Chapter 36
As November gave way to December, the skies over Henderson turned as gray as steel.
Six mornings a week, Nick drove to work and prayed for a sliver of sunshine, for some spot of color to open up, but winter
had gripped Indiana in earnest. It had gripped him, too. Whenever he turned his attention inward, he confronted a bleak, cold
storm even the blast furnaces couldn’t thaw.
Because Aubrey was gone. Tansy hardly spoke to him anymore. Even Paige, who’d reclaimed her sunniness inch by inch in the
past few weeks, hadn’t once brought up the elephantine truth that weighed on him day in and day out. She came and went, kissed
his cheek and teased him with bad puns, but a wall had risen between them he couldn’t seem to scale. And every time he considered
hashing it out with her, his stomach shrank to a queasy pebble.
Today, he donned his protective equipment and nodded at Jackson as he took up his post.
Jackson just shook his head.
Great. Even his best friend had lost all hope.
“Man, you have got to talk to somebody,” Jackson said. “You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”
Nick grunted and wandered off, seeking the violent heat of the furnace. Talking wouldn’t do him any good. He’d poured himself out, bled words until he’d run dry, and what did he have to show for it?
Nothing. Except the false, cruel hope that, twenty-three months from now, he might have a shot at happiness. Well, twenty-one,
if he worked backward from the time Paige would move out.
Not that he was counting, or anything.
At least, he shouldn’t be, because he didn’t trust it. He’d once lost Aubrey in the span of two weeks. Two fucking weeks.
Compared to that, twenty-one months was a lifetime, and so he knew exactly what awaited at the end of that countdown, what
had always awaited him when it came to Aubrey MacLean. She’d probably be married by then. It was a miracle she wasn’t already.
He would still track her down, of course. Make himself congratulate her. Then he’d proceed to go die a brokenhearted death,
somewhere private.
But for now, he read her letter each night until his soul cracked. He took more showers than ever, no longer fueled by memories
worn thin by decades, but by the very real agony of knowing exactly what she felt like. She was all cream and silk and sunshine—nothing
like the roughened hand he tried to placate himself with.
When the showers failed him, he fought.
He drank too much.
He wondered if his daughter-who-wasn’t still loved him.
He filed for divorce. Which felt redundant; his mind had divorced Tansy years ago.
But he wanted the law to reflect reality, so he worked out an agreement with her that didn’t involve lawyers.
She got the house, he kept his retirement accounts.
Simple. Now he only had to wait for the decision to grind its way through the wheels of the legal system.
Any day now, he would receive an official statement informing him that he was utterly—and now legally—completely fucking alone.
One morning, he sat down to breakfast and realized Paige’s winter break had begun. It had crept up on him, somehow. Materialized
out of the fog.
“Daddy?” She reached over the table and took his hand. “Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”
He summoned a bent smile. “I’m fine, Peanut. How’re you? How’d exams go?”
She shrugged. “Fine. A’s across the board.”
A flicker of true warmth heated his smile. “Of course.”
“Of course. Hey . . .” Her thumb grazed across the backs of his fingers. “What’re you doing today? Do you have any plans?”
He waded through the haze cobwebbing his mind. It was Sunday, which he hated. Sundays were empty and formless, offering nothing
in the way of distraction. “I don’t know. I’ll probably spar with Jackson, later. Why?”
A hopeful spark lit her eyes. “What if we drove up to Chicago, instead? Checked out the holiday lights?”
He almost choked. He couldn’t get his agreement out fast enough.
Paige grinned. “Aww. You’re excited. That lights me up inside. Get it?”
Everything in him softened, but he still played along. “Wow. Don’t quit your day job, kid.”
She giggled. “But my day job is being awesome. I couldn’t quit that if I tried.”
He snorted, then gave in to a full-blown laugh. The sound startled him. He hadn’t heard it in so long. “If you say so.”
