Charlie surprised me when he popped a pizza roll in his mouth and chewed. “Ours is definitely better than yours. Just have some pasta and some salad, and then you can head home and think of new ways to torture me tomorrow.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Fine.” He cleared his throat and made another plate.
“Fine! ‘Fine’ is my new favorite word.” Harper took my hand and led me to the table. “You want a beer, Violet?”
“Hey,” Charlie grumped. “Six-year-olds have no reason to ask that.”
“I’m almost seven. And I know adults sometimes drink it.”
I chuckled as Charlie set the plate down in front of me and then held up a beer bottle and raised a brow at me. I nodded, and he pouredthe bottle into a glass and handed it to me before taking his seat next to his daughter.
“So, is there anything anyone wants to talk about?” Charlie asked, clearly out of his comfort zone, because he stared down at his plate as the words left his mouth.
“Denise Quigley is insector, Daddy. So me and Violet think she’s sad,” Harper said as she twirled her fork in her noodles, preparing for the perfect bite.
Well, I personally think Denise Quigley is an asshole.
But I’d settle for “sad and insecure” because I doubted Charlie would want me to say what I really thought.
“Yeah? Why do you think she’s sad?” he asked, and I wondered if he’d stood outside the bedroom door listening to us, because I sure as hell would have.
“We don’t know, right, Violet?”
I could think of a few reasons,She’s a spoiled mean girlbeing at the top of my list.
“Right. We don’t know. But we know it has nothing to do with you,” I said.
“Right. And isn’t Daddy’s sketti the best?”
“It’s really good.”Possibly the best I’ve ever had, but we don’t want to give the man a big head.
“Better than pizza rolls?” Charlie asked, his voice lighter now, as he tipped his head back and took a pull from his glass. His hair was longer in the front and shorter in the back. His sapphire eyes were the color of the deepest sea, and his broad shoulders made it apparent that he wasn’t a stranger to physical labor.
Yes. So much better.“Hmm ... I’ll have to think about it.”
Charlie’s eyes darkened as he looked at me, but he didn’t say anything.
“Daddy, Violet’s daddy is insector too.” Harper popped a large forkful of pasta in her mouth just as I took a sip of beer, and I coughed a few times at how blunt she was.
“Tell me what ‘insector’ means?” Charlie asked his daughter, and the way he looked at her made me look at him in a different light. He was softer around Harper. He was everything a dad should be to his daughter. And now my curiosity was getting the best of me, wondering where Harper’s mother was. She was clearly alive, because she saw her every year on her birthday, which was weird as hell.
Even my father had better stats than that, and he was an epic failure in the parenting department.
Who sees their kid once a year and only on their birthday?
Harper looked at me as Charlie told her to take a few bites of salad.
“Insector, or ‘insecure,’ is someone who isn’t happy with themselves, so they make others feel bad because they’re so miserable,” I said, reaching for a piece of garlic bread.
Damn. The man could cook.
“Ahh ... I know a lot of insectors.” Charlie laughed. I rarely heard the man laugh, and when he did, it felt like a gift that you were lucky enough to witness it.
“Daddy, we need to feel sad for all the insectors.” Harper was coming up with that all on her own. I wanted to tell her to put up boundaries with people who weren’t kind to her, but it wasn’t my place. And she quickly changed the subject. “Can Violet come to my Pinkalicious party? It’s going to be so fun.”
“It’s here at the house in a couple weeks, and you’ll probably still be living out in the guesthouse at the rate you keep changing your mind on every finish, so if you want to stop by, you’re welcome to.” Charlie smiled the slightest bit.
