male laughter. He put his keys down on the table, very confused and called out, "Lindsay?"

His wife came scurrying to him. She threw her arms around her husband and kissed him more deeply and passionately than she had since before Sophia was born. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. "Not that I'm complaining, Linds, but what was that for?"

"For being the best husband ever. And just because I love you and I missed you like crazy today and because I'm sorry about this morning."

"It's ok," he said, still a little startled by her change in mood since that morning.

Lindsay grabbed his hand. "Come look!" she urged. Quietly they tip-toed into the living room where Bill sat on the couch entertaining his granddaughter.

"What sparked this change in heart?" Danny asked.

"I'll show you later," Lindsay said, grinning.

"Ok." He kissed her shortly on the lips and crossed the room. "Hey, Mr. Monroe."

"Please, call me Bill," he insisted.

"Sure thing, Bill. Mind if I steal Sophie for a minute?"

"No problem." Bill handed Sophia to her father.

"Hey, Fee," Danny greeted, kissing her on the forehead. "I missed you today, sweetheart."

Bill got up and joined his daughter in the doorway to the room, where tears misted her eyes. "I can never get over it," she said quietly.

"Get over what?"

"What a great dad he is," Lindsay told him, "If you had known him a few years ago, you'd shoot me for even mentioning his name."

Bill smiled, "Well, he's perfect for you now. He loves you and adores his baby girl. That's pretty obvious."

"She's going to have him wrapped around her finger," Lindsay joked.

"That's the way it was with you and me when you were a little girl," Bill told her.

"Really? I don't really remember."

"Oh yes, you were the biggest Daddy's Girl. I couldn't say no to you if my life depended on it."

Lindsay smiled sadly. "And then Mom died."

"And then your mom died," Bill repeated forlornly.

"Sophia's middle name is Elaine, you know." Lindsay informed her father.

"That means a lot, Lindsay,"

"I wanted Mom's memory to stay alive," Lindsay said, choosing her words very carefully. "So I named my daughter after her."

The two stood in silence for several minutes watching Danny and Sophia. "Dad," Lindsay blurted out, not able to stay silent a moment longer, "why did you marry LeeAnne?"

Bill didn't answer. "I thought I loved her," he sighed, "It turns out that I just loved the idea of her. I wanted you to have a mother, so I thought that getting married would be the best solution. By the time I realized that I didn't love her, it was too late. Becky was on the way. Becky's my daughter too, Lindsay, and I love her. I couldn't let her grow up with out a mom."

Lindsay's lip trembled. "Do you love her more than you love me?" she knew it was stupid to ask, but she just couldn't help herself?"

"No, of course not!" Bill took his daughter into his arms, "You will always be my little girl," she told her, kissing the top of her head. "Always."

A/N Yay! Happy-ish ending. Review?

xoxo,

Lia