Page 175 of Daddy’s Fortitude

“Is that okay?” she said hastily.

“Is what okay?” he said. “You insulting me about the way I talk or how old I am?”

“Um, no. Me calling you Daddy. Did it feel good to you?”

He leaned forward and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck. “It felt better than good. It felt right.”

She sent him a small smile. “It felt right to me too.”

He ate his own food while she sat there wriggling around on her seat.

“I could do the dishes while you finish eating,” she offered.

“No,” he told her.

“Why not? I’m actually really good at dishes.”

“You’re just out of the hospital. You need to rest and relax. Besides, Little girls don’t do the dishes.”

“They don’t?” And was she a Little girl right now? She had just called him Daddy, and she was feeling kind of playful, but she wasn’t entirely sure at the same time.

“How old is your Little?” he asked her.

She stared at him for a long moment. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Have you thought about what you might like to do? What you would want to play with?”

Sheesh, he was coming out with all the hard questions, wasn’t he?

“I don’t know. I guess I’m not sure. I know that I like Owly McOwlFace. I like sleeping with him. Sometimes, I suck my thumb, and sometimes I like to hide. Maybe I’d like playing hide-and-seek. There’s not really much room to play hide-and-seek in here, though, is there?”

As she spoke, her enthusiasm grew. She never thought that she’d have a chance to explore being Little. Maybe that’s why she’d always told herself that she wasn’t sure she was a Little, because she’d figured she wouldn’t have a chance to explore it.

Denial had been easier.

However, now she had that chance, she should jump on it. If only she knew what she really liked.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why are you sorry?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I feel difficult. I don’t know what I like or how old I’d be or what I’d want to do. I mean, I like Garfield.”

She’d been wearing them the night at the fire.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “The hospital bagged them up. I gave them to Kirsten to wash. She promised to take good care of them for you.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” She put her hand on her chest. “How easy will it be to explore things here, though?”

He shrugged. “We can give it a shot. We can look at some things online. When you’re reading your stories, does anything appeal to you more than something else, a certain age, a certain toy, an activity?”

“Well, not too young. I’m not a baby, but maybe around three or four. I kind of like the idea of sitting and coloring, and I also like the idea of hide-and-seek. Maybe pretending to make things out of dough and clay. Oh, yeah, I really like that idea.”

“All right. That gives us a start, doesn’t it? We can go online and order some stuff. We can’t get it delivered up here, but I can always send Webb down to pick it up. Now, I’ll clean up the kitchen, and then we’ll talk about some rules.”

He wouldn’t let her help clean up, of course, so she ended up wandering out into the living room. She noticed the old chest sitting under the window. She hadn’t had a look in it. She didn’t want to nosy around too much. But the chest was calling to her. It had images etched into the wood. One was of a teddy bear, another one of a stroller, and she wondered if it had been a baby’s chest at one stage. Maybe it had held things that had belonged to Kirsten’s father.

Opening it up, she looked at the old-fashioned toys and blankets inside. She pulled each one out, holding it up. There were some wooden toys, a car, and a truck. There were some wooden blocks and a doll dressed in old-fashioned clothes. Five children’s books. And a gorgeous old quilt.