Page 44 of Roads Behind Us
“What’s this about?” he asked me, nodding after my precocious kid. Was that a guilty grin on his face? He’d been trying to conceal it, but it was plain to see. He was in on the matchmaking thing with my daughter. I knew it now like I knew my own name.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
Yeah, Athena and Rye were in on it together, but Athena’s reasoning was still a mystery to me. Was it just that she liked having a woman around? Had I fucked up the single-parent thing so much that my kid was desperate for another adult to tag in?
Rye’s distraction had worked, but Athena was quick, and as soon as she led the buckskin mare I’d bought for her out of the barn, she started up with the questions again.
Rye threw me an apologetic smile, took the lead from Athena’s hand, shrugged, and then she and I watched from the fence as he exercised Tulsa in our ring and got her ready to ride. He’d been working with her for weeks, but it looked like the horse was finally ready.
“Are you gonna ask Bea on a date?” Athena asked, peering up at me with her hand shading her eyes from the sun.
The sip of water I’d just taken from the plastic bottle hanging from a lanyard around my neck spewed from my mouth as I coughed. My resourceful daughter was worried about me getting dehydrated, and if I didn’t drain the bottle, its weight gave me a nasty ache in my shoulders.
“What? I bet you’d have fun.”
Taking the hat off my head, I dropped it onto Athena’s. “Where’s your hat?” She shrugged and adjusted mine to shade her eyes better. The light-colored straw material brought out the highlights in her hair that reminded me of Candy. Soon the weather would demand my felt hat, and the smooth, dark-gray color didn’t remind me of my dead wife at all.
“Athena, I’m not really in a position to take a woman out on a date right now,” I said, trying to swipe the water off my shirt and not fall over, but even if I wasn’t reliant on crutches, her questions still would’ve made me unsteady.
“Why not? Bea could drive. I get that your manly, misogynistic view of the world makes you want to drive, but Bea’s a strong lady. She won’t mind. And then y’all could go get dinner or see a movie or somethin’.”
“Did you just call me a misogynist?” I asked, and Athena cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously? I just let my not-yet-fourteen-year-old daughter drive me in a tractor. How’s that misogynistic?”
“Good point,” she said. “I take it back. But I stand firm on the manly comment.”
“Road Trip, where’s this comin’ from? You and me, we’re doin’ okay on our own, right?”
She sighed and turned her head to watch Rye lunge Tulsa around the ring. “Sure, Daddy. We are.”
“Talk to me, baby. What’s goin’ on in that head of yours?”
She tossed her shoulders again. “It’s nothin’.”
“Athena.”
Taking a deep breath, she chewed on her lip and turned back my way. “I dunno. I just thought… I thought maybe, if you had a girlfriend, you’d smile more. You used to smile a lot before Mama died.”
Here it was—proof of the weight of my happiness.
“I’m sorry I’ve made you worry about me,” I said. “But I’m okay. You’re right that I smiled more when Mama was alive, but I’m not unhappy. How could I be with you around?”
“It’s not the same thing,” she argued.
“No, you’re right. It’s not.”
“Everybody needs someone to hug and kiss and love. Even me.”
My heart stuttered to a stop in my chest. “’Scuse me?”
Rye stopped fast in the middle of the pen, and Tulsa reared at his sudden movement. As soon as he had her back down on all four hooves, he called over to me, “What the hell did she just say?”
Athena rolled her eyes and took a step backward, out of the path of my oncoming dad tantrum.
“So, I kinda have a boyfriend,” she said, looking back and forth between Rye and me.
“This is, like, a ceremonial position, right, Athena?” Rye said. “You’re not gonna go on dates, are you? ’Cause I dunno if I can handle that.”
“Uncle Rye, cut it out,” she said with a good dose of exasperation lacing her tone.
