Tempting Daddy by Ava Sinclair
Chapter Thirteen
Father
The sun comes out around three p.m. and the scenery outside the rectory is breathtaking. It’s still a couple of hours before Carmen has to leave, and I can already tell she’s getting nervous. She’s quiet and picks at the cuff of her sleeve—a little habit I’ve observed she has when she’s anxious about something.
I try to take her mind off of things.
“Fresh snow is so pretty. This is snowman-making snow.”
She shoots me a sad little smile. “I used to help the other kids in my neighborhood make them in their yards.”
“Didn’t you and your parents make your own?”
Carmen sighs. “No. My mother hates the cold and my father just flat-out refused. Said he didn’t go in for nonsense.”
“Get your coat,” I say.
“Why?” She looks up at me from her desk.
“So many questions. Just like a little girl.” I put on my coat and fetch hers from the rack. “Come on, now.”
She walks over, her expression curious. I hold the coat open and she turns so I can help her into it.
“Hat next.” I produce a toboggan someone left in the church lost-and-found. “And a scarf.” I wrap it around her neck. “Do you have gloves?”
“In my pocket,” she says fishing them out.
When they’re on, I open the door to the outside.
“What are we doing?” she asks, but my only answer is a wink. Her reply is a little smile that makes me feel flush with adoration. I walk out into the snow that’s up to the middle of my shins. It’s a good dry snow. I reach down, mounding some into a ball which I begin to roll. It gets bigger and bigger.
“Guess,” I say and look up to see her face filled with delight.
“We’re building a snowman?” she asks, clapping her gloved hands together.
“That’s right. Come on, now! Don’t just stand there, young lady!”
She rushes over and begins to mound the snow into another ball. Once it’s tightly packed, we lift it onto the base.
Our snowman is going to be big and fat.
“This is so much fun!” she says. Her pretty face is rosy with cold, the anxiety replaced by joy. “I need to think of a name for him.”
“A name?”
“Yeah,” she says. “My friends named their snowmen.”
“Well, you can name this one when we’re finished,” I say.
I send her to the rectory to fetch a carrot for the nose. She returns with a carrot and some charred bits of wood from the fireplace. I watch as she gives the snowman a face.
“He needs arms.” I fetch some sticks.
When we’re finished, the snowman stands facing us.
“He looks cold,” Carmen says. She touches the scarf at my neck. “May I?”
“Of course.”
She wraps the scarf around the snowman’s neck.
“So, what’s his name, Carmen?”
“Hmm. Let me think. Frosty?”
“You can do better than that.”
She grins. “How about Irving? After Irving Berlin. He wrote White Christmas.”
“Irving. I like it.”
She looks up at me. Her breath is coming out as warm steam.
“Thank you,” she says.
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I do. I know we can’t… we can’t do what we did last night again. But this is special, too. Sometimes my life feels like a puzzle that could be a happy picture if only there weren’t so many missing pieces. It’s like you just gave me one of those pieces. I feel like I just built a snowman with a loving daddy.”
“I’m happy to fill in as many pieces as I can.” I mean what I say, but I don’t say what else is on my mind. I want to be her Daddy. I want to give her all the love and protection her inner little girl needs. But I want to give her more. I also want to fill the needs of the woman she’s become. Both parts of her have needs. Am I doing a disservice to focus on just one? Will it hold her back?
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go back inside and have some hot chocolate. Your father will be here soon.”
“I don’t want to leave,” she says, her voice quavering. “I want to stay here with you.”
I nod, feeling a lump in my throat. I wish I could tell her she could, but I can’t. The storm gave us an excuse, but with the roads clear, she has no choice but to go home.
“We’ll see each other tomorrow,” I say, but it feels empty.
Letting her leave feels like letting her down.
