Chapter Twenty-Seven
M iss you beautiful xx
Sienna read the text again, trying desperately hard to pull from it the strength it gave her just a short while ago. An hour had passed, and Sienna was ready to call it a night on dinner already. It was the same as always—Penny regaling her with stories about people she hardly knew, events she had no interest in, never once stopping to consider that Sienna didn’t need to hear what she had to say. Never once asking Sienna about her life. Although, that was a fact Sienna was thankful for to some degree. She had long decided that the sting of Penny not having an interest was the lesser of two evils when the other choice was her disapproval and disappointment. No interest meant no scathing words.
She scraped the food off the plates into the bin and bent down to load them into the dishwasher. Twenty-six, and her job was still to clear the table after dinner, and Sienna knew it and had no problem with helping. What she did have an issue with was the way Penny reminded her every time she visited that she was expected to do it. As if she was still a sullen teenager Penny could send to her room if she refused.
“Hello, love. Need a hand?” Her father’s gentle voice drifted through the kitchen and she turned, giving him a small smile.
“No, it’s fine, Dad. You sit down.”
“I’ve been sitting down all day, love. How’s work? You haven’t said a lot about it.”
Sienna turned back, placing the last plate into the dishwasher and closing the door. Evan Daly was a shadow of the man she remembered growing up. Even at sixty, he looked at least five if not ten years older than his age. She studied him closer, his grey hair and the way his skin stretched over his cheekbones, suddenly making him look older and more drawn out than she had ever seen him. The biggest regret she had about her fractured relationship with her mother was the impact it had on the one with her father. Yes, they were closer than Sienna and Penny, but where there was one, there was the other, and Sienna had to sacrifice something for her own peace of mind. Penny had forced her hand for that something to be spending time with Evan. He was quieter than Penny, softer almost, the gentle one of the pairing, and she took after him in far more ways than Penny. He’d worked hard all his life to provide for her and Cerys, and Sienna wondered if he was thinking about slowing down any time soon.
“Yeah, good. It’s a really good place, Dad. I work with some great people, and we’re doing a lot to help others.” She knew giving him such a small snippet would satisfy him enough to not push any further—nothing too incriminating in case it came up in conversation with Penny. She also knew she was safe to show a little piece of happiness and pride she felt for working at The Lighthouse; her father understood just how much this meant to her. “How about you?”
“Oh, the same as always.”
“You thinking of retiring anytime soon?”
“And be stuck in these four walls all day? No chance. Like to keep busy, me. You know that.”
Sienna did. It was another thing the pair shared, and Sienna wondered on more than one occasion if it was for the same reasons as well. For her, keeping herself busy was a way to block out all the thoughts that could so easily creep in, the regrets and upsets, the wondering about what could have been different. If she let those seep in, then she would be even more of a mess than she was.
“You look happy, love. It suits you.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. Is there someone special, maybe?”
“Dad…” Sienna warned, but she couldn’t help the subtle uptick of her mouth the gentle reminder of Debs had caused.
“Oh. I see. There is. Do I get any more?”
Sienna turned to fully face Evan. “No.”
“You know I won’t tell your mother if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Sienna swallowed harshly, the reminder stark as it always was when it came from her father. “Please, Dad—”
“Please, Sienna,” Evan pleaded, taking a step closer to her. “I know nothing about what’s going on with you anymore. It feels like we’re living in two different worlds.”
“You know why that is.”
“If she knew you were happy with someone—”
“You said you wouldn’t tell her!”
“And I won’t. Not if you don’t want me to. But if she knew?”
“Nothing would change, Dad. You know that. Why do you still bother?”
“Because I love you. We both do.”
Sienna didn’t know why Evan was bringing this up now, of all times. It happened; there would be cycles when her father tried to appeal to her better nature when he begged for her to be more open with her mother, and she contemplated it. But then, before she could make a decision, before she could say anything or had the chance to explain, Penny would say something first and shatter Sienna’s tenuous hopes of reconciling their differences. Sienna would be left broken and distraught, swirling thoughts of every failure she had ever made, reminding her why it was a foolish idea to even contemplate in the first place. It would take her weeks, months even to crawl back out and start believing in herself again. Time after time she promised herself it would be the last time, until Evan asked her again and the cycle would repeat itself. She wondered if he even dared to raise the same idea to Penny, if he had the courage to say something to her, or if he hung all his hopes on Sienna, too beaten down by Penny himself to take the step and stand up for himself.
And for him to suggest Penny would be interested because she loved her…
“No. No, she doesn’t, Dad. She loves Cerys, not me.”
“That’s not true,” he whispered, and she could see the tears welling in his eyes. It was too much, the pain that image evoked within her, and she pushed off the counter, trying to move past him. His hand wrapping around her wrist stopped her. “Please, love.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I love you, I do, but it’s too much.” She gently twisted her wrist out of his grip, leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek. “I’ll see you soon, Dad.”