Chapter 25
Dan felt like he’d entered an alternate reality, or maybe a bad TV sitcom, where something surprising happened just for the sake of it.
His life, he thought as an incredulous, near-hysterical laugh welled up inside him, was about to jump the shark.
What on earth was Lindsay doing here? And why hadn’t she given him any warning?
He scrambled up from the blanket, everything in him reeling at the sight of his ex-wife standing there, looking as perfect and polished as ever, and almost a little smug that she so clearly had him on the back foot. “Lindsay…” He shook his head. “What are you doing here?”
Her eyes narrowed and she let out the kind of brittle laugh he remembered from far too many difficult years together, when everything he’d said or done had been deliberately misconstrued and used as ammunition.
“Well, that’s some welcome, considering I flew halfway around the world to see you,” she remarked tartly, flicking her blonde hair over one tanned shoulder. Another firework burst overhead, punctuating the moment.
I didn’t ask you to, he only just kept himself from saying. He was pretty sure that if he’d shown up in Dubai with absolutely no warning, he’d have a far less enthusiastic welcome than he was currently giving his ex-wife.
“I’m just surprised,” he said carefully. “It’s a long way to come without telling anyone—”
“Well, I did tell someone,” Lindsay interjected with a small smile, resting her hand possessively on Sophie’s shoulder. Their daughter, Dan noticed, was looking like she’d won the lottery, her face flushed, her eyes sparkling like stars.
“Sophie… you knew?” he asked, unable to keep the disbelief as well as the disappointment from his voice. In what universe did either his ex-wife or his daughter think that keeping something like this from him would be the good kind of surprise?
She nodded, seeming proud of the fact. “Mom told me two days ago she was going to surprise you, so I didn’t say anything.”
And why, Dan thought, now holding on to his temper with effort, would he want to be so surprised?
“Is that where you were today?” he asked his daughter as another firework shot across the sky.
Zoe and her parents and what felt like most of Starr’s Fall were watching this scene unfold, although thanks to the fireworks, at least he didn’t think anyone could hear them.
Zoe, however, was watching the conversation like a tennis match, her glance pinging between him and his family.
“I took the bus to meet her,” Sophie confirmed.
“To JFK?” Dan asked, startled as well as disapproving. It was over two hours, and not a straightforward route for a fourteen-year-old girl to take on her own.
“No, just to Hartford,” Lindsay said in the kind of indulgent but annoyed tone that suggested he was overreacting. Her hand still rested on Sophie’s shoulder. “She met me there and we drove up here. I’ve rented a car.”
“Oh…” Dan shook his head slowly. Did Lindsay not understand that it was completely reasonable for him to want to be informed if their daughter was taking a bus all the way to Hartford by herself?
Or was that meant to be part of the surprise?
He wanted to ask his ex-wife why she’d done all this, but he wasn’t ready to know the answer.
In the past Lindsay’s surprises had sent him sprawling, emotionally.
And where was she staying? What, Dan wondered with a sinking feeling, was happening—and why?
“You two probably need to talk,” Zoe said abruptly as she scrambled to her feet, glancing between Dan and Lindsay without, he thought, looking either of them in the eye. “Dan, don’t worry, we’ll make our own way back.”
“No.” His voice came out too forcefully, and both Zoe and Lindsay blinked.
“I drove your parents here,” he said more calmly, “and I’ll take them back.
” He wasn’t about to bail on that, not when Zoe had been so anxious about him doing it, and not when he’d promised.
He was not going to let Lindsay torpedo tonight, no matter that it felt as if she already had.
“It’s fine, Zoe. Sophie and… and Lindsay can go back to the house and wait for me there.
” He gave his wife a pointed look. “Where are you staying?”
“Dad…” Sophie protested. “She can stay with us.”
“We don’t have the space,” Dan replied bluntly.
He was not going to be outmaneuvered any more than he already had been, not this time.
“And I think our little house is a bit too modest, compared to what your mom is used to.” He glanced at Lindsay, his eyebrows raised. “I hear the Litchfield Inn is nice.”
“That’s good to know,” Lindsay replied with acid sweetness, “because that’s where I made a reservation.”
“Great.” He stared at her, his chest tight, his heart thumping.
Having Lindsay gatecrash his fledgling life in Starr’s Fall was not a good feeling.
It brought back all the other times she’d decided what they were doing, and he’d gone along with her, because he’d thought that’s what you did in a marriage.
It had taken him a long time to realize that both people had to compromise. Not just one.
Not just him.
Above them the fireworks finale popped and sparked in a glorious spray of color, while Dan stared hard at his ex-wife and prayed his brand-new life, a life he really, really was starting to like, wasn’t beginning to unravel.
He did not want Lindsay’s presence here to change anything, and yet he was afraid it already had.
As the display finished, a cheer went up along with a scattering of applause. Zoe touched Dan’s hand, no more than a brush of her fingers.
“You know what?” she said into the taut silence. “My parents are kind of tired. I am, too. I think we’re going to go now, before Starr’s Fall gets its version of a traffic jam.”
“And I said I’d drive you,” Dan said quickly. “You didn’t bring your own car.”
