“Oh fine, let him.” He moved over and Charlie jumped up obligingly. He didn’t want an argument over whether the dog could sit on the couch.
“Lilah, put the phone down please.”
She clicked out from whatever site she was on with a barely suppressed sigh.
“All the way down, so it’s not in your hand.” He waited until she set it on the coffee table. “Thank you.”
“What? I did it.”
“And I’m saying thank you.”
She started an eye roll, then thought better of it. He knew she was just posturing, but it got under his skin. Too much girl drama. He let her sit and stew a minute.
“What did you want to talk about?” She’d lost the bravado and sounded like a kid. A little anxious. Eight years since Sophie left and Lilah was still struggling. Glenn didn’t give a rat’s ass about Sophie anymore, but it killed him the way Lilah still suffered. No tears, at least not that he saw, just this vague resentment of him she wasn’t even aware of. The parent whostayed. It had been so much easier when she was little and he could just swing her into his lap.
He took a breath. “I get that you don’t want to be treated like a little kid, but I’ve got to know where you are. That’s why I got you a phone.”
“It’s seventh grade, Dad. Everyone has a phone.”
“And you need to use it the way we talked about. When you get home I want to know. If you want to go to a friend’s, you need to ask.”
“Why don’t you just attach a leash to me like Charlie?”
“Dammit, Lilah, you’re twelve, not twenty!” His voice startled the dog, who gave him an anxious look. Glenn ran a hand across his beard, lowered his voice. “I love you, and I want to keep you safe. That’s all this is about.” He waited until she made eye contact. “All right?”
For a moment she looked like she might cry, which took him aback. Had he been that hard? He hadn’t meant to yell.
“All right,” she said.
He squeezed her shoulder. “Want a snack? I’m starved.”
She disentangled herself from the couch. “I could eat something.”
He rummaged through the fridge, settling on peanut butter and honey sandwiches. When all else failed, he always had honey in the house. His own honey. Lilah, who’d always been artistic, had designed the label for him when she was six. A whimsical drawing of a bee on a flower. He loved it and wouldn’t hear of changing it, even though she was after him to let her do something better. He sold a lot of honey at craft shows and farmer’s markets, and people always commented on his label.
He found some oranges and brought it all to the table, with Charlie trotting along behind. He’d slathered extra honey on Lilah’s sandwich, the way she liked it. He felt bad about coming down on her, but he needed to be firm. He remembered what itwas like to be a teenager. He and his brothers had gotten into plenty of trouble. And that was with two parents at home.
“I thought you were hungry,” he said. She was picking at her sandwich, not really eating.
She shrugged. “I guess not that much.”
The shrug reminded him of Sophie, the casual way she used to dismiss him with the bored hike of a shoulder. It made him nervous on a level he could barely acknowledge. That fear, never far from the surface, that Lilah might grow up, and like her mother, find him lacking. She looked so much like Sophie, the blond hair and delicate features. She was going to be tall like her mother too. Right now she was gangly, but she’d grow into it.
He tore off a piece of his own sandwich and fed it to Charlie, a peace offering, even though he had a rule about not feeding the dog from the table. He had a lot of rules. Maybe that was why Lilah was starting to chafe.
“I saw that,” Lilah said with the hint of a smile.
“Yeah, I know.” He smiled back. “He’s such a beggar.”
“He rolled in something when I let him out before.”
He sniffed in Charlie’s general direction. “Ah jeez, that’s what I smell. Where’d he go, the swamp?” They joked that it was a swamp, but the yard actually sloped down to a wetland. Skunk cabbage and milkweed. Marsh marigolds, with their riot of yellow flowers that were early forage for bees. When a tree fell, it rotted where it lay, no one came to chip it up. Not everyone wanted a wetland in their backyard, but he treasured it. That was why he’d bought the house a decade ago. A wooded neighborhood in an older modest section of Laurelton, a quiet place to raise bees and a family. At the time, Sophie was still on board, although he should have seen signs of her discontent.
Lilah got up with her plate. “I don’t want any more,” she said, tipping the remnants of her sandwich in the dog’s bowl, which brought Charlie skidding across the kitchen. Charlie wasa rescue—part lab, part shepherd. Maybe a little something else thrown in. Good natured and smart enough to know where he’d landed. Glenn hadn’t been keen on getting a dog—he had enough to do—but when did he ever say no to Lilah?
Charlie had been advertised as housebroken but wasn’t even close. If he had an accident, and there were plenty, he always managed to hit the rug instead of the floor. Lilah wouldn’t hear of locking him in a crate when they left the house, so Glenn papered the kitchen and hoped for the best. Charlie was a terror, but a lovable one. As a puppy, he’d chewed up any shoe he could find and still surfed the counter for food the minute they left the room. He was always overjoyed to see them whether it had been fifteen minutes or five hours, greeting them at the door with his hippo, his whole body vibrating with excitement. Lilah had become moody but Charlie never wavered, always thrilled to chase a squirrel or roll in whatever disgusting thing he could find. Charlie was the great leveler. Even when they couldn’t laugh at much, they still laughed at Charlie.
“Do you have any homework this weekend?” Glenn asked as he rinsed the plates.
