Page 56 of Nobody's Fool

“It’s okay.”

“I just… You didn’t raise me to walk away from a fight.”

“Yes, I did,” my father says, and then a wistful smile comes to his face. “But alas, your mother didn’t.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It is later that night, two in the morning, when Molly says, “I left you alone with your dad on purpose.”

Both of us are lying in the dark on our backs.

“I know.”

“Did it help?”

“He thinks we should start again.”

Silence.

“There’s a corporate security job in Florida for me. Apparently, it pays well.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I’m married to a fabulous woman, and I have a son with her. This isn’t just my decision.”

“Kind of patronizing.”

I smile in the dark. “I realized that the moment the words escaped my lips.”

“I wasn’t asking you to make a decision.”

“I know.”

“I wanted to know how you felt about it.”

“Right,” I say. “There are pros and cons.”

“Want to go over them?”

“At two in the morning?”

“Neither one of us seems able to sleep,” she says, turning to her side and putting a warm hand on my chest. “Pros: the weather.”

“Neither of us likes the cold,” I agree.

“The winters get long.”

“Yet we’ve lived here our whole lives.”

“Does that go in the con column against moving to Florida?” she asks.

“I think so.”

“We are from here,” she says. “We grew up here. We like it here.”

“Even if we don’t like the winters.”

Molly continues: “More pros. The rent would be cheaper in Florida.”

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