Page 21 of Stay Away from Him

Sulking.The word made Melissa wonder. Sulking about what? Abouther?

Thomas moved to the end of a staircase close to the front door and called up.

“Ree! Come out and say hello to Melissa.”

Above their heads, a door clicked open, and footsteps creaked down the hall.

Melissa shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “She doesn’t have to…”

But it was too late. In the darkened hall above, a teenage girl appeared. She looked a lot like Kendall, but older, her face sharpened, angular, and guarded where her sister’s had been rounded and open.

“What?” the girl asked from up the stairs.

“Aren’t you going to say hi to my friend? This is Melissa.”

“Hi,” Rhiannon said after a pause, her voice deadened. Then she turned and walked back to her room. The door clicked shut.

***

“I’m sorry about that,” Thomas said in the car.

“What?”

“Rhiannon. She was rude.”

“It’s fine,” Melissa said. She thought it was pretty obvious what Rhiannon’s coldness was about—and she didn’t blame the girl at all. Her dad was going on a date. And she wasn’t sure what she thought about it, at best. At worst—she hated it. Hated Melissa.

“She’s a great kid, actually,” Thomas said. “A great student. Honor roll. Varsity volleyball. She’ll be a senior in the fall.”

He drove through a tangle of winding suburban streets to adestination he hadn’t yet told her about. Steering and working the blinker with one hand, he draped the other casually on the console between him and Melissa.

“But she’s also gotten a little complicated the past few years. She used to be really sweet, like her sister. But now—well, you saw. She’s quieter than she used to be. Not as warm. Sullen. Sometimes she gets angry. I don’t know, we’re working through it.”

His voice was tight with pain and worry, and Melissa touched his hand, a light caress with the tips of her fingers.

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “It’s all right. I was Rhiannon’s age once. Kendall’s too. She’s, what?”

“Fifteen,” Thomas said.

“I thought so. Something happens to girls around their age, Thomas. They get complicated. Because life gets complicated forthem.”

Thomas sucked air, hissing through his teeth, his eyes pained as they gazed ahead at the road. Melissa knew he was imagining losing Kendall too—his sweet youngest daughter, slipping into the opaque depths of adolescence.

She touched him again, to bring him back to her, but this time she left her hand resting on his, and he gave her a brief look.

“They’re still your girls, though,” she said. “They’ll always be yours. And they’ll always love you.”

“You think so?”

“You’re a good dad. They feel safe with you. I can tell.”

Thomas blinked a few times, his lashes whipping up and down furiously, and he heaved a huge breath that seemed to bring him a measure of calm.

“They’ve had a rough go of it, is the other part,” Thomas said. “It’s not just their ages. It’s also their mother. Losing her. That was hard on everyone. Traumatic.”

“I know. I’ve heard.”

Underneath Melissa’s palm, Thomas’s hand tensed.

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