Page 20 of The Fire We Crave

I take a deep breath and dial his number, before setting my phone on the counter on speaker phone.

He’s weirdly old-school and doesn’t like text messaging.

“Ben Moran,” he says officiously.

“Hey, Dad. How are you?”

“Quinn?” he asks. The single word goes up at the end in a question.

There’s only me and Silas left. How many other people call himDad?

Or maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that question.

“Yes. I wondered if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”

There’s a rustle on the other end of the line and then a mumbled conversation I’m probably not meant to hear.

It’s my daughter. I’ll wrap it up quick.

Great. Nothing like knowing that after not speaking to him for a month, a month in which he missed my birthday, I’m not worth his time.

“What’s up, Quinn?” he asks.

“I was wondering how you would feel if I came to stay with you for a little while?”

There’s a long pause. “For how long, and when?”

“Now, and for a month.”

“A whole month?”

That’s generally what a month means.

But as always, I backtrack quickly.

“Or a couple of weeks, maybe. There was a break-in at the bakery. I?—”

“Did you call the cops?”

“Of course. But they came back a second time, they?—”

“Why did you not shore up security after the first time?”

“It’s not that simple, I?—”

“Was anything stolen? Broken?”

I look down at a small chip in the marble island top. “Dad. Can you stop interrupting and I’ll explain? It’s an extortion scam. It’s happening to a few businesses. I’m one of them. They tied me up, Dad. They assaulted me.”

“Jesus, Quinn. You need to take better care of yourself and the bakery.”

I want to rage. Against him. Against the men who broke into my bakery. For years after Melody went missing, I slept with a broom tucked behind my bedroom door handle as a makeshift lock.

Only my father could put me, a human being, and the bakery, an inanimate building, in the same sentence of care.

“I’m recovering okay, by the way,” I say passive-aggressively. “There are still scars around my wrists that are healing every day.”

Dad takes a breath. “I’m glad to hear that. But it sounds like, if there’s trouble, you’d be better off staying where you are to make sure the bakery is okay. Would hate for Melody to come back and?—”

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