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Adele took strong, slow strides as she let the sweet summer air guide her home. Dew and chrysanthemums tickled at her nose and clung to her clothing. Her silk ballet flats swung from the fingertips on her left hand, while the moist, black soil massaged her rosy feet. Rounding a corner covered in thickets, her house emerged from a gathering of willow trees. Gretchen was in the front lawn, beating a massive, antique rug with a tennis racket. Her graying locks were slipping free from their bun and falling around her softly wrinkled face, now glossy with exhaustion. Adele skipped the last few stepped up to the front of her property, tossing her shoes onto the steps of the front porch. “Morning, Gretchen!” “Addie, help me with this,” Gretchen said in between gasping breathes of air. She was trying to take the immense rug down from the laundry line and fold it. At five feet tall, Gretchen was half the length of the rug and just barely the width. “Gretchen, don’t call me that,” Adele in mock admonishment, referring to her Gretchen’s informal nickname for her. Although Gretchen was technically in Adele’s employ, all pretenses of formality had long since faded away. It is difficult to be stern and heartless to the woman who changed your diapers and fed you your bottle. Gretchen was tired and not in the mood for attitude. “I swear, life just ain’t fair. All the young people get twice the energy and half of the brains.” Adele laughed as she helped to fold up the rug and carry it back into the house. Still barefoot, she wandered into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. Passing her father’s study, she found the door shut, uncharacteristic for the hot, Georgian summers. She knocked. “Daddy?” The door pushed open easily. Harrison Sacriste stood with his back facing the door, his hands interlocked behind his back. His bronze hair was still as thick and regal as in his youth, though it showed early signs of graying at the temples. His broad shoulders and slim waist, though not quite as slim as in his youth, were ideally fitted to his charcoal three-piece suit. Harrison had been weeping. He had not wept since he was fourteen years old and his first horse had died. Not even when his wife had left him did he weep. He felt a part of his life leaving him, yes. He spent half his day for three months wishing he were dead, yes. He contemplated leaving his estate and moving his daughter to a new country with him, yes. But he had never shed a tear. For Harrison, tears were not a reaction to fear, or sorrow, or even anger. According to him, a man who was crying was a man who was feeling so many things at once, that his mind became overwhelmed and inefficient. One thing that Harrison was not, was inefficient. But one little letter had changed all that. It was three lines long. I miss you, my darling. I will be with you soon. I love you and our child. - Ms. Rachel Sacriste-Malloy His first reaction was that this was a joke. Some heartless young ruffian had heard of his family’s history and was trying to get a rise out of him. But the stamps were from Germany. Why, in God’s name Germany? No local hooligan would have the insight and intelligence to falsify German stationary. It was truly her. Again. This was not the first time Rachel had tried to contact Harrison after she left. There were the occasional birthday and Christmas gifts for Adele, sometimes with a line or two scratched into a gin-doused card. Harrison was honorable; he did not lie to Adele. From the moment she was old enough to speak, Harrison had told her of her mother’s abandonment. He did not tell the tale to negatively depict Rachel, nor did he sugar-coat the details for Adele. Rather, Harrison simply presented it to Adele as a series of facts that they both had to accept as part of their lives. Harrison expected the gifts. He expected the cards. He even came to expect Rachel’s occasional reunion attempts; always dropping in without notice for an evening, gone before the sun was up. What he did not expect, was the rapture of joy each shoddy token of affection would inspire in young Adele. Even as a toddler, Adele seemed to gurgle her words with more enthusiasm when she was holding a gift from her mother. The first time they met, Adele was nearly four. Harrison remembered how those five words had had such an affect on his little darling, as if he were casting a spell. “Adele, this is your mother.” That’s exactly what Rachel did. She cast spells. Flimsy, imperfect, yet dazzling glamorous spells. She had bewitched Harrison into seduction and subsequently marriage, and now she was coming back to enchant Adele away from her safe, comfortable home. At least, that’s what Harrison thought. That thought lit a fear at the core of Harrison’s chest that was slowly spreading to reach his fingertips and toes. Every father’s greatest fear is to watch their daughter taken away from them. Harrison had prepared himself for suitors, young men looking for a good time and a dance partner. He was ready to watch Adele saunter off, with ribbons in her hair and young gentleman on her arm. He was not ready for this damnable note from past nightmare, coming back to life after too many years. “Daddy?” “Sugar-plum, come here,” Harrison chuckled in him deep southern drawl, “Come sit with Daddy.” Adele did as she was told, crossing the few steps between the doorway and her father’s leather sofa. She sat just like she did when she was a little girl, with her thin, nearly gangly knees and calves hanging over her father’s legs as she perched on his lap. Harrison noticed, with relief, that she was still small enough to fit. “Sweetheart, there’s something I need to tell you.” By the time he was finished, Adele was weeping tears of joy. She kissed her father on his temple and ran upstairs into her bedroom, no doubt to plan the perfect ensemble to wear to her mother’s long-awaited final homecoming. Harrison listened to her upstairs, opening and shutting drawers and flipping through the hangers in her closet. He was reminded, with bittersweet vividness, of Adele, age four, flipping through her dress-up kit to find the perfect princess dress to wear to dinner with Rachel.