“I know, but—”
“I’ll do it, Zoe.” He sounded angry, and he was angry, but not at Zoe. “Sorry…” he muttered, raking his hair out of his eyes while Lindsay looked smugly on.
Zoe touched his hand again, offered him a small, soft smile. “Dan, it’s okay. And thanks… for driving us.”
Getting her parents back to the car was no small feat, but at least the mechanics of it kept him from thinking about Lindsay and what she might want.
“That was some show,” her dad remarked once they were all buckled in.
“Yeah, I love fireworks,” Dan replied, and Zoe’s dad chuckled softly.
“I wasn’t talking about the fireworks, son.”
He managed a laugh, barely. “I wasn’t expecting my ex-wife to drop in.”
“We could tell.”
“Yeah.” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.
“But at least Sophie will get some time with her mom,” Zoe’s mother said gently. “That’s got to be a good thing, right?”
“I hope so,” Dan replied. He wasn’t convinced.
Back at their house, he helped Zoe settle her parents before heading back to his own house. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said at her front door. He wanted to kiss her, but something about the moment didn’t feel right. “I had no idea—”
“I know.” Zoe scanned his face, her own gaze concerned but also assessing. “I understand it’s a surprise, Dan, of course, but… why are you so freaked out? I mean, a drop-in visit…” She hesitated. “That’s what this is, right?”
“I don’t know what it is,” Dan admitted unhappily.
“Lindsay never lets me in on her plans. Even when we were married, she’d do something and tell me after, expect me to fall in line.
” Like accepting a sixty-hour-a-week job when Sophie had been five weeks old, so he’d had to put his plans to start his own business on hold.
Or signing the lease of an apartment they couldn’t afford, so he’d ended up working freelance jobs deep into the night, while still getting up with Sophie because Lindsay “had to work.”
For years he’d gone along with it all, because he’d convinced himself that’s what you did, when you loved someone. It took him years to realize that kind of imbalance in a relationship wasn’t actually love at all.
“It rattles me, seeing her like this,” he admitted to Zoe. “Brings back a lot of memories. Seeing Sophie light up like a—like a firework when she’s around, because I know what happens when it all fizzles out.”
Zoe touched his hand, lacing her fingers with his just as he’d done to her, what felt like a long time ago now but really wasn’t. “Maybe it won’t this time,” she said softly.
And what would that look like? Dan was afraid to think about it.
“Whatever’s going on,” Zoe continued, “whatever happens… I’m here for you.
” She smiled up at him, and then it did feel like the right time to kiss her and kissing her felt very right indeed.
Dan closed his eyes as he settled his mouth on hers.
This was what he needed to remember and hold on to.
Not Lindsay waiting for him next door, and all the doubts and anxieties she stirred up in him, making him feel like he’d lost a battle when he hadn’t even realized they’d been fighting.
This time was different, because he had Zoe. And he was different with Zoe. They were different. Smiling, she gave his fingers one last squeeze before slipping her hand out of his.
“I’ll talk to you soon?”
He nodded, kissing her one more time, savoring the moment. “Yeah.”
As Dan walked across the darkened yard and stepped into his house, he felt its emptiness.
Lindsay and Sophie weren’t waiting for him as he’d asked them to, which was both a relief and a worry.
He wasn’t ready for a big confrontation, but he also wondered where they were.
Then he reached for his phone to text Sophie, only to see that he already had a text from her.
I’m staying the night with Mom.
Dan’s gut tightened. He told himself this was a good thing, that he should be glad his daughter was finally having time with her mother, but he couldn’t shake the sense of dread that was rising up in him, threatening to overwhelm him, because he had too much history with Lindsay not to expect the sledgehammer of surprise that had flattened him so many times before. What was she planning? And why now?
Things had just been starting to go so well here in Starr’s Fall.
Yes, Sophie had been having a little bit of a blip, but she’d been on a generally upward trajectory, with her friends and her work and her dance classes.
She’d even been spending time with her great-grandmother.
It was only since Lindsay had video-called and had clearly started promising all sorts of things that Sophie had taken something of an emotional nosedive, he realized.
It made him worried for her, and what the fallout from this visit would be.
And what about him and Zoe? Things were great between them, Dan acknowledged with a rush of gratitude, but they were also extremely new, and as Zoe had said herself, their lives were complicated.
Having his ex-wife fly in made them that much more so…
what if it spooked Zoe? Just when she was starting to trust things, them, his ex-wife threw a complete curveball at them?
What if Zoe decided, just like Lindsay once had, that he simply wasn’t worth it? Would he even be surprised?
A gusty sigh escaped him as Dan scrubbed his hands over his face.
Lord, but he hated having thoughts like this.
He hated having all the old doubts rush back, about who he was, whether he could be enough for somebody.
It had been hard enough, that his dad had left when he was four, walking out without a single glance back at his family.
No matter that his mom had tried to be enough, Dan had still wondered why his dad had been able to walk away so easily.
Had wondered why he hadn’t been enough to make him stay.
And then to have his wife do pretty much the same thing thirty-five years later… well, it had been hard not to feel like he was the problem. He was the common denominator, after all. Maybe he couldn’t be enough for anybody.
After all, considering his track record, who was to say it wouldn’t happen for a third time… with Zoe?