Chapter 5
Dan had no idea what to make of Zoe the ice cream lady standing in the middle of his house.
Or the fact that the front door had been open, when he knew Sophie hadn’t had a key.
This evening was turning out to be seriously surprising.
After Sophie had run out of the diner, Dan had decided against chasing after her.
He’d learned from bitter experience that his daughter did better when she had some time to cool off, and he really did want a burger.
And so he had, somewhat uneasily, told the waitress he did in fact want fries with that and then waited for his order, while he seriously hoped his daughter didn’t do something stupid.
To his surprise, the people in the booth next to him introduced themselves, the guy—who was the same one from that afternoon—looking deeply apologetic.
“I had no idea she was there, I’m so sorry,” he said, while Dan waved a hand with an airiness he didn’t actually feel.
“It was probably good for her to see her behavior from someone else’s point of view,” he said frankly before introducing himself.
“I’m Zach Miller, and this is my fiancée Maggie West,” the guy had said.
And then, before Dan even knew what was happening, Zach had invited him to join them in their booth and they all ended up having dinner together, which was something that wouldn’t have ever happened back in New York but felt nice, if a little weird, in a small town.
Enjoyable as their company was, he hadn’t been able to shake his anxiety over Sophie and so he’d ended up bolting down his burger, paying for his share, and then hurrying back home…
to find Zoe, the ice cream lady, of all people, in his living room.
“Surprise,” she offered with a weak laugh before continuing quickly, “Sorry. I know this must seem weird. I actually live next door and have a key to this house, to help out while Juliet is away. She didn’t tell me she was having renters, and I saw Sophie sitting on the steps, so I came over and let her in.
” She said this all in such a rush that it took Dan a few seconds to absorb it.
“Okay,” he said at last. “Well, thanks. I appreciate you helping out.” He paused, glancing around the room, noticing with a wince how messy it was… and also how empty. “Where’s Sophie?”
“She’s up in her bedroom, I think,” Zoe admitted with a grimace of apology. “Sorry, we had a bit of a spat. She was kind of hostile and I…” She trailed off, looking regretful. “…Probably mouthed off a bit too much. I’m sorry.”
Dan had no idea how to reply to that. Had Zoe been rude, or just reasonable?
It was impossible to know, and even so, considering how antagonistic Sophie could be, he wouldn’t blame Zoe if she had been rude.
“Well, thank you for letting her in,” he finally said, sounding, he feared, a little awkward.
He really had not been expecting to find someone in his living room, and especially not the woman he’d been thinking about more than he liked to admit since he’d seen her that afternoon.
“I appreciate it,” he continued, “especially after everything that happened this afternoon.” He paused, lowering his voice in case Sophie was listening.
“I do know she stole that magnet, and I’m sorry about it.
We… we’ve been having a tough time lately. ”
Zoe pursed her lips, cocking her head thoughtfully.
Even in the dim lighting, he could see the pink of her hair.
“I get it,” she said after a moment. “I had a tough time at that age, too. But she’s certainly not making it easier on herself, lashing out the way she does.
I wish I could help her, but…” She shrugged, looking genuinely regretful.
“I know. I feel the same. I just wish there was something I could do that made a difference.” Dan felt a sudden longing to unburden himself to this near-stranger.
He had no one to talk to about Sophie—his work colleagues were both virtual and childless, and he’d lost most of his couple friends during the divorce.
Besides, most people, he’d discovered, had limited tolerance for other people’s parenting problems. They had enough of their own, or they just didn’t care.
But Zoe… Zoe seemed like she did. And he was intrigued by her, the spunky attitude but with a hint of vulnerability, her pale heart-shaped face and that pink hair…
“Would you like to stay for a drink?” he blurted, and her eyes, the color of moss, widened in surprise.
Dan felt himself start to flush. It had not been the most natural or understandable segue.
“Sorry, I just thought… I mean you were so kind in coming here… and I don’t know that many people in Starr’s Fall…
” Or any, save for the two he’d met tonight and the grandmother he hadn’t known he’d had until a couple of months ago.
“Maybe another time?” Zoe suggested after a second’s pause.
She was letting him down gently. He could see it in her eyes.
Good grief, what had he been thinking, asking her if she wanted a drink when she’d been practically edging toward the door?
It had been a long time since he’d been in this kind of situation, and he clearly sucked at it.
“Yes, absolutely.” He bobbed his head a little manically. “I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”
“I’m sure we will, too,” Zoe replied with a small smile. “I live next door, after all.” She looked, Dan feared, like she pitied him, and then she walked swiftly out the door and back to her own house, her own life.
Dan let out a groan as he scrubbed his face with his hands.
Zoe probably had a boyfriend or maybe even a husband.
Some kind of partner that made his abrupt invitation seriously awkward, like he’d been trying to pick her up when she’d been talking to him about his difficult daughter.
Plus, he was pretty sure he was a lot older than her, maybe by more than ten years.
The whole thing just made him look like some sad creep.
