Chapter 35
“Can we come back here, and bring Ali and Ziggy and Cutter?”
Just hearing her link them all reached a place in Colby’s heart he’d only recently discovered existed.
The day Ali welcomed you, made you feel whole again.
He rested a hand on his girl’s shoulder, trying not to think of how not so long ago he could only have reached the top of her head without bending over. She was growing up so fast, and these short interludes with her were just not enough. Which steeled his resolve to fight.
Helps that you have the best cavalry around at your back now.
He smiled at the thought, and at the certainty that Ali was included in that force to be reckoned with.
No sooner did the thought form than he heard Quinn’s voice through the earbud in his left ear.
“Looks all clear. The two subjects out on the point are from the US Lighthouse Society, and the family that are out on the beach arrived in a car with Idaho plates.”
He knew the man had them in sight, so he just gave a thumbs-up to indicate he’d heard.
“Can we, Daddy?” Grace drew him back to her initial question.
“I hope so,” he answered. “And soon.”
That made her smile. Then her brows rose sharply. “Oh! I almost forgot!”
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out what looked like a couple of folded pages torn from a notebook. It looked rather like that story he’d found, about the little girl and the monster.
“This is for Ali. I promised it to her, for her birthday. She said she didn’t care if it was late, since her birthday was last Sunday.
” Grace expression shifted to a sad frown.
“You have to give it to her, since I’m not allowed to see her anymore.
And we’re leaving in the morning anyway, to go over there. Again.”
She waved her hand in the general direction of the city. He took the folded sheets, tamping down his anger at Liz’s latest tactic. “I guess I shouldn’t look at it, if it’s hers, huh?”
“You can,” Grace said, “if it’s okay with her. But she should see it first, ’cuz it’s her present.”
He tucked the pages carefully into his own jacket pocket. “I’ll see she gets it. But right now, Gracie-girl, we need to talk. Very seriously.”
His girl’s blue eyes, so like his own, looked up at him. “Is this about…fighting her?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
“We better sit down,” she said wisely, and looked around. One of the north-facing benches was empty, and she scampered that way. Colby ran to keep up, loath to have her anywhere outside of arm’s reach, as if Liz could somehow swoop down and grab her.
Like the vulture she is.
Sending up a silent apology to the birds that were a necessary part of the system, he sat down beside his daughter.
He’d thought a lot about how he was going to approach this, what he was going to say.
He knew his girl, knew how she thought, even if she sometimes almost scared him with how smart she was.
“How would you feel if I gave up fighting for you?”
Grace stared at him for a long moment. He could almost hear her brain racing, processing. Then, finally she shook her head. “You wouldn’t. You just wouldn’t.”
He couldn’t help the sudden stinging of his eyes, and the tight, grateful smile that tugged at his lips. He blinked rapidly a few times, put his arm around his precious child and pulled her close.
“No. No, I wouldn’t. And I won’t. Ever.” Remembering Ali’s words, he pointed to the tall light behind them. “I will always be there for you, just like that lighthouse is there for the ships going by.”
His girl looked at the solid, steady fixture, and smiled. “I know you will.”
“But honey, I’m going to have to pretend that I’m giving up. Give up fighting at all over her taking tomorrow away from us. And more, I’m going to have to tell her that I’m not going to fight her anymore at all. No more arguing with her when I pick you up or bring you back.”
Grace looked up at him, her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“So she’ll think she’s won.”
“Why?” she repeated.
Although it wouldn’t surprise him if she could totally grasp Sun Tzu, he went for a more modern explanation.
“Because if she thinks she’s won, maybe she won’t be so…
careful. Maybe she’ll get careless, overconfident.
” His daughter’s brow furrowed again as she processed the words.
He shifted to something he knew she’d understand.
“I know she’ll get smug, think she’s better than anybody else, that nobody would dare challenge her. ”
Grace made a sour face. “She already thinks that.”
God, he loved his girl. “I know. But now we’re going to use it against her. Lull her, then come up from behind and shock her. But part of that is I have to act like she’s won. Like I gave up.”
Again he could almost hear that clever brain churning away. “How should I act?”
“How do you think you’d react…if it were true?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t believe it.”
“Then act that way. Like you don’t believe it.”
Grace went very still for a long, silent moment. Then she looked up at him, with an expression he could only describe as mischievous on her face. “Can I call her a liar?”
Despite his tension, Colby nearly laughed at her glee. “I don’t think so, honey. That might tip her over the edge, and she might really lose it. Lose her temper, I mean. She might even try to hit you or something.”
Grace shrugged. “She’s done it before. It wasn’t so bad.”
Colby went rigidly still, all humor vanished. In his ear he thought he heard someone swear. “She what?”
“Well, she slapped me once, when I told her I wanted to go live with you. It hurt, but only for a little while.”
“You never told me that.”
“It was while you were gone, working up on that island.”
His jaw tightened. Last year he’d been on a crew repairing storm damage on an emergency clinic on one of the San Juan islands north of here.
He’d hesitated about being gone that long; it had been a monthlong job.
But it was the only medical clinic on the island, so it had needed doing, and the money had been good and steady.
“You should have told me,” he said, a little tightly.
Grace looked up at him, and for one of the few times in her stubborn life he saw actual fear there. “I was afraid you’d get really mad at her, maybe do something… She always talks about that, that someday you’ll do something stupid and she can keep you away from me forever.”
He pulled her into his arms, hugging his beloved girl tight. “You might have been right, if I’d known she dared to hurt you.” Then he pulled back enough to look into her eyes again. “Why did you tell me now?”
“Because now you’re going to fight her anyway,” she said simply.
He gave a wondering shake of his head. “What am I going to do when you’re the genius out there saving the world and I’m just your dumb ol’ dad?”
“I don’t wanna save the world,” she said, hugging him back rather fiercely. “I just want us.”
“So do I, Gracie.”
“Then so be it,” came Quinn’s determined voice in his ear.
“Amen,” Colby muttered.
But hope was burgeoning, because he had the feeling that if it could be done, Foxworth could do it.