Page 112 of Shortcake
I swiped my thumb across the screen. “Meghan? Is everything okay?”
“Conrad!” she squelched in my ear. “It’s so nice to hear from you!”
Hear from me? “Youcalledme.” I pressed my fingers into my forehead and bit my tongue. No good came from saying my thoughts aloud. Not with Meghan. She marched to the beat of her own drums.
And her drummers were as insane as they were tone deaf.
“What’s going on, Meghan?” I asked. Straight forward. To the point. Keep her on topic… if that was at all possible.
“Does something have to be going on in order for me to call and catch up with you?”
I looked to the sky, overwhelmed by the bright stars that spackled the navy sky like someone had flicked a paintbrush over top of dark velvet. I inhaled a long, slow breath, allowing the beautiful sight to calm my nerves.
“No, but considering you haven’t called me in six years, I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s probably a reason for this one.”
“You moved,” she said simply.
“We did.”
“Aren’t you supposed to like, check with me about big life changes like that when it involves our daughter?”
I laughed. Actually laughed out loud. “You signed away all parental rights to Harper so you wouldn’t have to pay child support. I don’t have to check with you about shit when it comes tomydaughter.”
I would never have talked like this to Meghan in front of Harper. But my daughter was nowhere to be seen and my ex calling, pretending to be maternal after almost 16 years of being gone? Yeah, it was bullshit.
The truth was, I wanted Harper and Meghan to have a relationship, despite the fact that Meghan happily and quickly signed that sheet of paper relinquishing her title asmom.
It was why I encouraged their phone calls. And why I tried to get Meghan to visit as often as we could. She was always welcome in Harper’s life. She just wasn’t welcome to make decisions on our behalf.
Nope. She signed that away.
“She’s stillourdaughter,” Meghan whined. “Even if a court doesn’t say so.”
I snorted. “A lawyer might say differently.”
I heard a sharp inhale and a tiny little sniffle on the other end of the phone. Dammit. I softened, if only a little, Though I didn’t quite let my guard down yet. “We moved to New Hampshire. After my mom died, we both needed a change of scenery.”
“She seems to be adjusting well… finally,” Meghan said.
“Yeah. It was a rough start, but she’s liking it more and more. I think once school starts and she makes more friends, it’ll really start to feel like home.”
“I want to come visit,” Meghan blurted out.
Record scratch.
“Uh, what’s that?”
“It’s been a few years since my last visit. And I should see this new town. See where our daughter is living. Meet her new friends. See the new school.”
Harper’s mom hadn’t come for a visit in over four years.
Harper was eleven… maybe twelve the last time she had seen her mother in person. Sure, she had made other plans to visit, multiple times through the years, but they always managed to fall through.
So, even now, it felt like there was only a small chance that this trip would even happen.
Hell, she missed their phone dates half the time for whatever excuse she claimed to have.
I gulped, trying to swallow the golf-ball sized lump in my throat. As much as I didn’t want to see Meghan, this was Harper’s mother. A woman that no matter how angry she made me and how much I hated her for leaving us, I couldn’t just write out of my—our—lives.
