This is the story I was mentioning at the beginning of my first Mentalist fic - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head - which is a collection of one shots about Jane and his wife and daughter. I love the way he occassionally flashes back to how she was learning piano and such, and I think that they should show more of Jane's daughter. This story features his daughter more than his wife, but it is mainly just the three of them. As far as I'm aware they never say what their names are in the show, so I've decided to name his wife Violet, and his daughter Claire. I hope you enjoy the first of many!

The House That Built Me

"So, what do you think?"

Claire looked at her father as if he were insane.

"Well?" he prompted enthusiastically. "What do you think of your new bedroom?"

She stared silently into the empty room for a few moments. Moving house wasn't something that five-year-old Claire was particularly pleased about. She'd been quite happy in their old house – she wasn't as concerned about size as her parents were. She had enough room in her bedroom for her toys (if you ignored the ones that she left sprawled around the rest of the house) and enough room to run around in the garden, so when Mommy and Daddy had announced that they were moving to Malibu, she'd not been a big fan. It meant she had to leave behind the picture of a bunny she had once drawn on the wall underneath her bed – but she wasn't allowed to be upset about leaving that behind because her parents didn't actually know she'd drawn it and she'd get into trouble if they knew she'd been drawing on the walls...again.

But this new room was empty. There was nothing there. No toys, no pictures, no stuffed animals, nothing at all. The walls were coloured in Boring (Daddy called it "beige" but Claire called it "Boring") so it wasn't nearly as fun as her bright pink room in the old house. Just looking at the Boring coloured walls made her miss her old room.

Patrick, however, was thrilled with the room. There was a built in closet on the far wall, meaning he didn't need to try and wrestle her wardrobe from the previous house up the stairs and through the doorway. There was a wide window with a wooden bench build along the underside – he could already see them sitting on it, looking out over the ocean and the beach behind the house. The previous owners hadn't left any curtains behind, but they'd bought Claire's pink curtains from her old bedroom to brighten the room up. He could look around the room and envision where her new princess canopy bed would fit into the corner, her pink bedside table with her pink lamp beside it. He could see where there would be space to hang her fairy lights over the small vanity table they had bought for her. She'd recently informed them that she wanted to be a professional ballerina, and all ballerinas apparently had mirrors with lights around them. He'd already planned which shade of pink the room would be – paler than the neon pink she'd had before, but still bright enough to keep her happy.

Claire, on the other hand, didn't see any of this. She saw a Boring coloured room. She saw a matching Boring coloured carpet. She saw a window without any curtains.

"It's very empty," she finally voiced.

"Well, we're going to fill it with all your things," he reminded her.

"What things?" she asked.

"Your things that were in your old bedroom. Now," he announced, walking them both further into the room and indicating to a chosen wall on their right. "How about we put your new bed over here, facing the window? Then you can wake up and see all the birds outside."

Claire looked confused. "We didn't buy a new bed, Daddy."

"Yes, we did," he nodded. "You spent an hour jumping on it in the store, do you remember?"

At this, her head titled to the other side, scrunching up her nose and letting her blonde ringlets bounce around. "Where is it then?" she asked.

"It's in the big box in the hall."

Claire skipped back into the hall, looking at the box with keen interest. "It doesn't look bed-shaped."

"That's because it's in little pieces and I'm going to put them all together," Patrick told her.

"All by yourself?"

"Yes," he nodded proudly.

"Can you do that?" she asked in disbelief.

"Hey, monster!" he teased her. "I can make a bed!"

But Claire didn't look convinced. "Daddy, maybe you better ask Mommy for some help," she told him.

"We don't need to call Mommy," he assured her.

"But she's making a cake all by herself. She can help you make a bed."

"Daddy doesn't need any help making a bed," Patrick told her.

An hour later, Claire sat on the window seat in her new bedroom. It was slightly higher than her tiny legs, so she'd had to climb up on it and now her feet were dangling and swinging from side to side as she giggled.

"You think this is funny, don't you?" Patrick accused her.

Grinning behind Susie, her favourite doll, she nodded. "Yep, daddy."

"It's not funny," he protested.

"Yep, it is."

"No, it's not."

"Is."

"Not."

"Is."

"Not."

"Is times forever!" she shot at him suddenly.

He looked up at her, realising from the triumphant expression on his daughters face that he couldn't argue with "is times forever". Instead, he grumbled, looking back at the instructions. "It's not funny."

"Daddy," Claire told him softly.

He looked up, seeing that his five-year-old was now stood at his shoulder, smiling just like her mother. She patted him on the back sympathetically. "I think we'd better call Mommy now."

He smiled at her, ruffling those blonde curls that she'd definitely inherited from him. She'd wanted pigtails that morning, but had to make do with her hair hanging over her shoulders, as her mother was busy unpacking the kitchen and currently making a cake to celebrate them moving into their new house – and daddy was good at many things, but little girls pigtails was not one of them. "I think you're right, sweetheart."

