“Apologize. You called him twelve times.”
Poppy looked at her father.
“Why did you keep saying you didn’t want me?”
Cassian stopped moving.
“I never answered your calls.”
Viola immediately interrupted.
“She’s confused.”
But the nanny was looking directly at her.
“You answered. You said he didn’t want her.”
Cassian stood.
“What else did you tell my daughter?”
Poppy watched his face.
For the first time since he came home, she seemed unsure whether she needed to apologize at all.
Her hands remained folded behind her back. She had been standing beside the dining table when he entered, wearing the yellow dress she usually saved for occasions that mattered.
A paper envelope protruded from her pocket.
On the front, in careful blue letters, she had written DADDY.
Viola reached toward her shoulder.
“Sweetheart, we discussed this.”
Poppy moved away before the hand reached her.
Cassian saw it.
So did Miriam, the nanny who had cared for his daughter since she was three.
“What did you discuss?” he asked.
Viola glanced at the guests.
“Could we avoid turning a simple manners issue into a spectacle?”
His sister, Helena, put down her glass.
The room had already become a spectacle. It had happened the moment an eight-year-old asked her father why he kept telling her he didn’t want her.
Cassian came around the table.
He crouched beside Poppy.
“Look at me, sweetheart.”
She did.
“I did not tell anyone I didn’t want you.”
Her eyes searched his face.
“Not even when I called again?”
“Not even then.”
“But she said you were there.”
Cassian looked up at Viola.
His fiancée’s expression changed.
Miriam stepped closer.
“She told Poppy you were standing beside her.”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Poppy took the envelope from her pocket.
“I wrote it so you wouldn’t have to hear me say it.”
Cassian accepted it.
Inside was a card decorated with a small drawing of a telephone.
Beneath it, his daughter had written:
I AM SORRY I KEPT WANTING YOU.
He read the sentence twice.
Then he placed the card carefully on the table and took both of her hands.
“You never apologize for that.”
Poppy’s mouth trembled.
