Captain von Trapp walked stealthily over to the ballroom, where the door was almost completely closed.  With a mischievious smile, he opened it, spying seven figures leaning into crates and talking with barely contained excitement.

            "Oh, Father is going to love this!" Marta exclaimed as she picked up a small fluffy bundle.

            "There are so many!" Friedrich observed.  "How will we handle all of them, Fräulein Maria?"

            "Well, all of them won't be used at once, Friedrich," came an older, wonderfully musical voice.  The Captain's grin widened and he leaned forward.

            "FATHER!" Brigitta's voice shouted as the spy was finally caught. "No peaking! You promised!"

            The other occupants of the room all whirled around and hid what they were holding in their hands.  Georg shot up, not looking very guilty at being caught snooping at what his children were planning with their governess.

            Rolling her eyes in mock annoyance, Fräulein Maria handed her parcel to Liesl and walked over to the door, blocking his view of the room entirely.

            "Now, Captain," she said as she exited and shut the door quickly behind her. "You don't want to ruin the surprise, do you?"

            "Forgive me, Fräulein," he laughed as he backed up to give her some room.  He noted the lovely glow to her cheeks as she smiled at him.  "I just wanted to see what Max had bought with my money."

            "You'll find out soon enough, Sir," she insisted, also laughing.  "We have a lot of work to do, though, so if you don't mind.  I'm sure the Baroness would love to see some more of the grounds."

            "I see: you're trying to get rid of me," he narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

            "Yes."

            They let their laughter die slowly.  Then the Captain looked a little puzzled.  "I only counted six children in there, Fraulein.  Or was someone hiding?"

            Maria frowned in thought. "Louisa isn't in there.  She has been missing all morning."

            Georg's puzzlement turned into concern.  "She was present at breakfast.  She asked if the Baroness would be here today."

            "I haven't seen her after that," Maria continued the train of thought and then looked hesitantly up at her employer. "Captain, may I speak with you about something?"

            "Of course, Fräulein," he replied.  "Come, let's go to the parlor."

            "It's about Louisa, Sir," Maria started as she took the seat he offered her in the parlor.  "She's been running off alone a lot lately. I've noticed that she's become more and more enigmatic since your return from Vienna with the Baroness."

            Georg knitted his eyebrows in thought.  "I've noticed it, too, Fräulein.  She has always been the most independent of the children.  Even before her mother died, she was going off on her own, disappearing for hours.  She used to scare us to death."

            He walked over to the window. "She's also the most stubborn of the children.  She could be sick with a 102 degree fever and insist that she's well enough to go outside. Ever since I came back to Vienna and things changed between the children and me, I've noticed that she's-"

            "Resisting?"

            He turned to face his observant governess.  Seeing compassion on her face, he smiled.  "Yes, she's resisting.  She keeps herself so guarded, it's impossible to tell what she's thinking and feeling at times."

            "Sounds familiar," Maria said candidly.

            Georg smiled at her and returned to face the window.  A movement near the lake caught his eye.  "There she is," he said.

            Maria stood and walked to join him.  They stared for a moment at the lone figure tossing rocks into the lake.  Maria felt instant compassion for the girl and wished she knew how to reach her.

            The Captain smiled at the memory the image of Louisa throwing stones into the lake brought up.  When Agathe was alive, he and Louisa had spent what had felt like hours engaged in the activity.

            Catching the smile on his face, Maria asked, "Something on your mind, Captain?"

            "I think I'll go have a chat with her," he answered and resisted the sudden urge to reach out for her hand.  "Thank you, Fräulein; if you'll excuse me."

            Maria watched him depart and said a silent prayer for the Captain and Louisa.  She wanted the girl to be happy, as she must have been once before.   Glancing out the window again, she gave a hopeful sigh and returned to the ballroom to the children.

The final clump of the rock breaking into the lake's surface echoed in the quiet air. Louisa relished in the sound for a moment and bent down to pick up another rock.

            "You know there are more flat stones over near the gazebo," a voice from behind startled her so greatly she jumped.

            Spinning around to see her father standing there, she reddened.  "I just felt like throwing rocks at the moment," she explained.

            "I see," he said and strolled away from her.  She watched him walk over towards the gazebo and pick up a small rock.  A strange feeling formed in her throat as she watched him easily throw the stone at the lake and it skipped five times before falling into the water.

            He looked over at her. "Would you like to try?" he asked, offering another stone out to her.

