Chapter Twenty-Nine GRAHAM
Chapter Twenty-Nine
GRAHAM
“Why did you do that?” Allie asked, her chin set in a mulish line and her eyes flashing. We were at the kitchen table, and I hadn’t had enough coffee yet.
“Do what?”
“Stop being friends with Madison.”
“I’m still friends with Madison,” I insisted.
Allie’s curls bounced with the sharp shake of her head. “When we saw her at Firehouse, you were all polite and weird. I thought you actually liked her.”
God save me from my way too perceptive daughter. “I do like her.”
“You like her, like her?” my daughter pressed.
I bit back a groan. “I like her as a neighbor and a friend.” I paused to take a gulp of coffee.
Allie blinked at me. “I think you’re being stupid. Gram said you were upset because Madison told me it wasn’t a big deal to get caught smoking. You took it out of context.”
Fuck my life. Why did teenagers have to be so pushy? “You’re right. I did take it out of context. Madison explained, and I’m not upset.”
Allie sighed. “Why do you use me as an excuse?” she asked next.
“What are you talking about?” I muttered, dipping my head and taking a deep breath. We’d already covered this topic, but here we were again. I slid my hand through my hair as I straightened.
“You never date, and I’m your excuse.”
“You’re not an excuse, Allie. You’re a priority.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think so. I want you to go apologize to Madison about your weird attitude.”
I almost burst out laughing because she was talking to me like I was a bratty kid. I blinked at her. “Allie, this isn’t your issue.”
“It is. I want to be friends with her.”
“You are friends with her.”
“Yeah, but it’s weird if you’re weird about her.”
This conversation was going in circles, but pointing that out wouldn’t change it. So, I said, “If you want to go spend time with Madison, just let me know when you’ll be back.”
Allie stood from the table. “You’re avoiding my point,” she said pointedly, complete with her index finger pointed right at me.
“Lots of pointing,” I observed.
She rolled her eyes and went to put her cereal bowl in the sink before flouncing out of the room and going into her bedroom. It was Saturday, and it had been two full weeks since my weekend with Madison.
My daughter might be right, and that was uncomfortable.
Even more uncomfortable was how much I missed Madison.
I missed her so much my heart ached. I missed her so much I’d looked at those online photos of her more than I wanted to admit, just because she was so beautiful.
I shook my head and took a deep breath. This would pass. It had to.
My thoughts were taken off of Madison when my phone rang. Glancing at the screen. I saw Allie’s mother’s number flashing. Great, fucking great. Not who I wanted to talk to now, but I might as well get it over with. I swiped my thumb across the screen.
“Hi, Alison. What’s up?”
“I was thinking of scheduling another visit,” she said easily.
I was already cranky. Her entitlement rankled me. “I really don’t want you to talk to Allie about it until you’re actually here.”
“Graham, that’s not fair,” she said, sounding all affronted.
I couldn’t find a single fuck to give for her feelings. “You’ve let Allie down more than once. I can’t trust you to be reliable,” I said flatly.
Just then, Allie appeared in the kitchen as if she had a radar and knew that her mom was on the phone. Crossing her arms, she leaned her shoulder against the archway into the kitchen.
Meanwhile, her mother said, “You’re being ridiculous.”
I took a breath, letting it out slowly. “No, I’m not. Just let me know when you’re planning for, and we’ll figure it out from there.” I hung up before she could say anything else.
Allie glared at me, her eyes glistening with tears. “That was Mom, wasn’t it?”
“It was.” I’d promised myself to always be honest about these things.
“Is she coming to visit?”
“She said she’d like to plan another trip. I told her to confirm when she was actually here.”
I braced myself because I’d long ago learned that I was the one who absorbed my daughter’s anger at her mother.
Allie blinked and lifted her chin. “I’m old enough to handle it if she cancels.”
“I know you are, hon.”
I approached her because I wanted to hug her, but she was having none of it. She was the teenage equivalent of a cactus. She blinked rapidly and took a step back, shaking her head. “It’s okay, Dad.”
She spun around and dashed down the hall, slamming her bedroom door loudly.
