Page 13 of Hold on Tight

“Christ,” said her father. “Do you know anything about the circumstances? Where was he? Iraq? Afghanistan?”

When she didn’t respond, he sighed. “I think you need to call a lawyer.”

“Why?”

“What if he wants to have some kind of relationship with Sam?”

“What if he does?” For a second, she let herself fantasize about it. About what it might mean to Sam.A father. For so many years, he’d been stoic about his fatherless status, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t bother him.

“Mira, I think you need to think these things through more.”

She had to take several deep breaths.

“A lawyer could help you anticipate potential consequences. The best defense is a good offense.”

“Defense against what?”

“What if he wants visitation? Custody?”

“Why would he?”

“He might. Now that he knows. You could spend the rest of your life negotiating the terms of where Sam will be, when.”

“Hon, stop, you’re going to upset her,” Lani said. “I don’t see how a lawyer changes things, anyway. There’s nothing she can do to keep him from seeing Sam, if he’s the father.”

“She can put more distance between them.”

“How?”

“Move back.”

“Dad, come on.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lani said.

Her father had hated the idea of the move.Hatedit. Lani had done her level best to help him understand how important it was for Mira to make her own life, and what a great opportunity the job was. How important it was for Sam to see different parts of the country. “Plus we’ll be able to have time together. To travel,” Lani had told her father.

When her father had stayed adamant that he believed Mira was making a mistake, Lani had helped bolster Mira’s determination to go anyway. “I love him to death,” Lani had said to her. “But it’s time for you to do this. If you stay here—”

She hadn’t had to finish the sentence. They both knew Doug wouldn’t give Mira the space to grow up as long as she was under his roof.

The jobwasa terrific opportunity. It turned out that Mira had an unexpected talent for programming, which she’d discovered while taking an online coding class whose teacher turned out to be Seattle-based. Mira had written an app for the class, trying to find something that would take the sting out of a finals period spent in solitude in her bedroom, online, instead of partying with friends on a college campus. She’d been half brainstorming, half shoe shopping, and she’d thought to herself for the ten thousandth time that she’d be ever so much more likely to buy shoes online if she could see them with one of her outfits. She lost a week’s sleep writing code, but when she was done, she had “If the Shoe Fits.” If you took a barefoot picture of yourself in a particular outfit, the app would show you what you’d look like in a given pair of shoes—more or less.

A lark. A homework assignment.

And, it turned out, the ticket to gainful employment. Her professor worked full-time for an e-tailer that had acquired an online shoe-seller. The group was hiring, and he’d connected her with Haley, who loved Mira’s app and was looking for people in Seattle who had both technical talent and people savvy.

At first, Mira hadn’t wanted the job. She’d listened intently to Haley’s job description and sold herself dutifully in phone interviews, but she’d thought,I’d have to be crazy. Because in Fort Myers, she had everything queued up for her: a safe, warm, comfortable home, people who shared the cooking and cleaning tasks, free childcare. A built-in family for Sam. A safety net. If sometimes it felt more like a wet blanket, well, that wasn’t such a high price.

And then, twenty-four hours before she owed Haley an answer, she’d been out with her boyfriend, Aaron, and they’d driven up to an espresso shack. He’d tossed his wallet in her lap so she could restore his money to the leather folds, and she’d seen it. Nestled in there. A check. Her father’s handwriting.

She hadn’t thought. She acted on instinct. She pulled the check out. “What’s this?”

He glanced over, then did a double take. “Oh,” he said. Only that.Oh.

“Aaron?”

She was having trouble catching her breath. In the lower left-hand corner of the check it said,Dinner for two.

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