Page 5 of Thanksgiving Daddy's Girl
Howie looks from me to Maeve then back again. I give him a shrug.
“Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”
“You guys just seem tense.”
“No,” I say. “I’m not tense. I’m fine. Maeve?”
She shakes her head. “I’m fine too.”
Howie arches an eyebrow and stares at us, his face pinched with disbelief. The last thing I need is for him to know his daughter spent the morning teasing the shit out of me in her white bikini and I spent the afternoon jerking myself off in the shower to her… which is something I still can’t quite believe either. Never in my worst nightmare would I have ever thought I’d be jerking off to the image of a little girl who used to call me “uncle.” For fuck’s sake.
“What are you two up to?” Howie asks.
“Nothing,” I say quickly… probably too quickly.
Howie was always the more perceptive one between us. We are both tech savvy and business wise, but Howie has always had an inherent bullshit meter. He has a way with people I could never have. He can read them, see through their bullshit, and get to the truth of things better than I could ever dream of. It’s why he was the best choice to be the public face of our company while I worked behind the scenes. Unfortunately, he’s now turning that bullshit meter on us and I’m flailing because there’s been this unspoken tension between us all bloody day.
“Myles and I were talking about Thanksgiving today,” Maeve said. “And we just weren’t sure what you might think of it.”
Howie turns to her. “What about it?”
She shrugs. “We were just talking about how nice it might be to actually make Thanksgiving dinner this year. You know, some of mom’s favorites. We thought it might be nice to kind of have her with us this year.”
Howie’s face clouds over and I can see the emotion percolating below the surface and his suspicion quickly fades. I hate to see him upset by the memory of his lost love, but God bless Maeve for being quicker on her feet than I am. She reaches across the table and lays her hand over her dad’s, and he puts his other hand on top of hers.
“I miss her too, Dad. And it’s not that I don’t like going out to dinner and all, but maybe it’s time we start a new tradition,” she says gently.
“By resurrecting old traditions?”
She nods. “Yeah. I know Mom wouldn’t want us to spend the rest of our lives mourning her. I know for a fact that she’d want us to celebrate and enjoy the day like she used to do.”
Howie’s eyes shimmered, wet with tears and I want to take the man into a firm embrace and tell him it’s okay. But the moment doesn’t seem quite right for it. This moment is for him and Maeve, so I let them be.
“I miss her,” he says, his voice quavering.
“I do too, Dad. Every single day,” she says. “But Mom loved life. She loved living. And she’d want us to live and love life the way she did. She’d want us to find joy again. Most of all, she’d want you to live and find joy in your life again. I think you know that.”
“It’s so hard. Life without her is hard.”
“I know it is. But what was it she always used to say?”
A faint smile traced his lips and a light I haven’t seen in his eyes since Gwenny died started to flicker. A small laugh drifted from his mouth.
“She used to say that life gives us hard parts to make the rest of it all that much sweeter,” he says quietly. “And that life is meant to be lived joyfully.”
“That’s right. That’s what she said,” Maeve says. “And I can’t think of a better way to honor her memory than by doing that… living joyfully. And that includes making one of her favorite holidays as joyful as we can make it.”
Howie stares at his daughter with an unmistakable light of pride in his face. It’s a feeling I’m slightly envious of, to be honest. I’ve always wanted to have a child I could look at with pride in my eyes. But that’s never seemed to be in the cards for me. I do loveseeing Howie look at his daughter that way though. It gives me a vicarious rush of pride since it’s probably as close as I’ll come to it.
“You’re right,” Howie says. “Okay. We’ll do Thanksgiving the way your mom would want us to do it this year. We’ll start a new tradition by bringing back the old traditions.”
Maeve jumps up and comes around the table, throwing her arms around her father’s neck from behind. He laughs as she kisses him on the cheek.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“When did my daughter become so wise?”
“Don’t worry about a thing, Dad. Myles and I will handle everything,” she says. “It’ll be the best Thanksgiving we’ve had in a long time.”