I was grateful she had a sturdy door. Taking a breath, I let it out in a sigh and turned to slump into a chair by the kitchen table.
Nothing could prepare me for how much I wanted to make everything okay for my child.
I wanted to wrap her in bubble wrap, but I couldn’t.
Allie ended up leaving for the day to go to a friend’s house. I thought that was for the best. She needed breathing room from me, and I could use a break from her prickly silent treatment.
I was outside chopping wood later that afternoon when I heard a piercing bark. Glancing up, I saw Wilbur coming through the trees from Madison’s property.
This was strange. He’d never once come over here, and I knew she didn’t let him wander. When he reached me, I knelt to pet him. As soon as I straightened, he barked again, looking toward the path between our properties.
“What’s up?” I asked conversationally.
He answered with another bark. I set the ax down and snagged my jacket from where it rested on the woodpile. Shrugging into it, I tugged off my leather gloves. I decided to follow him over to her place. I told myself it was nothing.
I couldn’t shake the unease slithering down my spine, though. We passed the entrance to the hunting trail that led into the valley. Wilbur stopped there and barked several times. I kept walking to Madison’s place. I was finally thinking of it as hers, instead of her grandfather’s.
My heart twisted sharply at that. I’d felt this echoing ache for two full weeks, missing her and missing the anticipation of maybe seeing her again.
I’d created a chasm between us, and I didn’t know how to cross it. We got to her house, but there was no sign of Madison. Her door was unlocked, and when I walked in, nothing but an echoing silence greeted me. Wilbur didn’t even come into the house. He stood by the door and barked.
“Bud, I wish you could tell me where she was.”
He trotted down the steps, glancing over his shoulder and waiting. “Okay,” I said. “Take me to her.”
My unease had shifted into full-blown worry. I patted my jacket pocket to make sure I had my cell phone, then Wilbur and I set out. I followed as he turned up the hunting trail I’d pointed out to her a few weeks ago. He trotted along at a good clip for such short legs.
We’d gone about two miles when Wilbur stopped by an opening in the trees. The view offered a nice panorama of the valley and the mountain ridge on the far side.
He barked again, and I stared down at him. “Wilbur, I don’t know where she is.”
He startled me when he darted off the trail and began to make his way down into the valley.
None of this made sense, but at this point, Wilbur was my only guide.
I elected to follow him and promptly discovered he was far more nimble than me.
He dashed around boulders and ducked under the brush with ease.
Just as I was starting to think we needed to turn back because this wasn’t going to work, he barked again.
Looking ahead, I saw him perched on a boulder.
I followed his gaze to see a flash of bright blue.
It was the same blue as the down jacket I’d seen Madison wearing the other day at the café. She must’ve veered off the main trail.
Distracted, I took a step and slipped, one of my feet catching on the thick underbrush. My elbow struck a boulder as my feet gave out. I let out a sharp grunt of pain. Wilbur glanced back, trotted to me, and nipped at my knee impatiently.
The reverberating nerve pain radiated from my elbow up to my shoulder as I shook my arm. I took the moment to glance around and then clambered to my feet again. “All right, bud, get me to Madison.”
I didn’t think this route was how Madison had gotten to where she was, but Wilbur had settled on a shortcut. I cupped my hands around my mouth, calling, “Madison!”
A moment later, I heard her voice in return. “Over here! Is that you, Graham?”
Relief rushed through me. “It’s me. Wilbur found a shortcut. Are you okay?”
“Yes!” she called in return.
Wilbur picked up his speed at the sound of her voice.
He ducked under a fallen tree while I had to climb over it.
I kept my eyes on that patch of royal blue.
As we got closer, I could make out her shape and realized she was sitting on a small boulder partially obscured by trees.
I didn’t know how long it took us to get to her, maybe another ten minutes, but it felt like forever.
When Wilbur got to her side, he leaped onto the boulder, nuzzling into her and licking her face. I pushed through the tree branches, my heart pounding in an unsteady, reckless beat. A mix of worry and relief rushed through me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked when I finally reached her.
Madison looked a little dazed as she stared at me, and she was shivering. “What the hell happened?” I asked when I stopped beside her. My heart felt squeezed tight.
