It took a while for her to exhaust her patience. After all, she couldn't blame him, right? She'd lied to him and manipulated his feelings, even if she hadn't meant to hurt him. And here she was, half asleep on the swings, dejectedly swinging her legs back and forth, back and forth, back…
No. She snapped her eyes open and shook herself. She couldn't sleep! Anubis would come soon. She pulled her cell out of her pocket and checked the time. It was nearly ten-thirty.
"Hi, sweetie." Julius Kane stepped out of the shadows behind the slide. Sadie jumped and instinctively pulled out her wand. But wait—only two people in the world would call her "sweetie:" her father and the elderly lady who lived next door. She assumed the former and lowered the wand.
"Hi," she replied, and kicked a pebble, propelling it ten yards away. She looked down at the blacktop. "Anubis didn't come."
"Yeah, about that—"
"It's okay, you don't have to console me."
"No, I mean—"
"Look, Dad," she said, cutting him off and looking him straight in the eyes. "It was my fault, alright? I did something terrible to him and I didn't even realize it. I…I don't know what to do." At that moment, Julius made an important decision. He was, in fact, not going to help mend their relationship by informing Sadie that Anubis was sick. Instead, he would give his beloved daughter a few unhelpful, ambiguous pieces of advice on the philosophy of life.
"You'll figure it out," he said, nodding. "The course of true love never was smooth." Sadie didn't even blush at the mention of 'true love.' Instead she said,
"Yeah. Look what happened to Romeo and Juliet."
"The quote was from A Midsummer Night's Dream, you dunce," he told her smoothly, and disappeared into the shadows once again.
The father and daughter had not taken a single step towards each other the entire time. Where the family love had gone, no one will ever know.