Page 8 of Tempest

“Oh my god,” Tori whispers. “That’s so badass.”

Badass? I’m not sure. Fortuitous? I sure hope not. Just my luck? Fucking probably. Tori seems as shocked by this revelation as I am. I guess her parents never mentioned they knew me. Why would they, though? Who was I to them? To Caroline, I would have been one of the artsy girls that never rated her attention as part of the elite high school student body. To Gavin…well, I was probably only a mistake he made that one summer. The girl he slummed it with while on a break from the girl he really loved.

It’s all water under the bridge, now, and thoughts that Tori never needs to hear. She’s not her parents and I won’t treat her any differently due to the pain they caused me all those years ago. My job is to nurture her talent and this young woman has that in spades.

“Why Seattle,” I ask her, knowing her roots match mine in New York state. With this portfolio, she could have gotten into Parsons.

“I missed my dad,” she says with an easy shrug. “He’s here, so I am, too. Besides, I don’t think the evolution of sustainable fashion will start in New York.”

I’ve avoided run-ins with Gavin and Caroline for damn near twenty years, but now, it may be inevitable. For the first time since I deplaned at SeaTac airport, I’m questioning my decisions.

3

Gavin

“Icannot believe you didn’t tell me,” Tori chastises me as she bounds through my front door, using the key I told her to keep when she moved out last week.

I cannot believe she’s already moved into her own apartment just a couple of blocks from school. It doesn’t seem right; she was just born. Or so it feels like. Time moves too fucking quickly for my liking.

In a couple of years, I’ll be forty and she’ll be old enough to have a drink at my birthday. How in the hell did this happen?

“I mean, she’s huge in the business. I’ve talked about her with you and Mom, and neither of you said anything. Not even when I told you she’d be my mentor. What’s up with that, Dad?”

“That’s complicated, kiddo,” I say, attempting to dismiss the conversation altogether. I should know better than to think she’ll so easily drop it.

“I’m not a toddler, I can handle complexities.”

“You’re a complexity.”

“I’m not, I was the easiest kid, and you know it. Now quit diverting, Dad.”

“That’s true, except when you were three and started bossing us around like you ruled the roost,” I say, trying another route away from her destination.

“Odette Quinn. Spill the tea or I’m going to jump to all the wrong conclusions,” Tori demands.

All her assumptions would probably hit closer to the truth than not, though. Telling her the story of her dad being an asshole to the kindest girl he ever knew isn’t something I want to do. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, ghosting Odette is the biggest. It’s the one that keeps me up at night, even now, thinking of all the ways I could have handled the situation.

All the ways I should have.

I wasn’t upfront and honest with her. And now I’m not being either of those things with the most important person in my life. Again.

I’m not sure how Tori will handle the whole story. Will she feel guilty for her unwitting part in the story? I’d never want that. I’ve never wanted her to know the truth of our family and those we’ve hurt along the way.

Then again, maybe Odette didn’t drown in the same sea of sorrow I did. She was strong, so independent. She had the world waiting to fall at her feet. Maybe that’s what happened. I’ve long tortured myself with the idea that she moved to the city, made a name for herself, and had some wealthy, well put together man who’d follow her wherever she wanted to go. Odette deserved nothing less. I wanted to be the man who gave her everything. Or everything that she couldn’t attain by herself, anyway.

“I cared about her once. A great deal and a long time ago,” I finally say, unwilling to lie. She’d see through it anyhow.

“Before you and Mom?”

Fuck.

“No, kiddo. Not exactly.”

“Not exactly? What does that mean, Dad?”

“It means that for a time before your mother and I were married, we weren’t together.”

“How much time,” she asks, more concern in her tone now than the disgust that was there a moment ago.

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