He sighed. "I guess she must have. She's twenty-three and she's crying to her mother."

His wife gave him the dirtiest of looks. "That's a mean thing to say, Dale."

"Sorry," he said with as much sincerity as he could muster. He was about to settle in to his side of the bed when Katie reentered their bedroom.

She smiled at them sadly, her eyes puffy but the tears having stopped. Dale looked away from her guiltily, knowing that she was beautiful but thinking she had grown even more beautiful in the intervening year - and of course his wife catching him staring at their daughter's breasts and trim stomach...