In the car, Paige chirped about one thing after another. Mostly having to do with college admissions. Half an hour in, her
phone pinged. She pulled it out and squealed at the name on the screen.
“Maria?” he said, with a lift of his eyebrow.
“No. Aubrey.”
The name dumped a shot of ice water into his veins. “Aubrey?”
“Yep.”
“Why the hell is Aubrey texting you?”
Paige turned. He didn’t like the look on her face—much too sly. “Because. I texted her first.”
His fingers tightened around the wheel. “About?”
“Here. Read it.” She offered him the phone.
He glowered. “I’m driving.”
“Fine. I’ll read it to you. But at least look at the picture, first.” Paige flashed the screen, which showed her at school,
flexing beside a line of math trophies longer than his arm. “I sent this to her and wrote, ‘Sorry, but the queen has been
dethroned. Actually, on second thought, I’m not sorry at all.’”
He snorted. “What’d she say back?”
Paige read off the message. “‘Congratulations. I knew you could do it, and I can’t think of a more worthy successor.’ Then
a little heart emoji.”
Raw emotion punched him in the chest. “She likes you.”
“Yeah. I like her, too.”
When he said nothing, Paige sniffed. “Like, a lot. You know that, right?”
He did. He wished he didn’t.
He pointed at a sign rising in the distance. “Hey, look. A Waffle House. We haven’t been to one of those in ages. What do
you say we stop in and have pancakes for lunch?”
“Pancakes?” Paige said flatly. “I want to talk about Aubrey, and you try to distract me with pancakes?”
“Yeah. Is it working?”
“Ugh,” she said. “You’re impossible.”
Yeah. Didn’t he know it.
An hour after lunch, when they finally reached Chicago, they parked downtown, then spent an hour browsing a bookstore that made Nick feel like a kid in a candy factory.
Afterward, they bought hot apple ciders from a streetside vendor and wandered down the Magnificent Mile, oohing and aahing at the cascade of lights while the day tilted toward dusk.
The mug warmed his palms through his gloves. He sipped, rolling the sweetness on his tongue and telling himself life wasn’t
so bad. At least until Paige pulled him onto a bench, set her cider aside, and fixed him with a stare about twenty years too
grown-up for his liking.
“So,” she said. “We are going to talk this out, before the day ends.”
He tensed and gulped the cider. It turned rancid on the way down. “Okay. I guess it’s been coming for a while.”
“Do you have anything you want to say? Up front?”
His throat thickened. “Er, no. Maybe. Just that . . . no matter what, I love you. I love you so much that no one’s invented
a word for it yet. Whether you’re my biological daughter or not, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. You’re still the best
and most important thing in my life, and that’s never going to change.”
Paige’s breath whooshed out of her. “Oh. Well, I know that. That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s . . . not?”
“Wait.” She studied him with no small amount of alarm. “Is that what’s had you all grouchy and broody for the past month?”
Nick frowned. “I don’t brood. Why is everyone always saying that?”
“Come on.” Her vivid blue eyes turned thoughtful. “I just . . . I thought you knew I figured out who my dad is weeks ago.”
His head rang inside, as if Jackson had just clocked him a good one. “What? How? Did Mom tell you? Because she said—”
Paige flung up a hand. “I don’t mean I figured out who the actual guy is. And please don’t give me a name. I don’t wanna know.
I just mean I know who my dad is. Because it’s you.”
Moisture clogged his eyes. He tried to summon words and failed.
“Aw. Daddy.” She scooted in and wrapped him in a side-hug. “I’m sorry. I should’ve realized.”
He swiped at his nose. “What, that I’ve been a wreck over it?”
“Yeah,” she said gently. “I mean, I’m not gonna lie, it’s been hard for me. Really hard. And at first, I wasn’t sure who to
question. You or Mom. I thought for a minute Aubrey might be my mom, when I found that letter. The timing lined up, at least.
