Chapter 8
Zoe stepped into Maggie’s living room, taking in the happy scene as tension knotted between her shoulder blades.
Ben was lounging in the chair by the computer desk in the kitchen, and Zach was leaning against the counter, drinking a beer.
Maggie was laughing at something he’d said, her face flushed from the heat of the oven, her hair falling out of its bun in curly wisps.
Zoe hadn’t even come into the room properly, and already she felt like an interloper.
She needed to put her game face on—the ready smile, touched with sarcasm, the pointedly arched eyebrow, the lighthearted snark she was known for.
All of it was a defense she’d painstakingly built up over the years, a persona of airy confidence and devil-may-care attitude that had served her so well, forming a barrier between her and everyone she knew.
She had friends in Starr’s Fall, oh yes, but she didn’t have kindred spirits.
She never let anyone close enough to find out if they could be.
She wasn’t even sure she’d know how anymore.
“Zoe!” Maggie came toward her, arms outstretched for a hug which Zoe returned gingerly. “I’m so glad you came, and Dan and Sophie, as well.” Maggie released her to kiss Dan’s cheek and give Sophie a little squeeze. Clearly she was feeling pretty loved-up at the moment.
“Nice dress, Zo.” Zach gave her a knowing grin as he raised his beer bottle in greeting, and Zoe smiled blandly back, doing her best to ignore the remark about her outfit.
She was usually up for some banter, but right now she felt too vulnerable.
She’d known someone was going to make a comment about her stupid dress.
And really, she didn’t know why she was feeling so fragile, like her usually cocky self was beyond her, but she was pretty sure it had to do with Dan and his daughter, and that thought was alarming. What was it about this man that she barely knew that had her feeling so unsure of herself?
“Now, what can I get you to drink?” Maggie asked, and the next few minutes were spent in a flurry of pouring wine and handing out Cokes.
Sophie had edged over to stand slightly behind her father, and as far away from Ben as possible.
Zoe couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for the girl.
It had to be awkward in the extreme, to be essentially paired with a teenaged boy she’d never met.
But then, Zoe realized, that meant she was paired with Dan, which was also very awkward. She accepted her glass of white wine from Maggie and took a step away from him, as if creating a foot of distance meant something. Well, it did to her.
Maggie was chatting to Dan about his move to Starr’s Fall, asking all the usual questions about settling in.
“And what made you decide to move here?” she asked, sounding both interested and mystified.
“It’s such a small place… Ben and I came because we’d been on vacation here and fell in love with it.
It was our happy place for a long time.” She gave her son a swift, affectionate smile.
He responded by rolling his eyes with a good-natured smile in return.
With her eyebrows expectantly raised, Maggie turned back to Dan, clearly waiting for his answer.
“Well, ah, one of the reasons we moved here was because we have family in town,” he said, looking a little uncomfortable about that fact.
“Family…?” Maggie looked surprised, and Zoe suspected she did, too. Somehow she had not gotten the feeling that they had family here; far from it. They seemed almost as isolated as she was.
“Yes, my grandmother,” Dan confessed. “But I didn’t actually know about her, because my mother was adopted.
But she reached out to me recently. And I decided it would be good to have a fresh start somewhere we actually had a connection, however small.
And we needed a change, and there’s a school that works for Sophie…
” He lifted his shoulders in a little shrug. “So here we are.”
“Wait a minute…” Maggie glanced between Dan and Sophie. “Is your grandmother Henrietta Starr?”
Looking embarrassed, a slight flush to his cheeks, Dan nodded. “We met for the first time about a month ago.”
“You’re related to the founding family of Starr’s Fall?” Ben exclaimed. “That is so cool!”
“Well, like I said,” Dan emphasized, “we didn’t know about her until recently. She’d contacted my mother, that is, her biological daughter, but sadly my mother died a few months ago, so she never got the message. I only came across it because I was closing down her Facebook account.”
“That’s amazing, that you managed to get in touch,” Maggie exclaimed, looking thrilled by the connection, but Dan looked uncomfortable, and, Zoe thought, sad. His mother had only died a few months ago and he’d gotten divorced? What a tough year.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Zoe said quietly.
