When had his own face ever been this fascinating? Their reflections gazed back at them out of the mirror, as Luke and Murron stared into it, trying to trace every single similarity in their countenances. Murron reached out and followed the lines around his mouth with her finger, watching the reflected child doing the same – when he smiled into her hands, she touched the dimples on his cheeks and then those on her own, twins. He lifted up the hem of his shirt and showed her the birthmark on his ribcage, looking at her questioningly – she nodded and pointed towards her own ribs, where the same vaguely star-shaped mark bloomed. Their hands weren't the same, though – the shape of her fingers, she must have gotten from Ellie, just like the pale blonde hair and the nose (thank God for that, he thought).
It was as if they could never get enough of looking into each other's faces – had they been lovers, they could not have studied each other more intently. The sun had set by the time anyone spoke.
"Luke?"
"Yes, baby?"
"Are you going to stay and be my daddy?"
"If you want me to."
"Yes please." He watched her think, hard. "Does that mean you're going to be with mommy? Like Dee and Patch?"
"I think that's up to your mommy to decide."
"Oh." She looked around. "Where is mommy anyways?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. Should we look for her?"
"Let's."
Looking back on it a few weeks later, Ellie realized that things could have gone worse. The tribe could have refused to accept him. Murron could have hated her new dad. Luke could have been an awful father. Or he could have been too good at it. He could have tried to get back with her.
But none of that had happened. Instead, Luke found himself accepted relatively easily by the rest of Ellie's housemates, and worshipped by his daughter. They were a funny duo: Murron hanging off him nearly all the time, and him, always slightly bewildered, trying to be the best father he could be, but more often than not, at a complete loss for what to do – after all, he lacked the years of experience that Ellie had had at being a parent. The time that Ellie had spent learning how to be a mother, he had spent roaming up and down the country, working here and there, trying to fit in somewhere, but always ultimately being blown somewhere else by the wind.
All that seemed to exist for him now was Murron – he willingly helped Darryl and Sammy with the farm work, but it was she who absorbed his every free minute, trying to make up for all the lost time. It was a good thing that there was plenty of work for Luke to do around the farm every day, or Ellie would never have had any time to spend with her daughter, except for the nights when the little girl crept into her mother's bed and curled up next to her.
It was those nights that reconciled Ellie to having Luke around – those nights when she'd stay awake and watch her daughter sleep, knowing that she never crept into Luke's bed like that. Yes, Murron was absolutely enthralled with the idea of having a father at last, and the object of her affections could have been a lot worse, but at the end of the day, it was still her mother she turned to when she felt bewildered by this turn in her life.
There were, of course, other problems that weren't as easily tucked away as Ellie tucked her daughter into bed. Luke's return had brought back all her memories of what had happened with Jack, and how she had done him wrong – whenever she looked at Luke and Murron, she remembered Jack watching Murron and knowing he was seeing his rival's features in her face. Ellie had not yet managed to untangle that snarl of feelings – the guilt over hurting Jack, her first love, and her feelings for Luke, this other man whom she had also loved, and who had fathered her child. Sometimes she wondered how she had ever managed to be with Luke in the first place – not because he was an unpleasant companion, but because the simple fact of his presence nearly overwhelmed her with guilt over what had happened with Jack. At the same time, the time he spent with Murron brought out the best in him – watching them together, Ellie saw the Luke that she had fallen in love with eight years ago, not the aimless drifter he had become over the years. But as happy as she was for her daughter to have a loving father, it changed nothing about the fact that she could not separate Luke from Jack – to think of one was to think of the other, and that put an end to any kind of romantic feelings she might otherwise have developed for Luke.
Of course, Luke didn't really seem to want any kind of romance anyways. He was so wrapped up in Murron that he never spoke of anything but his daughter to Ellie – which, come to think about it, bothered her as well. Sometimes she caught herself gazing at him half-longingly, wondering why he wasn't interested in her any more – had she changed so much, was she so old? - only to call herself hard names a minute later for even thinking that. She didn't want to want him, but it bothered her that he didn't seem to want her either. No matter which way she turned it, it was a mess – loving him was impossible, but only being friends while sharing her child was just as impossible.
Nothing much had changed with Darryl, either – although Lottie was doing her best to spend more time with him, there was a sullen and standoffish look that never left his face these days, and intensified when he looked at Luke. Ellie couldn't really blame him for that, although she wished there was something she could do – but she knew from experience that the only thing that could really help Darryl was to fall in love with someone else, and he didn't seem to be ready for that just yet. Sometimes she cursed him for only speaking up when Luke entered the picture – wouldn't it have been so much easier if he'd spoken earlier? Couldn't she have learned to love him, if he hadn't kept silent until he actually felt threatened? Maybe he hadn't realized exactly how he felt about her as long as there was nobody else who might want her love.
Ellie sighed and made an effort to focus on the real world instead of her thoughts. All this thinking was for nothing anyways – she had been turning all those thoughts over and over in her head for weeks, and had gotten nowhere, except confused. She couldn't fathom Luke, or Darryl, or even herself. So instead, she concentrated on the sight of Murron, sprawled out on the lawn pursuing her new favorite pastime: looking at Luke. Whenever they weren't doing anything in particular – reading, walking, talking – she'd stop and gaze at him as if he were a precious stone or a rare painting. His face seemed to hold endless fascination to her, and she spent so much time just studying his features, she might be learning him by heart. When Ellie had asked her about it, Murron had explained that she didn't need to learn him by heart – his face was in her heart, already, but really, she was trying to find out her own face in his.
"I know where I am in your face, mommy. I know your nose is my nose and your hair is my hair. But I don't know where I am in daddy's face. And I don't know which parts belong to me alone. So I'm learning them now."
In a strange sort of way, it made sense to Ellie. Only now that Murron had both her parents for comparison, she could find out what bits of her came from her mother and father, and what bits were just herself. Perhaps, Ellie reflected, my daughter has never really known who she is, until now that she can really see who she came from.
Ellie was mistaken on one account: Luke was not indifferent to her. In fact, she occupied his thoughts almost as much as the little girl who had taken up residence in his heart without warning. But the fact was that even though Ellie had granted him some sort of forgiveness, he had not forgiven himself – neither for leaving her, nor for having missed the first seven years of his daughter's life. He knew that Murron didn't think that way – that she was too delighted to have a father to think or even care about the time when she hadn't had one – but he cared.
He had thought that once he saw Ellie again – once he got the chance to really apologize – he would feel all right. That the guilt of having hurt her would somehow lift off him if he could only be sure that she was all right, that she had moved on, that she bore no grudge.
Of course, he hadn't expected Murron. That had changed everything and added to his load just when he thought he had slipped it off his shoulders for good. He could never take those seven years back.
But sometimes, late at night, when he thought he could almost feel Ellie and Murron three doors down, he realized that even if there had been no daughter waiting for him here, he would never have been completely free. The first heartbreak lasts forever – no matter whether it's your heart that gets broken or if it's you who's doing the breaking. Breaking someone else's heart is its own kind of pain, and sooner or later, we all come to regret the pain we have caused, of that, Luke was sure.
In light of all this emotional garbage (and from the way she hardly talked to him, he was certain that Ellie was on her own guilt-trip about Jack), he decided it was best to keep his distance and occupy his time with Murron instead – the only person who didn't have any reproaches or regrets in this.
And of course, there was work to occupy him – from the number of chores Dee, Patch and Sammy found for him to do, he wondered how they had managed to keep the farm running before he was there. Feeding the chicken, checking up on the cows and sheep in the pasture, mucking out stables, mending fences, haymaking, fruit-picking, potato-peeling, there was never any need to be bored.