Chapter Fifty-Nine
A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person.
—Mary Karr
My mother and I find my father in the kitchen, holding his famous lasagna with two big puffy pot holders covering his hands and a grin on his face. “Cholesterol be damned,” he says. “It’s been too long since I had you both here together.”
Whose cholesterol?I wonder. His or hers, but I set that aside and focus on the bigger picture.
For instance, my father is cheerful, smiling, his hair in that mad scientist mussed-up mess that makes my father my father, but there is more, too. There is something under the surface of his happiness, a forced presence that reads like a secret. An easy read from me, the master of secrets these days. Oddly, though, so very oddly for me, more complex is the fact that my simple fatheris complexenough for me to wonder if he has one secret or perhaps more than one?
In that moment, I regret not calling Jess and checking in on my father’s bidding war, but as she said, Why would she know anything? She just hooked my father up with an attorney.
“Just in time,” my father announces, setting the hot plate down and removing his pot-holder gloves.
I round the counter and hug him. “Hiya, Dad,” I greet, tilting my chin up to inspect him.
His brow furrows. “Hi, baby. What’s wrong?”
“I’m about to indulge in your lasagna. What could be wrong?”
He studies me a moment and purses his lips. “Okay,” he says softly, running his hand up and down my arm. “We’ll get to it over the strawberry shortcake.”
The next hour is what I would describe as a holiday with the Griswolds, minus squirrels in trees and fires. We’re all together, our little family, and there is chitchat, but it’s as awkward as a holiday word game where some family member makes up words that don’t really exist. Or like the entire conversation is a Wordle puzzle, and no one knows the answer, so they just say random stuff.
The first moment of relief comes when my mother happily allows me and my father to retreat to his man cave. “Take your strawberry shortcakes and enjoy your father-daughter time,” she offers a bit too agreeably, considering she’s, well, her. And she’s never really that agreeable at all.
A few minutes later, my father and I are settled in the cozy sitting area of his mad, brilliant scientist lab, indulging in our desserts when he says, “What’s wrong with my daughter?”
It’s as if I’m in the midst of a hurricane, in the calm eye of the storm, in a safe place where I could tell him everything. But then what? Destruction? Devastation. I know him. He acts on my behalf, and in doing so, could he become a “liability” as per Adam? My father has always been my rock, the person I love most in this world, which is exactly why his life matters more than mine.
I settle the bowl of deliciousness on top of the table and angle toward him. “I’m worried about you,” I reply, speaking the truth if not the whole truth. “What is going on with your bidding war? And why are you not telling Mom? And why didn’t you tell me about theLion’s Denoffer?”
His expression tightens, and he sets his dessert on the table as well. “Your mother.” His fingers are laced together, his gaze fixed forward, not on me. “I thought she was having an affair.”
My insides twist and turn. “And?” The question comes out in a barely there whisper.
“I hired a PI.” He glances over at me. “She’s not, and now I feel like shit for having her investigated.”
She’s not.
I let that sink in.
It feels good.
It also feels accurate.
“Why do you think you were suspicious?”
“I was made a fool of onLion’s Den. I was hardly a man. Of course she wants a man. All women want a real man, not a fool.”
I’m officially gutted, just gutted, hurting for him. “Dad—”
He holds up a hand and looks at me. “It’s a thing, baby girl, and you know it. A woman wants to know her man is a man.”
I’d push back on that, remind him that friendship, and love, are what matters, but he’s in a headspace that is his alone, and right now he’s letting me in that space. I need to let him talk and guide him to share more. “Is the potential affair why you’re hiding the bidding war from her? Because she knows something is off between you. So much so she even told me.”
“No,” he says in a surprising dismissal of this idea. “Nothing like that. I wanted to surprise her, show her that her man came through and in a big way.”