Dan shot her a swift, searching look. “Thank you,” he replied, his tone just as quiet.
For a second, they simply stared at each other, their gazes locked as they exchanged a silent acknowledgment of understood grief and pain.
Zoe looked away first; she felt as if she’d revealed too much of herself with just those few words, even though she’d been talking about Dan.
“I knew Henrietta was looking for her biological daughter online,” Maggie told Dan. “I’m so sorry about your mother too. Losing a parent is so hard, I know.”
“Yeah. It is.” Dan cleared his throat, giving a rueful smile as he did so, and then the moment passed. Maggie went to check on the casserole in the oven, and Zach asked Sophie if she liked computer games.
“Computer games?” Sophie sounded cautious, a little repulsed, even, and Zoe saw Dan tense.
No doubt he was hoping his daughter wouldn’t torpedo the evening with her particular brand of rudeness.
It was hard to be rude to Zach, though, Zoe thought wryly, because he was so good-looking, and everything pretty much bounced off him like he was made of Teflon.
Sure enough, Sophie managed a smile and a shrug, far from her usual sulky rejoinder. “Not really,” she said. “Do you play them?”
“Oh, yeah,” Zach assured her. “All the time. Ben and I play RainQuest, which is, like, the coolest game ever. You want to try it?”
He nodded toward the desktop behind Ben; the screen had a vivid green and purple graphic that looked like vines swirling around the ornately written letters RQ.
“Umm…” Sophie looked apprehensive, but Ben was already swiveling in his chair, fingers poised over the keyboard.
“Do you want to be an elven queen or a selkie princess?” he said, like he was asking her to choose between blue and green.
“Umm…” Sophie said again, clearly flummoxed.
She twirled a strand of hair around her finger, looking uncertain but also a little intrigued.
It probably helped, Zoe thought, that Ben was cute in a geeky kind of way, and a year older than her.
“An elven queen?” she finally replied in a questioning tone, and Ben typed something into the computer.
“Great, and a name?” he asked, and gingerly Sophie crossed the room to stand before the desk, still twirling her hair, seeming like she didn’t know whether to act cool or kind.
“I don’t know…”
“Arwen is a good name,” Ben suggested with an encouraging smile. “Or Galadriel. They’re both from Lord of the Rings.”
“Okay, Arwen, I guess,” Sophie said, and inched a little closer.
“This feels like a miracle,” Dan whispered to Zoe. He’d stepped closer to her, so she could breathe in the scent of his aftershave, something woodsy and understated. “My daughter is interacting positively with another human being.”
“And one her own age,” Zoe whispered back. She gave Dan a mischievous smile. “The important thing now, you know, is to act like it’s no big deal.”
He angled his body away from Sophie and Ben, who were now both sitting at the computer, Zach standing nearby while Maggie busied herself with the dinner preparations. He leaned in even closer to Zoe. “I’m not even noticing,” he assured her. “Where is she?”
Zoe laughed softly, her gaze resting on his, his gray eyes crinkled at the corners, that dimple in his cheek reminding her of how much she liked his smile.
“You’ve got this down,” she told him, and his smile deepened, his gaze still on hers.
Were they flirting, she wondered. It felt like they were flirting, but surely they couldn’t be.
“I’ve been meaning to thank you,” he told her more seriously, “for giving Sophie a job. It’s given her such confidence, and I know she might not tell you herself how much she enjoys it, but I can assure you she does.
And,” he added ruefully, “I have a feeling that she might not be as helpful as I’d hope she’d be, based on her experience, and let’s be frank, her attitude. ”
“You’d be surprised,” Zoe told him, her lips twitching to suppress a smile.
“She’s getting better every day. And,” she added seriously, lowering her voice all the more, “I can relate to what she’s going through.
It’s hard being fourteen when life hurts.
” She looked away quickly, not sure if she regretted saying as much as she did.
She’d shared quite an intimate confidence, considering they were standing together in a room with four other people.
Though, it had to be said, the others did seem intent on giving them some space.
“I appreciate that,” Dan said after a moment. “You said something similar before… maybe now’s not the time to ask for the details, but…” He hesitated. “I’m glad you’re in Sophie’s life.”