            She paused, not really sure what was going on.  Father hadn't skipped stones with her in years.  Smiling quickly, she walked over to him. 

"I haven't done this in a while, so don't blame me if it doesn't work," she mumbled defensively.

            Noting her tone, her father laughed. "If I can get five skips after all this time, I'm afraid of how many you could do."

            She took the stone, turned sideways to the lake, and threw it.  It skipped six times over a distance of about ten feet.

            "Your technique hasn't faded, I see," Georg exclaimed, impressed.  She looked more relieved that she had done it than with its distance.

            He offered her another rock, and the gradually, the time elapsed from silence to a friendly competition between the two. After ten minutes, each had gotten their throws to ten skips over a range fifteen feet.

            "This water is easy to do this to," Louisa scoffed.  "We should do this at the river."

            "Sounds like a plan," he said and they smiled at each other.  The sound of laughter from the house caught their attention. 

            "You're missing whatever is going on in that room, you know," Georg observed.

            She shrugged.  "They'll tell me what to do when I get there.  It's no big deal."

            "I've noticed that you go off alone a lot," he said. "I hope nothing is wrong."

            Louisa was not used to talking about her emotions with anyone, especially her father.  Ever since Mother had died, she had learned from his example: that keeping your emotions hidden was the only way to spare yourself deep pain.  She had learned it so well, that no one, not even Fräulein Maria, knew what she was thinking or feeling.  Louisa thought she liked living like that, but the laughter in the ballroom made her feel differently.  She felt alone.

            "You know me, Father," she tried to sound light-hearted. "I was always the loner."

            "Yes, you were," he smiled. "You also liked to find bugs in the meadow, climb trees higher than Friedrich or Kurt, and seemed to be the one most often caught torturing the governesses."

            She smiled proudly; he remembered.  "The others were too scared to do anything about it. We were all miserable, but no one wanted to do anything about it."

            He opened his mouth to tell her that they could have come to him, but the memory of how he ran his household came back to him.

            "Fräulein Maria was the only one who fought back," the girl continued, an annoyed look crossing her face.  "She actually made me feel guilty."

            At that he laughed.  "She has a way of turning things around, doesn't she?"

            "Father," Louisa started softly. "When Fräulein Maria leaves, will you go back to, to being…" she couldn't finish the thought; it terrified her so.

            "Louisa," he said, willing her to not have any more doubts, "I promise you that I will never do that to you children again."

            He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder.  He desperately wanted to do more, to hug her perhaps. But Louisa was never one for such gestures.  Removing his hand, he smiled awkwardly, not quite knowing what to do next.

            Louisa tried to hide the smile that formed at the reassurance.  "Good. Marta was worried," she said.

            They resumed skipping the stones in the water for a while when they started to hear an odd noise coming from the ballroom.

            "Is that yodeling?" Louisa asked, amused.

            "I think it must be," her father answered.  "It sounds like Fräulein Maria."

            "I hope so," she remarked.  "If it was Liesl, I'd kill her."

            Laughing, he walked over to the gazebo and motioned for her to follow him.  Relishing in the very rare moment of having her father all to herself, she forgot to keep her façade and practically ran after him. They sat on a bench overlooking the lake shadowed by the Untersberg.

            Looking at the house again, a thought suddenly came to her. "Father, where's the Baroness?"

            "Oh, I think she went into town with Uncle Max," he shrugged.

            "She's so different from Mother."

            He turned to look at her. "Why do you say that, Louisa?"

            Meeting his glance, she narrowed her eyes slightly. "Well, when you bring a lady friend here that isn't a servant, I can only think that she might become our new mother."

            "How very observant of you."

            "Brigitta said it, not me."

            He raised his eyebrows.  "So, you all are talking, huh?"

            She laughed. "We're not little anymore, Father.  Well, Marta and Gretl are, but you know what I mean."

            "Yes, I guess I do," he said, again regretting all that he had missed in his two year isolation from them.

            Sensing his thoughts, she stiffened.  "We were always there, Father."

            Squinting up at the Untersberg, he sighed.  "I will never forgive myself for doing that to all of you."

            She didn't say anything.  Of all her siblings, she was the only one yet to totally forgive him.  She shivered, despite the warm day.

            "If it wasn't for Fräulein Maria…" he thought aloud.

            "Fräulein Maria," she repeated. "I'm glad she came. I wish she'd stay forever."

            "Someone you can climb trees with?" he teased.

