6. Ember #2
I nodded. “So they’re targeting you.”
Jack stared at me. Darby frowned.
“Your company, I mean,” I clarified. “Since that’s the only link between the sites. Have you heard about any security equipment being vandalized that doesn’t belong to one of your clients? If yes, it’s a widespread issue. If no, the vandal is targeting your clients specifically.”
It was obvious, wasn’t it? But Jack stared at me like I’d just told him something mind-blowing.
He pushed his chair back. “I need to make a call,” he said, and stepped into the living room.
“You’re smart,” Darby told me.
I picked up the last piece of carrot on my plate and pointed it at her. “That’s a step up from weird,” I noted.
Her smile was wide when she said, “You’re smart and weird.”
I laughed right in time to look over and watch Jack walk back into the kitchen. His eyes snagged on me as my laughter faded, then flicked over to Darby. An expression passed over his face—surprise, maybe. Something deeper. But then it was gone.
When dinner was over, I helped clear the plates, and was about to retreat to my lair in the attic when Darby said, “Ember, Dad said you could help me with my math homework.”
I blinked, my dirty plate suspended above the dishwasher tray. “Um. Did he?”
Jack gave me a hopeful look from behind Darby. “You’re good at math, right?”
“It’s all these letters,” Darby complained, shoving the utensils in the dishwasher basket. “They’re so confusing.”
She was learning algebra, maybe for the first time. I was supposed to be keeping my distance from her—not letting her get attached—but a little help with homework wouldn’t hurt, would it? “I can have a look,” I conceded.
That’s how I ended up sitting at the kitchen table once more with Darby by my side and eighth grade math textbooks spread out before me. Darby had a pencil in her hand as she stared at the worksheet in front of her, scowling. She looked just like her father, and it made me want to smile.
“Okay. Algebra,” I said, feeling a little more at ease. This was more familiar ground. Math. Logic.
“Why are there letters? I thought math was supposed to be numbers.”
“The further you get in math, the fewer numbers there are,” I said.
“That’s stupid.”
“I think that’s a swear jar word,” I noted.
Darby glared at me so forcefully I leaned back, but on the other side of the kitchen, where he scrubbed a baking sheet, I caught the edge of Jack’s smile.
I turned back to the worksheet. “Okay. How about you tell me what you find confusing.”
“Everything!”
“Okay. Sure. I guess we can start with the question. Let’s read that out.”
“It just says ‘solve each equation.’” Darby scowled.
I nodded and grabbed a scrap piece of paper. “Right. So in each equation, we’re looking to figure out what the missing number is. Right?”
“I guess?”
“See here, it wants us to find x. But if x is confusing, why don’t we just put a question mark for now.”
Darby’s frown was still there, but she said nothing. I passed her another sheet of scrap paper and got her to write out the equation again, but with a question mark instead of the letter.
“You know the order of operations, right?”
“Duh. PEMDAS.”
“Excellent,” I said with a sharp nod. “What’s the P for?”
“Parentheses.” Without me having to say anything more, Darby went to the parentheses in her equation and solved what was inside it, then moved on. We worked through the equation, and she solved it with only a small hiccup while doing the final division.
She leaned back, then looked at me and gave me the kind of smile that stopped my heart. My throat suddenly got tight as I returned her smile.
“That wasn’t so bad,” she said.
“No,” I agreed. “Want to do the next one? This time, let’s keep the letter instead of swapping it for a question mark. And here, it’ll be easier to see what’s going on if you line up your equal signs on every line. That way you know what’s happening on either side of the equation.”
Darby nodded, a determined look on her face. She was sharp, and she caught on quickly. The second and third equations gave her no trouble at all. The fourth had some exponents, which she forgot to do at first, but it was an easy fix.
Before long, her homework was done. Darby let out a giant, dramatic sigh and stuffed the worksheet and textbook into her bag. “Thanks!” she said, flashing me another smile, then turned to her dad, who had been lingering in the kitchen the whole time we were working. “Can I go watch TV?”
“Have you practiced your piano?”
“Dad! It’s Friday!” She curled her shoulders and tilted her chin up, looking pitiful.
