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Today, we were talking to Emmie about the fact that I was her father.
I’d never been this nervous in my life. Of all the big things I’d done, none of them had been this scary.
Danna had told me that Emmie loved me, and that she would love to have me as a father, but that didn’t change my fear. I’d been abandoned once before, and even though logically I could tell myself it wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough… that thought had stuck for years and years.
It was tough to just shrug it off and say that this wasn’t the case now. A small voice at the back of my mind kept saying,but what if it is the case, what if she doesn’t want you?
The front door opened, and Danna and Emmie returned. Danna had taken her out to the park this morning to play with a few shifter kids.
Since she’d told me that she wanted to stay, I’d made sure that the pack knew about Danna and Emmie, and we were already working on making a space for her in one of the schools that focused on shifter kids and helping them. Emmie needed as much help as she could get with how powerful she was, and she needed to mingle with the others so that she grew up in a balanced life.
While they’d been gone—it had been arranged that way specifically—I’d gotten a couple of things ready for her.
“Come on, I think he’s in here,” I heard Danna say before they both walked into the kitchen.
“There you are,” I said with a smile and kneeled.
Emmie came straight to me for a hug. She did that a lot these days.
The more I got to know her, the more she opened up to me. At first, she was very quiet and shy, but we were close now.
What if that’s because she doesn’t know I’m her father? What if that changes once she finds out I am, and she wants nothing to do with me?
“Are we going to bake something?” Emmie asked.
“No, I can’t bake,” I said.
Emmie frowned and glanced at Danna. They baked together all the time, and Emmie was getting pretty good at it.
“I have a surprise for you.”
“What is it?” Emmie asked.
“Come with me, and I’ll show you,” I said.
She followed me up the stairs and to her bedroom door, which was shut.
“You can go on in,” I said, gesturing toward the door.
Emmie opened her door and walked in.
“Wow!” she exclaimed. “Mommy, come look!”
Danna followed her in, eyes sparkling, and she squeezed my hand in passing.
“Oh, it looks incredible!” Danna cried out a moment later.
I followed them in, grinning.
I’d had a decorator come in and change the guest bedroom Emmie had been using into a room of her own. All her toys had already been here for a while, her clothes were in the closet, but now she had fairies and unicorns on a pink comforter, pink and purple pillows, and I’d gotten an artist to paint a mural of clouds and a rainbow on the one wall. The other walls were gradient shades of purple and pink.
“It’s so cool,” Emmie said. “And the bed! And the chair! And the shelf!” I’d brought in a bookshelf with books fit for a six-year-old, and a cozy armchair that glittered around the bottom so that she could sit and read her books. She had a desk with a chair for later, when she got homework from the school she would start in the fall.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“I do!” Emmie gushed and flew to me, throwing her arms around my legs in a hug.
I laughed.
