Chapter Text
“Daddy, daddy, daddy!”
“What baby?” Alexei looks at Yelena standing up in the cart.
“You need to buy these for Mommy!” Yelena points to the row of pink carnation corsages on display at the local grocery store.
“Those are for the students at the high school, for their dance,” Alexei explains to the young girl.
“No, you need to get one for Mommy,” Yelena insists, grabbing her dad’s polo shirt.
“But why?” Alexei smiles.
“Because my song!” Yelena pleads and then starts to sing in her sweet little voice, “I was a lonely teenage bronco buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck.” (Melina had recently explained to her that a carnation was a flower and they had found a book on flowers at the library.)
“Oh, your song!” Alexei pretends to see the logic of the 4-year-old’s argument. He kisses her forehead and throws up his hands and opens the refrigerated glass door.
“And because Mommy is so pretty,” Yelena says.
“Very true, very true.”
Alexei hands the plastic container to a very pleased Yelena. He then has a second thought and puts two more in the cart.
“All my pretty girls get one.”
“Yay!”
Later, when they’re checking out with the three corsages, and the milk they originally came to get, Yelena also suggests, “Daddy, you should take Mommy to the dance.”
The cashier smiles at the father and daughter.