Page 43 of Snake

Ida reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Hey, I’m sorry. I just want you to have everything.”

“I already do, Ida.”

“Yeah, but I was there, lying next to you on our bellies, watching Outlander when your dads weren’t home, talking about how bad we wanted to be somebody’s Sassenach.”

In her head, as Ida pronounced that Scottish word, Cox whispered, city girl.

Autumn shoved the memory away. It was so maddeningly absurd that she couldn’t get the man out of her head. He didn’t like her. She didn’t like him. And even if that weren’t true, he lived hundreds of miles away and was not her type. So what if he was good looking. So what if, when he deigned to speak, poetry spilled from his lips. So what if he’d held her while she puked and comforted her when she was scared. So what if he’d saved her more than once on that night. He’d only been gathering intel. No doubt his whole club was laughing now at his stories about the hapless drunken city girl.

Plastic, he’d also called her. And a snake.

“We were fourteen, Ide. And Outlander is a fantasy series.”

She freed her arm and went back to the locker room.

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~oOo~

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A few nights later, Autumn stood before the grill on her balcony and flipped two beautiful salmon steaks, then flipped the foil vegetable packets as well.

“Rosé? Or sauv blanc?” Pops asked behind her.

Autumn smiled over her shoulder. She was not an oenophile, but her father was. “It’s your birthday, you pick.”

He considered the bottles in his hand. “I think the sauv. Shall I pour now?”

“Sure. These only have a minute or two left.”

Pops went through the sliding door to her kitchen, and Autumn continued grilling his birthday dinner.

Managing her divorced fathers was a daily tightrope walk. Though both Pom and Pops said they wanted everything to be easy on her, and though she believed they meant it and really did try, neither was particularly successful. Pom was dramatic about it, but Pops was just as jealous of any time Autumn gave Pom as vice versa. He was simply quieter about it—which actually made Autumn feel more guilty. When Pom made a scene insisting that he didn’t get the same access Pops did (not true), she could tell him to get over himself, but when Pops said “I understand,” and looked away, she dissolved into a puddle of guilty goo.

But they didn’t like the same things, so she couldn’t simply make everything balanced through repetition. Pom wanted extravaganzas for his birthdays—he wanted costumes and event spaces and glitter. Pops hated all that; he was happier with a quiet meal and a nice gift, or maybe an evening at the theater and a dinner in a quiet restaurant. So, though neither would enjoy the other’s kind of fun (another of the factors in their divorce, when their love for each other was no longer strong enough to mask these differences), when Autumn spent a lot of time arranging a big surprise party for Pom, Pops sighed and said he understood why she was busy, and when she had Pops over for a home-cooked meal and their annual screening of The Princess Bride, Pom made a big fuss about how Pops always got the personal touch.

She adored them both, but sometimes they were exhausting.

When the salmon was properly seared and the vegetables the perfect degree of dark and glossy, she plated them nicely, added a sprig of dill to each, turned off the grill, and carried the plates to the table. Pops was already seated, sipping his wine as he contemplated the park across the street from Autumn’s condo.

The plates in her hand, she paused. The last wisps of summer sunlight streaked the sky, backlighting her Pops in a rosy halo. He was a big guy, over six feet and probably forty pounds over a weight a doctor would call ideal. For work every day, whether he was due in court or spending the day in his office, he wore a classic two-button, three-piece Brooks Brothers suit, navy or charcoal, sometimes with a muted pinstripe but usually plain. Tonight, for a date with his daughter, he wore professionally pressed charcoal slacks, a white Oxford cloth button-down, only one button undone, and classic Bass loafers. Besides his belt, his only accessory was the Breitling Navitimer watch she’d bought him for his sixty-fifth birthday last year.

She loved him so, so much, her quiet, careful father. When her dads had been in love, Pom called Pops his ‘kite string,’ keeping hold of him so he didn’t fly off into the ether. And Pops had called Pom his ‘sparkle.’ They’d been a perfect example of opposites attracting, each filling in the lack in the other.

But when their love had started to form cracks in the foundation, the first thing they’d lost is patience for their differences. Instead of a ‘kite string,’ Pom had begun to see Pops’ methodical, prudent approach to life as a noose. And instead of sparkle, Pops had become frustrated by Pom’s ‘attention-seeking.’ They’d held on far longer than they should have, because they hadn’t wanted Autumn to lose her foundation of a happy home.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t been nearly as circumspect about their decaying relationship as they’d believed. Autumn had seen it happening, but nobody—least of all her—had wanted to talk about it. Even Pom had been buttoned up about it. As a result, she’d been doing this equity dance between them since long before they’d taken off their wedding rings. Now this gentle, benignly intended tug of war was simply a feature of their relationships.

She set a plate before Pops and kissed the top of his head, still lush with ruddy blond hair, though it was thickly streaked with white now. “Happy birthday, Pops.”

He reached up and held her head to his for an extra beat. “Love you, little lassie.”

“You look like your mind is busy,” she said as she sat down across from him with her own plate and glass.

“Not especially. But this looks beautiful.” He picked up his silverware and cut into the salmon. His eyes rolled back with his first bite. “Perfection. You’re such a good cook, honey.”

“Thank you. I love cooking for you. You don’t want to talk about what’s on your mind tonight?”

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