"Luka?" Abby switched the light on as she came down the stairs. While it wouldn't have surprised her to find him in the kitchen, seeing him standing at the patio doors was something else.
"What are you doing?" As she came alongside him, she couldn't help noticing that he held the small photo of his first wife and their daughter in his hand.
"Did you have a dream?" It was difficult to completely keep the concern from her voice. Was she ready for another cycle of his sleeplessness?
"No, not really." Luka shook his head, while there was a time when he might once have concealed the photo from her, that was no longer the case and he turned it so she could see what he held.
"What's going on then? You're not up for no reason." Sliding her arm around his waist, Abby found herself pulling him closer with the question.
"She would have been 22 today, Jasna, a year younger than Danijela was when she died. I still see her as this little girl playing with her doll." Luka lifted his hand to wipe his eyes as he spoke.
"There's nothing wrong with that, Luka, she's always going to be your little girl."
"Yeah, it's just hard to believe how fast time flies, and I can't help wondering what she might have been like if..." His words trailed off as his gaze seemed to become lost to something outside the window.
"If what, Luka?" As much as she hated pushing him for more, too many years had been wasted in their not talking about his past for her to go back.
"I just wonder what she might have been like if she'd had the chance to grow up." Luka's words seemed to come from a long distance away, almost as if he were talking to someone other than Abby.
"Would she have chosen marriage and a family like her mother, or would she have decided she wanted a career? She was such a bright little girl, and she was so looking forward to the day she would go to school. She never even got a chance to do something as simple as that." The reminders of how much his daughter had missed out on were too much and as his voice broke, Abby felt the tremble run through him.
"Luka, whatever she did, you know you would have supported her in it, just like you would have done for Marko, you'll do for Joe when the time comes. You're a wonderful father now, and I know you were a wonderful father then. You can't go back and change the past, but, you can remember all the things that made your daughter so special to you. You have to know she'll always be part of you, and because of that, she'll always be a part of us, and it's that which will keep them all alive.
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