20. Paternal Love
Exhausted was an understatement for how Seth was feeling. Hunched over his desk, he rested his head in his hands. Things were finally starting to settle back down to normal, his heart clenched at the thought. Normal. Was it wrong of him to think things could go back to normal after a death rocked his family like it did? Life moved on, it was a fact, but that didn’t make it any easier. He was doing his best not to fixate on recent events, but it was difficult. Even before, with just him and Leanne in the house, it was easy to spot the glaring gaps of how there should be at least a third person. That just lead to realization of the fact the reason there wasn't laid solely on his shoulders. And all he could think about was how his brother would now know exactly how this felt, except he did nothing wrong. He didn’t deserve such a fate as being a single father.
“Daddy?” A tug on his robes to accompanied the tiny voice and he looked up to find his daughter looking up at him with a look he couldn’t quite decipher. She had pulled on one of the fancy dresses he had gotten for her a while back, not too surprising as she did love to play dress up. This girl was still his child and the fact that she had woken from her nap, changed, and Seth hadn’t heard a thing until now, well that was concerning.
“Hey Princess.” Seth said pulling his daughter into his lap pressing the back of his hand to her forehead. It had been a week and a half since her fever broke, but he hadn’t quite lost the habit of checking when he could. Leanne being that sick, so close after Heidi had passed had been the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced. He had sugar coated it for his brother, unable to bring himself to tell Henry his niece was sick, to cause him to return to such a state of worry. It was too soon. Seth had set a deadline for himself, if Leanne wasn’t better by then, he would tell his brother.
Her fever dropped two days after that date. And Seth didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty for ignoring his own deadline.
Leanne wrinkled her nose and pushed his hand away from her face. Seth’s lips quirked up slightly at the gesture. Definitely feeling better, as she was quite apt at expressing her annoyance at him for constantly checking. ‘Stop touching my face!’ was what she had demanded as put her down for her nap. Wriggling out of his his lap she ran to the door of his office, looked down the hall then back to him. When he didn’t immediately get up to follow, she ran back and grabbed his hand, tugging with more strength than Seth felt an almost five year old should have. “Come with me!” Oh, that was never good.
Seth pulled himself up out of his chair and let his daughter lead him from the room, trying his best to suppress his dread. Who knew how long she had been up, or what she had gotten up to while he was in his office wallowing. Not wallowing, working. He didn’t have the time or the energy to deal with a catastrophic mess. At the time he thought he was doing the right thing, sending his nanny on an extended vacation for the off season. He didn’t have long practices, and while W.Q.W. took up a bit of time, it wasn’t so much that he needed the constant presence of Mary Beth. Seth felt it would be best he took what the opportunities he had to spend as much time home with Leanne as he could.
But then the virus happened. And things with Michal, then Leanne. What was suppose to be a fun off season turned into Seth burying himself in what work he could find, just so he wouldn’t focus on how tragically sad he felt. All the time.
They past the linen closet first, door open sheets and towels within the toddler’s reach askew. Then the kitchen. A disaster. Drawers pulled out, a chair pulled over so Leanne, he assumed, could climb onto the counter and reach the cupboards and sink for who knew what. This would take him hours to clean. Finally Leanne let go of his hand and skipped ahead into the living room. “Ta da!” she exclaimed holding her hands up and looking very proud of herself.
Seth froze, taking in the sight before him. A sheet had been pulled over the coffee table as a makeshift table cloth, and it was set like it had been many times before for tea parties. Messily made sandwiches on the plates, water in the glasses. Flowers pulled from the garden sitting in the plastic vase he kept in her room. “I made us lunch!” Leanne declared sitting on a pillow and patting the one next hers.
He blinked a few times before ambling into the room and settling down next to his child. Just staring in awe at everything before him. He couldn’t even be mad for the extraordinary mess that was made in the other room, all the effort she had put into this. “I would have made us lunch, baby. You didn’t have to do this.” Had he been so out of it that Leanne felt it necessary to take on the chore herself?
“But--- but I wanted to,” She rebutted, deflating quite a bit. “I am always happy when you make lunch and I wanted to make you happy.”
Seth blinked again rolling his eyes up to the ceiling willing the tears to stop welling in his eyes. His mother constantly warned him that he didn’t give Leanne nearly enough credit. That small children knew more about what was going on around them than most people expected. After a few moments of silence passed, he felt a small hand rest on his cheek, just like he had done to her so many time in the past few weeks. She even repeated his words back to him. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling fine, baby.” Seth said taking her hand into his and kissing her knuckles. “Thank you for making lunch. This is the best part of my day.”
“You are welcome!” Leanne chirped politely as the grin returned to Leanne’s face and he couldn’t help but smile back. It was the first genuine smile to grace his lips in almost a month. It was moments like this that made happiness seem like such a simple thing to achieve. He leaned over and kissed her on the top of her head, before taking a bite of the sandwich, that thankfully wasn’t terrible. The two of them, he decided, made quite the little duo and if he had more days like these to look forward two, he’d turn out to be quite a happy man. Out of everything that had been plaguing his thoughts recently, this was the one he was going to do his best to focus on.
![[info]](https://www.scribbld.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
awesomecakes) wrote,
