Sorry

"I'm so sorry!" Madison squealed as slipped on the ice taking her sister Kaylee down with her causing both sisters to laugh uncontrollably as they lay on the ground.

She and her little sister were chasing each other in the yard throwing snowballs at one another. It was the first snow of the year and it fell hard the night prior. Their mother watched from the window of the kitchen window. She smiled as she listened to her children scream as balls of flurry hit them.

The growl of a grown man interrupted their play as their father came charging out the back door. The girl's cries of joy got even louder as the large man barreled through the snow only to get trapped in a deep drift where the fire pit was, sinking him up to his waist. His daughters bust into even harder laughter at their fathers situation.

Without hesitation, he started to scoop up the snow around him and lob them at the children. It wasn't an easy task when they moved behind him to throw snowballs back, it was unfair really and they would get him now before he got out and caught them.

"Kaylee, go around, get him from the front!" Madison ordered.

Her little sister ran to the front grabbing snow as she went and threw them at her dad. She started getting balled herself and she took cover behind the bush that was near the back porch. It didn't offer a lot of cover but it protected well enough as the snowballs her father threw her way missed and hit the house.

"One, two Maddy's coming for you!" Kaylee began. A song her and her sister made up about themselves to remind each other that they could always rely on the other, no matter what.

"Three, four Kaylee's out for more." Her sister shouted back with a grin

"Five and Maddy's got my six." Kaylee said, though she never knew what that meant, she said it anyway; she heard her father say it now and again to his army friend that had no legs. He always told him that he had his six.

"Seven, eight Kaylee's never late!"

"Nine, Ten Maddy and I win again!" Kaylee shouted as their father called a white flag of surrender.

Secretly he gathered big ball of snow to get his baby girl with. As Kaylee stepped out from behind the bush and into full view he threw the snow at her. Madison saw the motion of the throw and yelled for Kaylee to duck. She hit the ground before the ball smacked into the house where her little body once blocked.

Madison ran and jumped on her father grabbing surrounding snow to dump on his head. A giggle from Kaylee's direction indicated her joy at being missed. She straightened herself dusting the bracken off her coat before charging to jump on her dad as well. As she took her first step, the icicle that hung from the roof broke off its weak base.

The only thing he could hear was the ear shatter cry of his smallest child before she hit the ground. He knew that cry, not from his children but from grown men, it hurt him then to hear that sound and nearly killed him now hearing it come from a child and not just any child but his very own little girl. Madison leapt off her father and ran instinctively to her sister, pulling her out from under the roof where more icicles waited. Their mother burst from the back door barefoot and slipping on the ice near the railing, her husband managed to swiftly dig himself out of the pit he was in, but he still struggled to pull himself free. Fear gripped him tight at the sight of Kaylee motionless on the ground.

Time moved slow for him in that moment, his hands scrapping at the snow, he looked up to see his wife slip and hit the ground as well but recovered quickly as she scrambled in the snow to her child shouting in words that he couldn't hear. He watched as his oldest daughter sat over her sister, for a brief second he thought she was choking the little girl but he saw her hands were coving something. Yes her small hands were near her neck but not in the way he thought, she was clutching something red. As his brain moved at adrenaline speed he caught sight of the red snow surrounding both his children.