Second chance...sort of

He carried his daughter's body with him.
He was surprised at how easy it was.
He'd underestimated how much he'd isolated himself.

She'd changed so much since he'd seen her last.
He marveled at the difference between the young woman next to him and the picture of a smiling seven-year-old he held in his hand.

He took time to contemplate the changed shape of her face, the way a woman had emerged from it.
He held her hands and smiled at just how much they looked like her

mother's.  He even saw something of his mother in her, and found all the memories and feelings he'd thought were lost to him.
Her smell, her skin, so beautiful and delicate.

As if she were an infant all over again.
He puzzeled over the things she had brought with her.
The pictures, the letters, the little trinkets,and imagined the stories

she would tell him about these things that meant so much to her.
By day he carried her up the mountain to show her the world.
He told her every story he could remember,about himself, about the things

he'd done and the places he'd seen.
He rested her head on his shoulder and imagined her quietly listening with a small smile on her face.

By night he raped her in the large white bathtub,shivering at the coldness of being inside her and chuckling in spite of himself.
"Who's your daddy?" was terribly appropriate but he didn't imagine she

would have laughed.
Afterwards he took down the soap and carefully cleaned her as he had done when she was small, plump and silk-Skinned as a seal.

He sang her lullabies and cradled her in soft towels.
In the mornings he sometimes grieved that he could not make her breakfast.
He would've, but it wouldn't have made much of a difference.

He watched her sleep in the bed he had made for her on the couch and
Forced himself to ignore the smell that couldn't be washed away and the
Colors appearing on her skin.  

It was better this way, he told himself.
He couldn't help but feel that she had given him permission.
The expression on her face, the calm, the acceptance.

Whether real or imagined, it was there.
It was better this way.
This way, he could make the life for them that they'd missed out on.
This way, he would never have to know what she had been about to say.