Page 63 of Shortcake
We stayed until Mom’s last dying breath.
We stayed until it was too painful to stay any longer.
And with the final gift she gave us—the income of her Brooklyn townhouse—I’d made the choice to buy this beautiful home with private lake access in the quaint, sleepy town where I’d always loved spending my summer camp weeks at.
I make a good salary. But without the added help of New York real estate, I never would have been able to afford this home. It was a mansion compared to where we’d been living in Brooklyn.
Thank you, Mom.
Even in death, she’d found a way to take care of us.
“Ugh, cooking looks so boring,” Harper scoffed, breaking me from my thoughts.
Addy made an exaggerated hurt sound and clutched her heart. “Cooking isn’t boring!”
“You’re right. The monotony of slicing vegetables in exact diameter time after time isn’t boring at all,” I joked. I was with Harper on this one. There was a reason Harper and I ordered pizza every week and managed to live on sandwiches, mac and cheese, and cereal.
Harper offered me her fist and I bumped it with my free hand. “Dad gets it.”
Dad gets it.The phrase sent a spiral of happiness through me. My daughter was talking to me again. And not just one-word grunts.
“Can I go up and read?”
I hid my smile and nodded. “Sure. We’ll order a pizza or something when Addy leaves.”
“Sweet!” Harper bounded upstairs and for such a skinny thing, it sounded like an elephant was charging up the stairs.
“She’s reading,” I whispered to Addy. “You made her excited to read. Thank you.”
Addy slid me a soft smile, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Happy to help.”
Outside, the sun was slipping down the horizon rapidly. The water line cut it in half so that it looked like half an orange slice coming out of the lake. “Can I ask you something?”
Her eyes darted cautiously to me, then dipped back to the sliced vegetables.Thwack.“Why do people do that?” She sliced the final disk of onion before one by one, started placing them in a casserole dish, alternating vegetables.
My slices of zucchini and eggplant were way less uniformed than hers and it messed up the whole balanced aesthetic of her dish.
The meticulous movement mesmerized me. I was grateful to have something to stare at that wasn’t her eyes, mouth, or body. “Do what?” I asked.
“Ask to ask something. Clearly, I’m going to sayyes, go ahead. So why bother getting the permission?”
I blinked, more confused by her sudden offense than anything. “I don’t think the answer would be clearlyyes, go ahead. You seem a little distant after the bookstore, so I wanted to tread carefully before asking something that might be personal.”
She whipped around to face me, hands on her hips. “Iseem distant?You’rethe one who kissed me, then very quickly told me it would never happen again. Apologizing like I was… like I was some sort of mistake.”
I winced at the way her voice cracked.
Shit. I’d hurt her. Embarrassed her at the very least. I didn’t make any pretense to believing that a girl as young and vivacious and gorgeous as Addy would actually want a grumpy old stick in the mud like me. At least not outside of a single one-night-stand together.
But we’d already had our one-night-stand and she still wanted me. I pushed away that little voice of reason. Because somehow, her wanting me was even more terrifying.
Addy and I had been lucky with our one and done weekend. I’d not been as lucky with Meghan. That night had made me a father of a little girl with an estranged mother who ran as far and fast away as she could have after giving birth.
Nope. I couldn’t have Addy. For several reasons, ranging from our age difference to me being the new sheriff to her obvious distaste of cops to me being her landlord…
But most of all, I couldn’t have Addy, not even for a night, because I knew I’d want to keep her.
Forever.