            "We all did that, Father," she corrected and they laughed again. "Of course, it was Fräulein Maria's idea."

            "Of course it was," he said non-chalantly. Turning to face her, he became serious. "Louisa, I am truly sorry for not being there for you.  I wish that things could be slightly the way they were before."

            She tried to hold his gaze, but chose to look at her shoe instead.  "Father," she said, "it was as if you left when Mother died.  It was like both of you left us."      

He sighed.  "I can only offer you my feeble explanation as to why I reacted the way I did to your mother's death," he said slowly.

Looking up to stare out at the lake, she waited for him to continue.

            "When she died, it was like I was back in the navy, during the war," he started but stopped suddenly.  He rarely spoke of his naval days with his children.  The stories he did tell were usually funny tales of strange, exotic places and of eating strange meals such as squid.  He never talked about the horrors that came later.

            She silently turned her head to look at him, as if she knew he was going to tell her something deeper than he had ever told any of his children. 

            "Yes, Father?"

            "It was like losing control," he said at last, unable to mangle her innocence with what he had seen.  "I was lost. I loved your mother so deeply; I didn't think I could go on without her.  The first thing that soldiers are taught is to keep your distance from emotions.  It makes loss less painful."

            "Was the war that horrible?"

            He shuddered despite himself.  Looking her squarely in the eyes, he said, "Louisa, I pray every night to rid myself of what I saw, what I heard, and what I did.  I pray that no one, especially my children, will ever have to endure that nightmare."

She stood very still, the intense tone of his voice numbing her.

"When your mother died," he continued, "I reverted to that soldier mind set, because it was the easy way out.  It never occurred to me that you all were suffering too.  It was very selfish of me to treat you the way I did, but I could not get past losing your mother.  What I failed to realize that she lives in each and every one of you."

            Again, Louisa chose to look at the lake rather than at him.  Hearing his explanation helped ease the hurt inside her, and she felt she understood him for the first time in her life.

            He saw the pain and hesitancy in her eyes.

            "I regret that you feel that you cannot talk to me like you used to," he confessed, changing the subject back to his initial reason for joining her.  "We used to have such wonderful conversations.  But now you know why I did what I did.  I'm not saying it was right; on the contrary. I feel that I owe you all that explanation.  You needed it most of all."

At that, she twisted her mouth is a bitter smile.  "You were the only one who seemed interested in what kind of bug I found.  Mother hated bugs. Fräulein Maria does too.  You should have seen her face when I showed her the snake I had caught last summer."

            "You still have it?"

            "You knew I had it?"

            He threw caution to the wind and took her hand in his. "Louisa, I knew everything."

            Tears formed in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.  "Well, that makes one of us."

            He sighed, not knowing what else to say to her.

            Surprising him, she squeezed his hand. "Do you want me to show you the snake?"

            Grinning, he squeezed back.  "Only if it's well guarded."

            She finally let her tears fall, but only because she was laughing.  She could blame them on being happy, an emotion she was finally feeling again.

  "Father, it's dead.  I like to scare Marta and Gretl with it."

            "Louisa!" he tried to sound appalled, but would have been more shocked if she hadn't been so malicious to her younger siblings.

            Jumping up, she ran to the lake, a bounce to her step.  Shaking his head in wonderment, he followed her.

            "Wanna throw more stones?" she offered.

            "Don't you think you should go into the ballroom and start yodeling?"

            They laughed aloud at the thought. "I think I'll be in the background of whatever they're planning.  It's more fun that way.  Here," she said as she offered him a stone. "I dare you: twenty feet."

            Instead of accepting it, he dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out the whistle.  Her eyes widened.  Smiling in finality, he held it out to her, giving her a physical release to her anger and pain.  "I think this could really fly."

            Not knowing which emotion to blame for the tears in her eyes this time, she dropped the stone and accepted his offering.  Fingering it for a few moments, she stood silently.  Then, meeting his gaze and returning his grin, she turned and threw it into the lake harder than she had thrown anything in her life.  They both observed the odd sound of the wind passing through it as it sailed through the air before it splashed with force into the water.

            Georg and Louisa stood silently, relishing in the serenity of the moment. Finally, Louisa looked at her father and smiled. 

Stepping forward, she wrapped her arms around him, feeling the inner warmth that only her father could give her. 

            Returning the fierceness of the embrace, Georg closed his eyes and truly felt at peace with all of his children at last.

Fin