Page 21 of Chasing Your Ghost

He looked between her and the shelf, lifting his brows in question. “You want to help me with the bookcase?”

She nodded. “Yeah, and I think Noah’s coming to help too.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, his forehead creasing as he frowned. “You don’t have to.”

“I know, but I want to. I could use the distraction,” she admitted with a shrug.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Hugh said, his frown transforming into an understanding smile. “I’ve already done the primer, so we just need to give it a few layers of the white paint now,” he explained as he rummaged around for another two paintbrushes.

“I can handle that,” she replied after he’d handed her one of the brushes. “My dad and I made this cool ladder shelf together a while back. He did all the hard work—” Her voice caught, and she had to clear her throat before she could continue. “But I did most of the painting,” she managed, pushing away her regret about how she’d sold the shelf along with all the other furniture. At least she’d kept her dad’s books. She would never part with those.

Hugh nodded, his blue eyes pitying, not in a bad way that made her uncomfortable, but in a way that made her feel like he saw her pain and wished he could somehow ease it for her.

“Where do you want me to start?” Riley asked.

“How about you start on the side while I finish up the top.”

“Sounds good.”

She dipped her brush in the paint and moved to the side closest to her. Starting at the top, she carefully glided the brush down the varnished wood.

“Tell me about your dad,” Hugh said, surprising her.

Anyone else probably would have tried to shift the topic away from her father, not delve into it headfirst, but Riley liked that he wasn’t shying away from it.

“He was an accountant,” she told him, though he probably already knew that. “Most people think that’s a boring job, but he loved it. He was crazy good with numbers, and all his clients adored him. I don’t know how he did it, but he got through college while raising me. Once he was working, he never missed any parent-teacher meetings or any of my dance recitals. He had some help from my grandparents before they passed away, but most of the time, it was just the two of us.”

When her dad’s parents passed away within days of each other, it had hit Riley and her dad extremely hard. They’d always been just a few blocks away, and every Sunday night, Riley’s grandmother made a big roast, and the four of them would spend the whole night chatting about anything and everything. It had become their family tradition just after Riley was born, and she hated that she hadn’t realized how special it had been until they were gone.

Riley started telling Hugh about those dinners, only pausing when Noah joined them and got given his paintbrush. Once he’d gotten to work, he asked what they were talking about, and Riley filled him in. Soon they were laughing with her as she recounted the time she’d been charged with bringing dessert to one of the weekly dinners.

She’d spent the whole afternoon baking rainbow cupcakes only to arrive at her grandparents’ apartment with a store-bought cake because she’d mixed up the flour and powdered sugar containers, leading to a multi-colored batter explosion in the oven.

“What do you mean they exploded?” Noah asked through his laughter. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“No, they literally exploded,” Riley explained, grinning as she remembered her dad’s horrified expression when he saw the mess she’d made. “One minute, they were rising and looking like sheer perfection, and the next, the inside of the oven was covered in batter.”

“How did you figure out you’d mixed up the flour and sugar?” Hugh asked.

She sighed. “I tasted it. Plus, my dad had a wonderful I-told-you-so moment because he’d come into the kitchen while I was measuring everything out and asked me if I was sure what I was pouring into the bowl was flour.”

“No,” Noah groaned.

“Yes,” Riley sighed. “But I was so sure of myself that I didn’t listen to him.”

“What can I tell you,” Hugh said with a grin. “Dads are always right.”

Noah flicked a bit of paint at his dad. “Don’t even start,” he warned.

“What? It’s true,” Hugh maintained, chuckling as he wiped the drops of paint from his shirt, not looking even a little mad about it. “We always know best, and we’re never ever wrong. It’s a gift.”

“He’s right,” Riley agreed, sending him a conspiratorial wink before turning to Noah. “Dads have this annoying ability to know absolutely everything. It’s why you should always listen to them.”

“Oh, shut up,” Noah retorted. “Now you’re just being a suck-up.”

“Also true,” she said. “But I have to be so that your dad will take me to the shops to buy a Bunsen burner and some low-grade non-explosive chemicals.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed in confusion as he looked between Riley and his dad. “I’m sorry. What?” he sputtered.

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