After five days, I hadn’t seen Darby willingly play the piano without her father prodding her to do it.
It was strange, since he seemed so in tune with everything else about his daughter. So willing to make her happy.
Why was he so insistent she play an instrument she clearly didn’t enjoy?
Jack sighed, relenting. “You have twenty minutes before bedtime,” he said with a nod.
Darby was out of the room within the next two seconds, heading toward the living room. I stood up and pushed my chair into the table as Jack put the last of the dishes away.
He turned to face me. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I took one look at that homework, and my eyes started blurring.”
I huffed. “It’s not that bad. You just have to be methodical about it.”
“Not everyone finds that as easy as you do,” he noted, a hint of humor in his voice. Was he making fun of me?
I flushed, embarrassed, my chest feeling hot and tight. My gaze slid away from his as a bitter taste coated the back of my throat.
Jack noticed. “Hey,” he said gently, moving closer. “What’s up? What just happened?”
I blinked up at him, wanting to run. Instead, I shrugged a shoulder and shook my head.
“I know I’m strange. I like numbers, and I’m bad at…
everything else. It comes in handy for this kind of thing”—I waved at the table where we’d done Darby’s homework—“but I know that I suck at regular human interaction.”
Jack was quiet for such a long moment that I was forced to look up at him. I found him frowning down at me. He moved closer, so close that I caught a hint of his scent and felt the heat of his body. “It wasn’t a criticism, Ember,” he told me in that same quiet, gentle voice. “It was a compliment.”
I flinched, not believing him.
How could anyone compliment the thing that had made me such an outcast? I’d always been terrible at making friends and forming relationships, so I’d thrown myself into school and achievement. I’d made a career out of it. A life out of it.
But I knew that most people saw me as a frigid, arrogant nerd who was unable to interact like a normal human. No one complimented that. No one liked my personality. They endured it when they needed to work with me.
Like Jack was enduring it now. Just until we got our wedding certificate filed and I went back to Chicago.
He reached for me, like he wanted to touch my arm, and I jerked back. Jack lifted his palms as if to tell me he was no threat.
“S-sorry,” I blurted, awkwardness making me fumble over the word. “I just—I think I need to go for a walk. I was at my computer all day.”
Jack watched me for a beat, opening his mouth like he wanted to say something, and then reconsidering.
He took a step back, and I felt like I could breathe again.
“I’ll get you a flashlight,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon, so you should stick to the road.
I’ll grab a high-vis vest for you too. There aren’t many cars on the road, but it’s better to be safe. ”
“I’m more worried about the raccoons,” I muttered, and Jack laughed. I loved making him laugh. I loved that I was able to make him laugh.
Flushing, I accepted the flashlight and vest, put on my shoes, and went out into the fresh air.
It wasn’t until the house was out of sight that I was able to gulp down enough breaths to steady my rioting heart.
By the time I got back, I could hear the low murmur of Jack’s and Darby’s voices in the living room, and I crept past them to go up the stairs and back to my room.
JACK
I sat on the couch with Darby’s feet on my lap as we watched one of her shows. In the break between episodes, she looked at me and said, “Ember’s nice.”
For some reason, my daughter’s words made the back of my neck flush. “Yeah,” I said. “She is.”
“Why don’t you date her for real? She’s better than all your other ‘friends’,” she snarked, putting “friends” in the sassiest teenage finger quotes I’d ever seen.
“How about you leave my dating life out of this?” I replied, tickling the bottom of her foot.
She yelped and kicked at me, then curled up in a ball and covered herself with a throw blanket, glaring at me over her shoulder. The next episode started, and we left the conversation there.
I thought about it all evening. About what that would look like—me dating Ember.
Me dating anyone. I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t take time away from my business or my duty as a father.
It was one thing to have a date night or meet up with a woman for a quick romp.
It was another to commit. To change the way my life with Darby was organized to allow another person in.
To replace the wife I’d lost a decade ago.
I stared at the ceiling, hearing the creak of Ember’s footsteps over my head.
She was a whole lot more than just “nice.” She was under my skin.
But she was off-limits in too many ways to count.