One or Two Things I Know for Sure
Chapter 16 CareBear
"Was I a mistake?" the girl asks, sitting on her bed Indian-style in a white shirt and pink care-bear pajama pants. Her father stops by the door and taps his cane on the hardwood floor, thinking over the question in his mind, because this isn't sure how to answer it.
"You weren't planned, it doesn't mean you weren't wanted" he finally says, turning around to look at his little girl, who isn't his little girl anymore. She just turned twelve and thinks the world belongs to her already.
His first little girl is growing up.
"Did you love me? From the beginning?" she asks, sitting with her legs hanging from the side of her bed. He walks over and sits next to her, her head on his shoulder. Her hair is so long now, straight and to her waist, in the color of burned sugar.
"There are one or two things I know for sure in life" he tells her, and she looks up at him, with the same eyes as his.
"One is that I am a very handsome genius diagnostician" he says with the straightest face he can, the one he's been practicing for years for comments like this. His daughter rolls her eyes and tries to hold the smile back, but he catches the corners of her mouth turning up and smiles with her.
He puts an arm around her shoulder, and like this she still feels so tiny to him. Like she is still that squirming thing they handed to him at the hospital, when she was all pink and dangerously loud crying.
"And the second is that you, your sisters and your brother, are just about the people I love most in this world" he confesses and she smiles up at him while running the words over in her head.
It takes her a second before she pulls a little away from him and asks "Who are the other people, huh?"
She arches a brow and crosses her arms as if it makes her look scary, he wants to tell her that her mother is the only one who can pull it off.
Instead he smiles and pulls her closer to him again, "Well your mom, my mom, and Angelina Jolie of course"
Annabel can't help but to burst out laughing, her father holds her to him and she just laughs. A full-bodied laugh while shaking her head and thinking that her father really is that crazy.
"Thanks Dad" she says when her laugh comes down to a giggle, and he kisses her forehead.
"Now go to sleep" he says in a pretend strict voice, pushing himself up as she gets under the covers.
"I love you Daddy" she says when he's at his door and he stops again.
"I love you too Anny-Bel" he whispers as he closes the door.
He hears her call him a crazy old man before her door completely closes, and smiles.
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Sorry took so long. I have the next chapter all ready to go; it all depends on how many reviews I get!!
GabbyAbby
