Chapter 4 #2
The apartment is quiet and I’m not sure what to do with myself. Working a farm means there’s always something to do. From dawn until dusk, the chores are never-ending.
But here, the dishes have been done, the kitchen straightened, and the groceries put away.
Mostly. The wildflowers my dad brought and I’d stuck in a Mason jar sit in the middle of her table catching the soft light from above.
They look nice there. Good call, Dad. I never would have considered she might enjoy the flowers.
I grab my phone off the counter and step outside to the small landing above the back alley. I need to call my dad and check in. He can handle everything for a few days, but I worry about him being alone.
The phone rings four times before he picks up. Noise blaring on the other end has me pulling the phone away from my ear and checking the number. “Dad?”
A roar of laughter and music make it hard to hear his reply.
“Hang on a minute,” he shouts.
For the past ten years since my mom passed, my dad has never stepped into a bar. And the first night I’m gone he goes out? To party?
Things on the other end quiet down. He must have stepped outside. “Sorry about that.”
“Dad? Are you at a bar?”
“No, no. I’m at home. I just had a few of the guys over. Rod, Blake, Hershel, and Ralph. We ended up ordering pizza and playing cards like we used to.”
“You’re having a party?”
He chuckles before answering. “Well, I suppose so. Don’t know why we stopped getting together.”
I do. He refused once Mom died. I’d tried to get him to invite his buddies over, but it was like he wouldn’t allow himself the privilege since Mom couldn’t be there to give him a hard time about the guys coming over. “Yeah. You should get back to doing that.”
“Is the girl okay?”
I lean forward, bracing my arms on the banister. “She’s about as you’d expect. Sore and the concussion is still giving her a headache.”
“She eat?”
“Yeah.”
“You cook for her?”
That makes me pause. “You say that as if it’s unusual for me to cook for someone.”
“For anybody else, it wouldn’t be.” His voice holds that dry note he gets when he thinks he knows something I don’t.
“Seems to me like you’ve gone to a lot of trouble for her.
Setting up groceries, cooking for her, staying with her.
I don’t know many people that could keep you off the farm for that long. ”
I rub the back of my neck. “She can’t be alone.”
“Mmm.”
That one sound says entirely too much. “She needs help.”
“That so?”
From the window in the entry door, I can see that it’s still dark inside her bedroom. “Yes. Did you forget the part about I am the one that hit her with the truck? I feel responsible.”
“Hmm,” he mumbles and then goes quiet for a few seconds. “You know, when I dropped off those groceries, I expected to find you feeling guilty and not knowing what to do with yourself. Instead, you were in her kitchen opening cabinets and finding out what she had on hand.”
“I needed to know what she had so I could fix us dinner.”
“No, son. You wanted to know what she needed.”
I don’t answer that. Isn’t it the same thing? There doesn’t seem much point. He always could see straight though me and my bull.
He sighs on the other end. “You step up for people when they need it, same as your mama did. But this is different, I think.”
I feel a frown forming on my face. “How?”
“She matters more.”
The words settle heavy in the silence between us.
“That’s not what this is.”
“No?”
“No.” I answer too fast, which probably tells him more than if I’d stayed quiet. “She thought I was sleeping with half the Eastern Seaboard.”
That gets a bark of laughter out of him. “What?”
Leaning against the brick wall, I scrub a hand over my face.
I didn’t mean to say that. “You remember the girls had me buy them all that underwear? Well, Naudi saw me ordering sexy underwear for three different women and came to the conclusion that I was involved with all of them. That’s why she always looked at me as if I tracked mud across her floor every time I walked into her shop. ”
His laugh comes harder this time, full and unrestrained. “Oh, that’s rich. And you let her think that for months.”
“I didn’t let her think anything. I didn’t know that’s what she believed.”
“Well, what else could she think if you kept showing up with lists and not mentioning it was for your sisters? How did you set her straight?”
“I mentioned their names at dinner, and she asked about them.”
He laughs again, and in spite of myself, I smile.
“I’d pay good money to have seen her face.”
“It was something.”
“I imagine it was.” He chuckles then adds, “Poor girl probably thought you were some smooth-talking ladies’ man.”
That smile sticks around a little longer. “There’s nothing smooth-talking about me.”
“No, but you do okay with the ladies once they get past all that standing there looking scared of your own shadow business.”
“I do not look scared.”
Dad snorts. “Son, you probably walked into that woman’s shop holding a slip of paper and looking as if somebody forced you in there at gunpoint.”
“That place is wall-to-wall underwear. Women’s unmentionables.”
“That’s the point.”
I shake my head, but I’m still smiling.
Then Dad says, “And now you’re engaged.”
I blow out a breath. Why did I tell him about that? “I told her I’d fix it.”
“And can you?”
I look at her bedroom door again, remembering her with damp hair, no bra, and fury in her eyes, telling me her parents were probably already on their way from India for our wedding.
“No,” I admit. “I don’t think I can fix this.”
Dad is quiet long enough that I wonder if he might have gone back to his party. Then he says, “Maybe don’t spend your time figuring how to get out of this.”
That catches me off-guard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he says, calm as ever, “you got yourself a chance to know the woman beyond the glare she gives you over a lace thong.”
I laugh before I can stop myself. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“A little.”
“She’s tolerating me now. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we are friends.”
“Seems to me she spent a lot of time noticing what you were doing for a woman who can’t stand you.”
That shuts me up. There’s truth in it, and I don’t much care for how easily he’d found it.
Dad keeps going, gentler now. “Attraction doesn’t always show up looking pretty. Sometimes it comes out sideways. Especially when pride gets involved.”
“She thinks I’m irresponsible.”
“She thought you were bedding three women at once and still watched you close enough to build a case against you. I wouldn’t call that indifference.”
I stare down at the floorboards. One is loose. I need to fix that before someone trips. A car door slams somewhere down the alley, and I shift on my feet.
“I’m not saying go make a fool of yourself. I’m saying pay attention. There’s a difference between a woman who dislikes you and a woman who’s bothered because she wishes she didn’t notice you at all.”
I let that roll around in my head longer than I want to. “You always have to make things sound bigger than they are.”
“No. Life does that on its own. I just have enough years behind me to recognize it.”
That sounds too much like him being right, so I change the subject. “How are things at home? When you aren’t partying, that is.”
He lets the subject change ride. That’s one of the things I appreciate most about him. He knows when to push and when to ease off.
“Bees are fine. Replacement shipment went out. Your aunt called and wanted three more jars put aside. Said the ladies in her bridge club are fighting over it.”
“Can you get another batch labeled tomorrow so we don’t fall behind with orders?”
“Of course. I’ll handle the farm. You stay there and take care of your girl.”
My head snaps up even though he can’t see me. “She’s not my girl.”
Dad’s laugh sounds low and satisfied. “Your engagement says different.”
Before I can answer, someone in the background asks if there’s more beer. “Gotta go, son, good talk,” he says and hangs up.
I lower the phone and stare at the dark screen. My dad, the party animal. Why hadn’t he done this years ago? Was it because of me?
When Mom passed, I’d just gotten back on the island from college with a degree in business and a minor in environmental engineering and horticulture.
Along with those, I earned a certificate that gives me Master Beekeeper status and a dream to turn our three-generation family farm into a lucrative honey-producing business.
It made sense for me to live with my dad. Had me being there kept him from moving on? I had never considered I could have been keeping my dad living in the past.
The apartment is quiet when I go back in. Naudi is still asleep. Nothing has changed in the last fifteen minutes. And yet, somehow, it did.