Marcus saluted. “Yes, sir.”
“He’ll be good. I’ll remind him,” Cecelia stated.
“Good for you, young lady,” the surgeon replied.
“I’m going home soon. Whoopee!” Marcus shouted.
“Whoopee!” Cecelia seconded.
A nurse stuck her head in the door. When she saw who was in the room, she smiled and left.
“Cece, it’s almost time to set the table. Could you please come downstairs?”
Cecelia walked into the kitchen, Skipper at her heels, and began putting knives and forks on either side of the plates while her mother spooned the mashed potatoes into a bowl.
“When you’re done, you have a letter here. It came today.”
“For me?”
“For you.”
Her mother drizzled the raisin sauce over the mashed potatoes. The chicken was almost ready. “Come eat. You can look at your letter when we’re done eating.”
After dinner, Cecelia opened the business size envelope, began reading it to herself and looked up. “It’s from Marcus. I’ll read it to you.”She began.
Dear Cecelia:
I have loved your mother from the very first day we met. I should have told you that—when you first asked me. Frankly, I was so surprised at the question that I wasn’t thinking clearly. That is no excuse, but I am telling you now because I know you don’t want her to cry or to be hurt anymore. I don’t, either.
Her mother sat down at the table. “Is that all he wrote?”
“No. There’s more.”
Do you know one of the most important reasons I love your mother? It’s you. When a mom raises a daughter as smart and as strong and as wonderful as you, she has done something beautiful, something more valuable than anything else she could do.
Cecelia looked up from the letter in time to see her mother reach for a tissue. “Are you sad, Mom?”
“No. I’ve got something in my eye.”
Cecelia nodded. “He said I was smart and strong and wonderful. That’s nice. I’ll have to tell Sam what he said about me.”She was silent for a moment. “There’s more.”
I want to be a father to you, Cecelia. I know you haven’t had a dad in your life for a long time. I would like to be that person—someone you can come to with your questions, like you did that day when we went camping and I showed you how to skip rocks on the water. Someone to walk you down the aisle when you marry the man you fall in love with after you graduate from college—and he had better be worthy of you or I will make him go away!
“Mom, he wants to be my dad! Can he do that?”
Her mother was weeping. “Yes,” she sniffed. “He can do that.”
“He says the man I fall in love with has to be worthy—what’s that mean?”
“It means Marcus will make sure he is a good person.”
“If he isn’t worthy, he’ll make him go away. That’s what Sam’s dad did with Brittany’s old boyfriend. I saw him. He smoked cigarettes behind the garage and smelled stinky when he said hi to us. Sam and I decided he was a loser before her dad figured it out. We were glad he wouldn’t let Brittany go out with him anymore.”
Her mother nodded and reached for another tissue.
“This is a long letter.” Cecelia read the last section to herself, frowned for a moment then bit her lip. “But I can’t read this last part to you. I have to think about this for a while before I write him back.”
“Do you want to do that now or later?”
“Now. I need to do this in my room. I need privacy.”She took the letter to her room and read the last part again, her arm around Skipper, who lay beside her on the bed.
But I can’t be a father to you if you won’t let me love your mother. I do love her and I want to marry her, but I can’t ask her if you don’t approve.
Will you please write me back and tell me if you approve?
With much love in my heart for both of you,
Marcus
Cecelia sat on the bed and re-read the letter. She patted Skipper before telling him to get down off the bed and pointing to his crate. Then she reached for the stationery box her grandmother had given her at Christmas. She walked around the room, looked at some of the pictures she had drawn, especially the one when she and her mom and Marcus had gone camping. She studied what he had written and sighed. Then she sat down at her little table, the one Marcus had brought for her to use after she came home from the hospital, and wrote her answer, struggling with some of the words she had to say. When she was done, she folded her letter and placed it in the envelope. She took it downstairs.
“What’s Marcus’s address—where he lives? I can’t remember. You know, where he has the porch swing.” She added the address her mother dictated.“I answered his letter. Can we mail this tomorrow on the way to school?”