Posted on Monday, 21 August 2006

“Daddy! Will you dance with me?”

William removed his reading glasses and looked up from his files. He watched his young daughter skirt around the table to rush to his side, tugging his arm when she got there.

“Daddy can’t right now, sweetie. Daddy’s trying to work.”

It seemed to Annie that her father had been working all weekend long. She was desperate for his attention now. “Please? Please, Daddy? I want to dance!”

Unable to resist the tousled curls falling out of the plaits her mother had so carefully tied with a ribbon only that morning, nor the winning smile that so closely resembled her mother’s, William bent over and tugged on a forelock. “But there’s no music, Annie. What will we dance to?”

“We don’t need music, Daddy.”

“We don’t?”

His daughter shook her head, sending her plaits one more step towards their demise. “Nope. Mommy says when we’re happy there’s always music in our hearts.”

“Mommy’s right.” She almost always was. “And are you happy right now?”

Squirming now, eager to be flying across her father’s office floor in his arms, she tugged on her father’s hand again. “I will be, if you dance with me.”

William threw back his head and laughed. Trust his impish daughter to come up with such a coy answer. “All right, all right,” he said, giving in at last. Not that there’d been ever any question that he would deny his young daughter.

He pushed back from his chair and formally held out his hand. Like a princess, his daughter primly took his hand and allowed her father to escort her to the center of the parquet floors. When he tried to take her small hands in his to begin their dance, she shook her head and pushed her father away.

“What’s the matter, Annie? I thought you wanted to dance.”

“Daddy,” she said reproachfully, “you’re supposed to bow.”

“Of course. How remiss of me,” and saying so, he bowed deeply and begged to take her hand again.

This time, she allowed her father to take her hand and whirl her around the room as she stood on the toes of his shoes. They were laughing breathlessly, with Annie urging her father to dance faster and faster, when Elizabeth found them half an hour later. Leaning against the doorway, she smiled indulgently. She didn’t think her heart would ever stop skipping a beat whenever she saw her husband and daughter thus.

As her father twirled her one more time, Annie caught sight of her mother standing off to the side. She forced her father to slow. “I want Mommy to dance with us!”

“You do?”

She nodded her head. “Mommy, come dance with us!” she commanded.

Laughing, Elizabeth let herself be dragged into the dance. With his wife’s head snuggled upon his shoulder and his daughter squeezed in between, hugging his knees, William didn’t think his life could be any more complete. He closed his eyes in happiness.

He opened his eyes and looked down again, frowning when he saw emptiness in between. Elizabeth followed his gaze and hugged her husband in sympathy and understanding. She then wrapped her arms firmly around his waist to close the gap between them, and tucked her head against his shoulder. Whispering softly up to him, she tried to reassure, “She’s not really gone, you know.”

William looked past his wife’s head, to his daughter similarly ensconced in her new husband’s arms, and sighed. “Yes she is. She’s no longer my little girl.”

Elizabeth grinned at the petulance in her husband’s voice, but took care to hide it from him by turning into his chest. He’d been mourning their daughter’s loss ever since she announced her engagement. “Annie may be a married woman now, but she’ll always be her Daddy’s little girl.”

Their daughter, who happened to be dancing near, overheard her mother’s words. Looking up first at her new husband, who nodded in understanding, she then motioned at her mother to switch places with her. Elizabeth was glad to relinquish her spot; happy to spend some time with a son-in-law she’d come to love as one of her own.

“Will you dance with me, Daddy?” Annie asked her father, as mother and daughter traded places and he took his daughter into his arms.

“I’ll always dance with you, Annie.” Reaching in between them, he tucked a loosened curl behind her ear.

There was appreciation deep within as she recognized that she’d always have a father she could rely upon. She reached for her father’s hand before he could put it away and brought it close to her heart instead. “She’s right you know,” Annie told him, as she allowed her father to lead her around the perimeter of the dance floor. “I’ll always be your little girl.”

“Are you happy?”

With silent but joyous tears in her eyes, she answered. “There’s music in my heart.”

William nodded. It was all a father needed to hear.

Across the room, Elizabeth observed the pair and smiled indulgently. Her heart skipped one more time.

The End