I quickly shrugged out of my jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She blinked at me. “I don’t know. I fell.”
I quickly brushed her hair to the side, my gaze traveling over her scraped cheek. There was a thin trail of dried blood right inside her hairline. “You must’ve hit your head.” Panic struck me, but I forced myself to focus.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
Madison obediently counted out three. I ran through several more tests to assess her basic mental function. “If you have a concussion, it’s mild. I’m guessing you knocked yourself out, so Wilbur came to find me.”
My eyes scanned the area, following along the steep incline directly above. “Do you remember falling?”
She nodded. “I slipped on some damp leaves up there. I don’t know where my phone is. When I came to, Wilbur was gone.”
She was still shaking. I knew the quickest thing to do was to get her back home. Even if I called for help, we could be home by the time they got here.
“Can you walk?”
Her head bobbed up and down quickly. “I walked around calling for Wilbur already.”
I eyed the cliff before looking back at Madison again. “Let’s go. We’ll take the shortcut. I’m worried you’re almost hypothermic.”
“I’m fine, just a little cold,” she insisted, although her teeth were chattering.
We were at a high enough elevation that frost had created patches of ice in the shade.
“Wilbur took off. It’s only been a half an hour or so, and I was just waiting.”
“Why didn’t you call?” I asked, guilt tangling into my worry. I knew I’d deliberately kept my distance from her.
“I just told you I lost my phone. It fell out of my pocket. I was going to start walking again and figure it out, but I was worried about where Wilbur went.”
“I’ll call your phone. I’m sure we can find it.” My eyes scanned the area again, lingering on the steep and rocky incline where she’d slipped down. When my gaze arced to her, I asked, “What happened to your face?”
“When I fell, I must’ve scraped it on some branches on the way down,” she muttered.
As soon as I dialed her phone, a song broke out. Specifically, Linda Ronstadt’s “You’re No Good.” I gave her a quizzical look.
“That’s your new song,” she said pertly.
I was torn between being affronted and relieved she felt good enough to have an attitude. I simply shook my head, listening for the song as I walked around at the base of the hill. After another call, I fished it out of the leaves and brought it to her.
“You ready to go?”
She nodded. “I don’t think we can get up there.”
I eyed the hill. “Probably not. We’ll take Wilbur’s shortcut. He’s faster than us, but it works.”
When Madison stood, and I looked down at her, I wanted to hold her, so I did. Stepping closer, I smoothed her tangled hair away from her eyes. Lightly brushing my knuckles over her scraped cheek, I asked, “Does it hurt?”
“A little. It stings more than anything,” she replied as she looked up at me.
“I missed you.”
My words surprised me. Not because I didn’t mean them or feel them deeply, but because I wasn’t prone to expressing myself.
“I thought you were mad at me,” she whispered.
I shook my head. “I was mad at myself.”
“For what?”
Wilbur barked, breaking into our conversation. I smiled down at him. “Let’s get you home, and then we’ll talk.” He barked again, clearly impatient with us. I cast a rueful smile at her. “I think Wilbur wants to go.”
“Ya think?” she teased lightly.
Madison was mostly fine, I hoped, but I felt a mess inside. My heart had tripped and fallen and was skidding sideways. I didn’t know how this was even possible, but I loved Madison.
She’d slipped through my defenses like a thin ribbon of air around the edge of a window.
I didn’t even think she’d tried. Yet here she was—this beautiful, out of her element woman and former homecoming queen—giving me a slightly impatient look as she stared up at me.
I wanted to tell her how I felt right this second, but I didn’t even know if I was ready, much less her.
When Wilbur barked again. I reached for her hand. We made our way back to the main path by following Wilbur. Despite pushing branches out of the way and climbing over a few boulders, I managed to keep a hold of her hand every step of the way.
When we reached the main trail, Wilbur’s step was almost jaunty now. He kept glancing back toward Madison and then circling our ankles. At one point, my eyes slid sideways to Madison’s, and I asked, “Corgis are herding dogs, right?”
She nodded and let out a soft laugh. The sound spun around my heart like a lasso cinching. When we reached the juncture where the trail intersected with the path between our houses, I looked down at her.