And I always wondered where I got the red in my hair. So I thought maybe you’d gotten Aubrey pregnant and she’d gone off to
New York after having me, and . . . thinking about that sucked. Not that I don’t love her, I do. But I don’t think I could’ve
thought about Mom the same way, if she wasn’t really my mom. So I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I realized it was
you, instead. Because I do still think the same way about you. One hundred million percent.”
He sniffled. “One hundred million percent isn’t actually a thing.”
“It is in my world. You’ve made it that way. I don’t care where the sperm came from, or whatever. You’re my dad, and anyone
who says otherwise can fuck off.”
He jolted at her language. He’d never heard her curse before. He decided he loved it, and then he couldn’t hold back tears
any longer. Warmth welled up and coursed out of him.
Paige hugged him tighter. A woman passed by, pushing a stroller, her gaze widening in alarm.
What, you’ve never seen a grown man cry? On the shoulder of a sixteen-year-old girl?
He wept himself dry, and when he finished, he felt better than he had in weeks.
Paige didn’t let go until he straightened and scrubbed at his cheeks.
“I’ll tell you his name, someday,” he said. “If you want to know.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He doesn’t even know I exist, does he?”
Nick hesitated, his fist curling of its own accord. “He doesn’t know you’re his,” he said carefully.
“Then no. It doesn’t matter to me.”
His fingers relaxed. He hoped she never changed her mind. He planned to hoard that secret, strip it from existence by taking
it to the grave with him.
She let go and scooted back to her side of the bench. “Well, I’m glad that’s out of the way. Because I was trying to talk to you about Aubrey.”
He braced, or tried to, but his muscles had softened in the wake of his emotional outpouring. “What about her?”
“You love her.”
He held her eyes. She’d phrased it as a statement, not a question.
“A lot,” Paige said.
His jaw worked. He bought time with a sip of cider. Then dug deep for his courage and said, “Yeah. I do.”
Her entire countenance relaxed. “So why’d you let her go?”
He snorted. “Let her go? I didn’t. She got her job back. She chose to go.”
“But you didn’t go after her.”
“Yeah. Because my life is in Henderson.” He didn’t say, Because I have you. He didn’t want Paige to think this was in any way her fault. He’d sooner stab himself in the eye than let the blame so much as touch her.
“But you could move,” she said. “Now that you and Mom are finally getting divorced.”
Every nerve ending curled tight. “How’d you know about the divorce?”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“I absolutely don’t,” he ground out. “I just . . . I don’t know. Didn’t realize you were Sherlock fucking Holmes.”
“Enola,” she said meaningfully. “Enola Holmes. God, you’re so old.”
He stared, blank. He had no idea who that was.
“The point is,” Paige said blithely, “you could go. I don’t need you around every single day anymore. And Maria and I are
applying to NYU. That’s Aubrey’s alma mater, isn’t it? If we get in, I could live right down the street from you. You’d never
be rid of me. And best of all, you’d be happy. We both would.”
He blinked furiously. Oh, fuck. He was going to cry again. He dug his fingernails into his palms, anchoring himself to the
pain until the urge passed. He didn’t need to go scaring any more passing mothers.
“It’s not that easy,” he said hoarsely.
“Why not?” Paige’s smile reflected the Christmas lights, like she had a mouth full of sunshine. “You know, Aubrey told me
this thing, once, when we were out at the farm. ‘If life puts something in your way, go around it. If it knocks you down,
get right back up. If it sticks you—”
“Oh, Jesus,” Nick groaned. “Not you, too.”
“What? Don’t you think she has a point?”
An ache coalesced in his chest. Yes, she had a point. Maybe. But when he considered going to her, asking to be enough for
her now, panic spiraled along his nerves. The mere thought made him feel like he’d run into a solid wall, one deep within him. One he tried not to look at, but couldn’t help breaking himself against from time to time.
Paige peeked up at him. “Or is it not really me you need permission from? Is it . . . yourself?”
He sucked in a breath.
Surely it couldn’t be that easy, could it?