She's his own daughter. He (his father) is in recovery, but at the very least, she has shortened his life.

Oh, daddy, by what witchcraft have you coaxed that sulky rose-bush into bloom?'

'No witchcraft at all - it just bloomed because you were coming home, baby,' said her father.

Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

She stared up at him, and her eyes were so large they looked like blue mint candies. 'I get to stay?'

'You're damn right you're staying, and I don't want to hear another word of disrespect.' His voice broke. 'I'm your father, and you damn well better love me the same way I love you, or you'll be sorry.'

The next thing he knew, he was grabbing her, and she was grabbing him, and all the bozos coming down the jerway trying to get past them were jabbing them with bags and briefcases, but he didn't care. He was holding tight to this daughter he loved so desperately, and he wasn't ever going to let her go.

My father is convinced that if I hadn't been a minister's daughter, I wouldn't have anything to write about,