Violet Jane had taken one look at the unstructured bed on the floor and cringed. She made no attempt to hide her distain at the situation. She'd left them alone for thirty minutes, and already there was sawdust and nut bolts all over the carpet – goodness knows how.

"Patrick, what did you do?" she asked him.

"Nothing!" he defending quickly, sounding almost hurt at his wife's tone of voice. He exchanged a look with Claire, who just giggled at him again. "I just took it out of the box," he said simply.

"And he played with it, too," Claire told her mother, despite Patrick pressing his finger against his lips in an attempt to get her to stay quiet.

"You 'played with it'?" Violet questioned, turning away from the woodwork mess on the ground to face the two culprits.

"I was just trying to make the bed," he explained.

"With a hammer," Claire added.

"Claire!" he hissed, as she burst into giggles.

"Patrick!" Violet sighed.

"Yes, dear?" he said innocently.

"Claire's lunch is on the kitchen table, can you show her where it is and then you're getting back up here and learning some basic DIY skills." Violet instructed him.

And he wasn't going to argue with her.

Building the bed had been quiet easy in comparison to making up the remainder of the bedroom. The chest of drawers had been more complicated and Patrick was sure he'd never lifted anything as heavy as the mattress Claire had chosen "because it was the bounciest". He was sure children were meant to be discouraged from bouncing on beds. He knew that Violet had broken her arm doing that when she was six years old. They'd agreed between them that Claire's bedroom was the priority. They were happy to spend a night on a mattress on the floor if they had to, but Claire would never sleep unless she was in a bed – so many sleepless nights were spent with a baby Claire trying to find ways of getting her to sleep – driving around town, pacing up and down the hall...surprisingly, only her own bed did the trick.

After the furniture had been made, it was time to break out the paint. He was glad that they had chosen a paler pink than had been in the previous house. It was still girly, and he was sure that the slightest drop on his shirt would result in Violet breaking out a camera and documenting the moment before he could wipe it away (he'd thought of this, and already hidden the camera batteries). Claire had wanted to join them for the paining, so with Violet in charge of pulling her hair back and securing it with a hair scrunchie, she had been given her very own paint brush. Her clothes wouldn't be getting stained by the paint as she was wearing one of Patrick's dress down t-shirts over her denim overalls. It gathered on the ground beneath her, but it meant that Violet wouldn't spend the following day getting pink paint out of Claire's favourite socks, either.

"You okay, Pat?" Violet asked quietly, when Claire went over and pressed all the buttons on the portable radio, searching for what she called 'proper songs'. She wasn't a fan of the classics that her parents listened to.

Patrick was a little stunned at her question, but gathered himself quickly. "Of course," he smiled at her.

"You're not the only one who can tell when people are lying," she smirked at him. "You're doing your quiet-brooding-thing," she informed him.

Patrick looked over at Claire, who had decided on a radio station that wasn't filled with static and went back to painting the corner of the room by the window. The look of concentration on her face was undeniably adorable. The determination to not touch the other wall, even though it was going to be painted the same colour anyway, was something that bought to mind a more advanced imagine; concentrating on homework. In a few years, she'd be in school, and it definitely wouldn't be long until she came home with spellings and math problems to solve. He was already looking forward to sitting and helping her with them, hoping that she wouldn't feel she had to hide any grades away from them – not that she'd be getting bad grades, she was insanely intelligent for her age.

"I think we're doing a great job with her," he smiled at his wife.

Violet returned his smile, the one that their daughter inherited. "Our little girls growing up real fast now, huh?"

"Yes," he nodded. "I'm going to miss this."

"Painting her bedroom?"

"No, the innocence. I want to think she'll have this view on the world forever, but unfortunately life doesn't work that way," he mused.

"Pat, stop worrying about her getting boyfriends," she teased him – since he'd seen Claire peck a boy from school on the cheek on Valentine's Day, he'd been worried about when she'd start going on dates and it had taken her at least a week to convince him that five year olds did not go off to the movies in their boyfriends cars.

"No boy is good enough for my little girl," he said defensively. "She's going to be mine forever."

"You're as bad as my father," Violet laughed. "You've never hurt me, have you?"

"No," he said surely.

"See, not all guys are bad. Some are good, some won't hurt her. Some will try to, but that's how she'll tell the good ones from the bad," she said. "Besides, boyfriends are going to have to go through you. I can't see you letting anyone hurt your little girl," she pointed out.

"True," he nodded. "I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I let somebody hurt her."

A splash of pink hit his cheek, and he turned to his wife to see her looking incredibly incriminating with a wet paintbrush in hand. He went to touch his cheek, but drew his hand back before the paint could end up on his fingertips.

"What was that for?" he asked her.

"You're being serious," she told him. "Painting is supposed to be fun."

"So is building a bed," he teased her back, trailing a line of pink paint across her own cheek.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it :) Please let me know what you think!