Her father was explaining the nickname that Wolf had heard multiple times over the course of the past couple of days, as if it made perfect sense. “But you’ll know exactly what I mean in a few months, I guess. You just start calling them things. And every so often one is bound to stick.”
“The baby is due July fifteenth,” Violet said softly. Wolf tightened his hands around his fork and knife. “So the wedding will be sometime before then.”
“Good,” her dad said.
“That’s exciting,” Alison said.
“You should see some of her baby pictures,” Cain said. “She was cute.”
And that was how he found himself looking at family photo albums. Pictures of little Violet, skinny legged and spinning in those grass fields she told him about, surrounded by bluebonnets.
A window into a childhood that looked a lot happier than any portion of his own.
Before the cares of the world had touched her, too. Before her mother’s abandonment had made her doubt whether or not there was something wrong with her.
He couldn’t help himself. He touched that picture. That sunny smile.
“She was the cutest,” Cain said.
He realized that Alison and Violet had slipped off to the kitchen, and he was just sitting there with Violet’s dad.
“You know,” he said slowly. “Protecting Violet is something I’ve done her entire life. But most especially after her mom left, I made it...the most important thing in the whole world to protect that girl. From as much as I could. The failure that I feel over not being able to protect her from her own parent is something else. It’s painful. And it’s something that I don’t know I’ll ever fully get over. Having to watch her grieve like that. So when I threaten you with bodily harm over hurting my daughter, you have to know it comes from there. From the fact that her happiness, her joy, is the thing I have spent my entire life trying to preserve in the face of some pretty shitty odds.”
Wolf nodded. “I get that.”
“You’ll really get it when you hold that child in your arms. Because you might care aboutmydaughter, I see that you do, but not like I do. That sense of responsibility, that sense of needing to protect? That’s a different kind of love. Because no one else in this world is going to do it for you. It’s onyou. When you are the father, that is something that falls to you and you alone in a very specific way. You have to be hard. You have to be willing to fight battles. You have to be willing to slay armies. But you also have to be soft. You have to figure out how to be there for them, no matter what’s going on. You have to figure it out. That’s the thing. Because you are the one that they lean on.”
Wolf didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. He knew that he could build a house. He knew that he could protect. He didn’t know how to do that other stuff. No one had ever done it for him.
“I know what it’s like to be left,” Wolf said slowly. “My own mother didn’t stick around.”
Cain’s expression shifted. “I see.”
“I feel sorry for Violet. That she has that in common with me. But we do have that in common. She has a great dad, though, from all that I’ve seen and heard. I personally don’t know a hell of a lot about good fathers. Didn’t have one myself. But... I know about bad ones. So maybe that’s a start.”
“Yeah,” Cain said. “It’s a start. But just remember that’s all it is. That’s all anything is. A start. You spend your life trying to get better. Trying to be better every day. To love the people around you better, and in the way they needed at the time. Because that’s the other thing. The way that you love your wife, the way that you love your children, that will change. Because their needs will change. Right now loving Violet means not killing you, for example.”
“Noted. You would really like to kill me.”
“I wouldn’t saylike to,” Cain said. “But I’m not opposed to it.”
Wolf felt like the enormity of the day might crush him. And actually, his future father-in-law’s threats didn’t seem like the heaviest part. They seemed fair enough.
And maybe that was the most overwhelming thing of all. Seeing an inside look at her family. At the way they supported her still, all these years later. It wasn’t as simple as just raising her and spitting her out to the world, which his own parents hadn’t even managed to do. They had a lifelong commitment to her. To each other.
And it was more than just forcing their way through with the sheer strength of their will and the determination to do the right thing. It was something deeper than that.
The way that you love them will change...
He shoved that to the side. And then, Alison and Violet came back into the dining room with trays that held mugs of hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles piled high, and plates of cookies.
“Some specialties we’re doing down at the bakery,” Alison said, smiling. And she handed him a mug of hot chocolate and a cookie.
The almost maternal affection in her face made his heart clench uncomfortably.
“Let’s go sit outside,” Violet said, grabbing her own hot chocolate and taking his hand. He looked back at Cain, who had a strange, resigned look on his face, and then back at Violet, who proceeded to drag him from the room and take them out to the porch swing out front, draping a plaid blanket over their laps.
“It was a good day,” she said, lifting her mug to her lips and looking up at him with an impish smile.