OK. *grins sheepishly*

FOUR YEARS LATER
“How has school been going?” I ask, trying to make conversation with my eight-year-old.
“Fine,” my daughter says, nodding and taking a bite of her dinner.
“Any kids you’d like to have over for a play-date?”
“Daddy!” she giggles. “I’m eight. Eight-year-olds don’t have play-dates.”
“Oh, sorry,” I say, pleased at least to have made her laugh. At night she cries and I can hear her sobs in my room. I want to comfort her, but I don’t know how. “Um…how’s your homework coming?”
“It’s been okay. We’re supposed to write a story over this weekend.”
“A story? Well, you like stories, right?” I say.
But tears come to her eyes. “It’s supposed to be about an imaginary friend we had, Daddy, and there’s only Stella for me.”
Not a day has gone by when my daughter doesn’t say the name Stella. I lean over and pat her small hand. “Didn’t you have other pretend friends? I remember Hailey…and Michelle…” I try to smile for her, but she doesn’t smile back.
“It’s got to be Stella, Daddy. I’m her mommy.”
“Well, you can still write about Stella,” I said.
She begins crying again. “No, Daddy. I can only write about her if I can see her.”
I squirm in my seat. “Tell you what, I met this woman from work who is very nice and I was thinking of taking her out for a dinner at Marion’s. I was planning to have you stay with a babysitter, but why don’t you come along and see if you can find Stella?”
She frowns at me suspiciously.
“You mean a stepmother,” she says. “You’re trying to find a stepmother for me.”
I sigh. I was hoping my daughter wouldn’t take it like this. “No, no. Just a nice woman I met.”

“Where’s the lady?” my daughter asks the instant we get into the car.
I hope she cannot see me blush. “We broke up.”
“Why?”
I don’t tell her that it is because of her. I had been trying to find a stepmother for my daughter, but if she didn’t want a stepmother, I guess I didn’t want a step-wife. “It’s complicated, sweetie.”
“Oh,” she says, and does not say one more word to me until we reach the diner.
“Do you think she’ll be here, Daddy?” she asks, a glint of that four-year-old hope in her eyes.
“Maybe,” I say. “Come, let’s find a table.”
The same owner who served us four years ago comes over to our table. “I remember you!” he says. “Weren’t you the one who lost a vitamin bottle?”
I nod.
“Did you ever find her?”
“So she’s not here?” my daughter jumps in.
The owner’s shoulders sag. “I’ve been looking, child. I’ve been looking. I just can’t seem to find her.”
Tears leak from my daughter’s eyes. Not the kind she cried four years ago. These are quieter, saltier, and I know they must come from deep inside her.
“Stella is waiting for you,” I say. “I know she is.”
My daughter looks up at me with hopeful eyes for a moment, but then sinks back into her teary gaze.
After our dinner, I take my daughter’s hand and lead her across the parking lot to the car. How nice her hand feels in mine.
“We’ll find her one of these years, Daddy,” she says, wiping tears from her eyes. “I guess I’ll do a story on something else.”
“I guess so,” I say.
“But I want to make the grade,” my daughter continues. “I want to become a real writer one day.”
She climbs into the car, and I follow after her, looking in the rearview window at her. “Just like your mother.”
“What’s like my mother?”
“She wanted to be a writer too.”
“That’s nice,” my daughter says absently.
“Don’t you remember all those books of poems and stories she would read to you at night?” I ask, hoping that that will spark some more emotion in her.
“No,” she says. “I really don’t.”
“Don’t you remember – " I begin, but she cuts me off.
“No, I don’t remember Mom,” my daughter says coldly. “Four-year-olds can’t be expected to remember the sort of thing like that.”
I want to laugh at the prim tone in which my eight-year-old speaks, but somehow the laugh gets stuck in my throat and we drive home in silence.

TWO YEARS LATER:
“Daddy!” my daughter says, bursting in the door, dripping wet from the rain. “Guess what?”
“No, what?” I ask, eager at her excited tone. She doesn’t use it on me that much.
“There’s a new family that’s moved in across the street, with three kids, and – and – " my daughter pauses to catch her breath – “and one of them is my age!”
“Well, that is exciting news!” I say.
“Yes, her name is Clarissa,” my daughter says, talking more to herself than to me, “and she has two pets, a cat and a dog, and a younger sister and an older sisters, and she’s seen the new Harry Potter movie and…”
“Is she nice?” I ask, cutting across her monologue.
“Yes, yes, she’s very friendly and all that,” my daughter says, “but just imagine, Daddy! A dog and a cat, and they get along well! Pets, just like what I’ve always wanted!”
“You’ve always wanted pets?” This is new to me.
“Yeah, I’ve always…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, trying not to snap.
“Oh, I thought you wouldn’t understand,” she says airily.
“Well, we can definitely get a pet if you’d like one,” I say, hoping that this will make up for my failure to find Stella. Maybe it will even get her a little closer to me. “Why don’t we go shopping for one tomorrow at that shopping center?”
“The one with Marion’s?” Her eyes light up.
I sigh. I had hoped she forgot about Stella. “Yes, the one with Marion’s.”
“Could we look for Stella while we’re there? I know she’s probably not there, but Clarissa has so many dolls and she wants to see mine, and I don’t feel like showing her Hailey or Melissa or those ones. Stella’s the best.”
I smile to myself. “All right, we can go to Marion’s.”

“I remember you!” the hearty owner says as my daughter and I come in the door. He smiles at my daughter. “Have you found your vitamin bottle yet?”
“No,” my daughter says. “That’s why we’ve come – to look for her.”
A frown clouds the owners’ cheery face and he glances up at me. “We haven’t found her yet.”
My daughters’ shoulders sag. “Daddy, could we eat lunch here? Maybe we can find her,” she says.
“All right,” I say.
The waiter beams. “I’ll go fix up a table of two,” he says, and bustles away.

-Copyrighted by Lena G 1-25-09

Now, that is really all I can post for now because I have not written any more of it. I'll try to hurry up and finish it so I can post the rest.

So...what do you all think?

Thanks, everyone! I am not going to post any more because I might want to submit it for publication sometime, and no one's going to accept it if it's already been published on a website where anyone can read it for free, unless Cricket takes it off the site. Sorry! But I'm glad you all liked it. :)