Free Another Chance to Love You by Robin Lee Hatcher

favor, Heather. Just listen to your mom and me for a second, will you?”
    She nodded.
    “Remember we told you we knew each other when we were in college? Well, we actually were really good friends.We spent lots of time together, your mom and me. In fact, there was a time we talked about getting married. Only…only it didn’t work out.”
    Heather’s gray eyes watched him without blinking.
    Daniel felt beads of perspiration forming on his forehead. He should have thought this through better. How did you explain something like this to a ten-year-old? Did she understand the facts of life, all about the birds and bees and so forth? Just how much was enough?
    “Honey?” Monica said, drawing her daughter’s gaze. Her voice was once again gentle, controlled. “You know how sometimes you ask questions, and I tell you you’re too young to understand and that I’ll explain when you’re older? I’ve decided you’re old enough to know something now that I’ve never told you before.”
    “Okay.”
    Monica lifted her eyes toward Daniel. The look was brief, and yet it was long enough for him to wonder how different his life might have been had he married her, stayed in Boise, raised not only Heather but other children, too.
    She looked at Heather once again. “Heather, Daniel is your father.”
    The house seemed deathly quiet. So quiet he could hear the ticking of the sweep-second hand on his watch.
    Slowly Heather turned her head so she could look at him. “You’re my dad?”
    He nodded.
    “Honest?”
    “Honest.”
    “Why haven’t you come to see me before?”
    He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He didn’t know how to answer that question.
    Monica answered for him. “Because I never told him about you.”
    Confusion, hurt, hope. He saw it all in Heather’s eyes as she stared at him. It made him feel overwhelmingly inadequate.
    “So do you wanna see me now that you know?”
    “Yes,” he answered solemnly. “I do want to see you. I hope you’ll spend lots of time with me this summer.”
    She worried her lower lip with her teeth. Her eyes narrowed in thought. Finally she asked, “Can I call you Daddy?”
    The simple question caused a rush of emotion unlike anything he’d experienced before. If he tried for a hundred years, he’d be unable to define it. “Sure. I’d like that. I’d like it a lot.”
    “And are you gonna come to the carnival on Friday with us?”
    He glanced at Monica. She nodded her head.
    “I’ll be there,” he told Heather. “You can count on it.”
    She looked at her mother. “Can I go call Mary and tell her about my dad?”
    “I suppose it would be all right.”
    Quickly Heather was off the sofa and out of the room, disappearing up the stairs. Her bedroom door closed behind her, then silence. Again, Daniel heard the ticking of his watch.
    “That wasn’t so bad,” he said after a lengthy pause.
    “No.”
    He turned toward Monica again. She was frowning. “What’s wrong?”
    “It isn’t going to be that easy, Daniel. We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking it will be.”
    “But she seemed okay with—”
    “She’s a child. It’s going to take time to work things through.”
    He heard what she was telling him. He didn’t know Heather the way she did. He couldn’t possibly understand how the girl was going to react to this or anything else.
    Would he ever know? Or was it already too late?

Chapter Six
    M onica watched her daughter closely over the next few days, but it appeared she’d worried needlessly. Heather seemed delighted to have Daniel for a dad. In fact, if she was perfectly honest, Monica would have to admit she was more than a little jealous at how quickly Heather acclimated herself to having two parents instead of just one.
    Daniel arrived at the Fletcher house every day that week, shortly after the school bus discharged Heather and its other riders at the corner. Instead of sharing her day with her mom, as had been their habit since Heather