Honey (Shooting Stars 4)

"However, the last thing Peter would want is for all of us to stop living. too. Honey. You know that. right?"

I nodded.

"It just hurts too much. Daddy. I can't be anything like Grandad and

I don't want to be." I said defiantly.

He was silent and then he nodded.

"No. I don't want you to be like him, either." he admitted.

"I don't think he really loves any of us," I continued.

"I guess he does in his own way. Honey." I shook my head.

"You don't accept terrible things happening to people you love as easily as he does."

"You don't know how he mourns or when. He does, in his own way.' Daddy insisted. "It doesn't do any good to dislike him. It doesn't bring Peter back. Did you ever hear Peter speak against him?"

"Not in so many words," I admitted. "But he didn't approve of him." I insisted.

"I think he felt sorry for him. That's the last thing Grandad wants, however," Daddy warned. "anyone feeling sorry for him."

Why not? I wondered. What was so terrible about people showing you sympathy?

We were both quiet again. Then Daddy reached out and put his arm around my shoulders.

"I don't want to see you so unhappy so long, and your mother is very worried about you, Honey," he said.

"Did she send you out?"

"No. I'm here because I'm just as worried," he told me. I relaxed and let my head fall against his shoulder.

"What all this dots. Daddy, is make me afraid of ever loving anyone else. It's like what happened when we lost Kasey Lady."

I was referring to our beautiful golden retriever, who had eaten some rat poison Grandad set out for rodents in the henhouse.

"Mm." Daddy said. He loved that dog, too.

"After we buried her, Mommy told you she never wanted to have another animal. She couldn't take the pain of loss."

"She'll change her mind one of these days. or the first time she sets eyes on another cute puppy.

"People lose people all the time, Honey. You can't stop it and you can't stop yourself from loving someone. It isn't like turning the lights on and off. It has its own life, its own power, and sweeps over you,"

"Is that what happened to you, Daddy? Is that why you and Mommy got married?" I asked.

He was quiet and then he laughed. "No," he said. "Hardly."

"What do you mean?"

"Our situation was somewhat reversed. We got married first and then fell in love." he revealed.

I pulled back and looked up at him.

"I don't understand. How do you do that?"

"Well, after your grandmother Jennie had died. Grandad Forman decided we needed a woman on the farm. He wasn't going to remarry. He said he was too old and God didn't mean for him to have a wife, but I wasn't exactly burning up the world with my romantic skills. Matter of fact. I hadn't had a girlfriend since the tenth grade, and she got married to someone else a day after graduation.