Sighing, he picked up the plate and coffee mug from the table and went to put them in the dishwasher. He knew he should check on Sophie, but he needed to work up the will as well as the energy. Sometimes his daughter just plain took it out of him, especially when he was doing it all on his own.
He considered texting Lindsay, asking her to call Sophie tomorrow, but his ex-wife tended to react to such requests with a great deal of irritation and self-defensiveness. You know she lived with me for the last year, right? I think I know my own daughter.
That barb never failed to draw blood. Sophie had lived with Lindsay for the last year, because his daughter had chosen to.
But Lindsay had made the offer irresistible, with a Park Avenue apartment, girly nights out, vacations to Europe, all on her big advertising executive salary, while Dan had been struggling to pay the rent on the two-bedroom walkup on the edge of Harlem that they’d all been living in until Lindsay got her promotion—and promptly left him.
He was trying not to be bitter. Only sometimes it was kind of hard not to be, considering the way everything had turned out.
Dan finished tidying up the kitchen and then, knowing he shouldn’t put it off any longer, he headed upstairs to check on Sophie.
The Cape they were renting had only two bedrooms with a tiny bathroom squeezed between them—cozy, although not as cozy as their old apartment in Harlem, but definitely a lot smaller than the Park Avenue palace Sophie had shared with Lindsay for the last year.
She’d informed him resentfully that she’d had her own bathroom and dressing room, which Dan found kind of ridiculous, but Lindsay had loved showering their daughter with over-the-top presents and treats…
until she’d decided to walk away from it all, all the way to Dubai.
He tapped on Sophie’s firmly shut door, waiting for her usual grunt of acknowledgment, but there was only silence.
“Soph…?” he called gently. Still nothing.
Feeling worried now, Dan opened the door and peeked inside. His daughter was curled up on her bed, knees tucked into her chest, as tears slid silently down her face. She looked so utterly miserable that Dan’s heart felt like it was breaking right in half.
“Oh, Soph,” he whispered, and came to perch on the edge of the bed. He rested one hand on her back which, amazingly, she didn’t shrug off. “Honey…” He had no idea what to say. Was there any way to make it better?
“I miss Mom,” Sophie wept, her voice sounding squeezed out from a too-tight throat. “I miss her so much, and I don’t even think she misses me.”
“She does, sweetheart—”
“I asked her to call me, and she didn’t even text me back.”
“Soph, I told you it was the middle of the night there—”
“No, that was three days ago.” Sophie raised her tear-blotched face from her knees. “And I can tell she saw it, and she hasn’t texted me back anything.” She buried her head in her knees. “I hate her,” she sobbed, sounding very much like she didn’t.
“Oh, Sophie…”
“And I hate you,” Sophie added, lifting her head once more. “For bringing me to this stupid town. There’s nothing here. And I didn’t want to go to a new school. I liked living in New York.”
Dan suppressed a sigh, knowing there was no point in offering the counter-arguments he’d laid out so many times before.
Including how, after stealing from several students, Sophie had been asked not to return to the ritzy private school Lindsay had sent her to for the last year.
Or how, after his mother’s death just a few months ago, he’d wanted to be near some kind of family, even if it was just his newly found grandmother, the biological mother of his own mother—someone whom he hadn’t even known about until just before his mother died.
Because she was the only person left. And also how he had a feeling city life wasn’t great for Sophie and had thought maybe living out in the country could be good for both of them, as well as being somewhere to reconnect after a challenging year apart, when he’d been relegated to only seeing her every other weekend.
None of those reasons meant much right now, when his daughter was so miserable and he was questioning every choice he’d ever made.
So he didn’t mention any of them, just sat there silently and rubbed her back and hoped one day they’d get through all this pain and sadness to something good on the other side.
Eventually Sophie’s sobs turned to sniffles, and when Dan looked at her, he saw her eyes were fluttering closed.
With her eyes shut and her lips slightly pursed, the tracks of her tears still visible on her pale cheeks, she looked like a little girl, a small child, and his heart ached with both love and sadness.
He wanted to do the best he could by his daughter… he just wasn’t sure how.
When Sophie was breathing evenly in deep sleep, Dan stood up, pulling a blanket over her and gently pressing a kiss to her forehead before he went downstairs to lock up.
Back up in his own bedroom, he paused in front of the window that looked directly into the house next door.
Zoe’s house. The shade was drawn on the window opposite his, only twenty-five feet or so away, but he could see a light seeping out from under it, and then, with a jolt of surprise, he saw a willowy silhouette of a woman cross in front of it. It had to be Zoe.
Okay, now he was being seriously creepy, and it had to stop.
Immediately. Whirling away from the window, Dan went to the bathroom to brush his teeth.
When he returned to the bedroom, the light next door was out.
Shaking his head at the flicker of disappointment he felt, he turned out his own light before changing quickly into his pajamas and heading to bed.
But as he lay there, staring into the dark, he kept remembering Zoe’s slender silhouette against the window shade, and wishing he could stop thinking about it.