Page 76 of The Sandbar saga

"Good girl." She helped her daughter strip off her clothes.

Callie leaned to the side and eyed the tub. "Can you let the water go to the bottom of the circle thing?"

She worked on loosening Callie's braids. There wasn't a night that her daughter hadn't asked for a full bath since she started speaking in complete sentences. The deeper, the better, in Callie's opinion.

Her daughter loved to swim. From six months on, she'd taken her to the swimming pool at the duplex, getting her used to water. At two years old, she was taking swimming lessons. At three and a half years old, she could swim across the deep end of the pool and float on her back.

When she was pregnant, she'd promised herself that her child would know how to swim, and she or he would be happy and loved.

"If you let me wash your hair without crying, I'll let the water keep filling." She fluffed Callie's hair as her daughter nodded. "Go ahead and climb in."

She grabbed a washcloth and towel, then sat on the toilet, ready to oversee the bath.

When the water reached the right level, she turned off the faucet. She tossed the washcloth in the tub.

"Let's see if you can scrub the dirt away tonight." She put the bottle of liquid soap on the edge of the tub. "Only a little squirt."

As she watched Ms. Independent wash every spot of her body, except her face, contentment pushed back her worry about if she was doing the right thing. Being a single mother was the hardest job in the world, and the most rewarding. She loved having a daughter.

But her daughter needed more.

She needed a father.