Chapter Eight
Iused mykey to unlock the door of my childhood home. Since we moved into the house the year before my mother died, my father hadn’t changed a single thing about it. Not even the locks on the front door.
“Dad, I’m here!” I called.
Every Thursday night we could manage, my dad and I tried to sit down and have a family dinner. It wasn’t every week, but it was often. Sometimes, when we were both working late, we would meet for dinner at a restaurant, but most Thursdays, we sat down at the dinner table my parents had purchased the year they married.
“In the kitchen!” he answered.
As I walked down the hall, I heard the clank of utensils and running water, indicating my dad was cooking dinner tonight rather than his housekeeper, Mrs. Marshall. I only hoped that whatever concoction he’d come up with was edible.
Relief filled me when I entered the kitchen and saw a box of fettuccine on the counter next to the stove and my father standing over a large saucepan filled with what appeared to be Alfredo sauce. My father might have burned every meatloaf he’d ever baked, but his Fettuccine Alfredo was delicious and perfect every time.
He glanced up at me as I approached the stove. “Hey, sweetheart. How was your week?”
At sixty-five, my father was tall and fit thanks to his daily sessions at the pool and weekend rounds of golf. Though his hair was mostly silver, he looked nearly a decade younger than he truly was.
My heart warmed at the sight of him and I walked over to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “My week was great,” I replied with a smile.
He looked down at me with a curious expression. “That’s good to hear.”
I released him and moved toward the refrigerator. “Wine?”
“Sure, baby. Whatever you think would be best with the fettuccine.”
I selected a bottle of chardonnay and opened it, pouring us each a glass.
“How was your week?” I asked.
“Fine, fine,” he answered absently. “The usual.”
My father was an appellate judge and had been for fifteen years. We might discuss particulars of our work if something interesting happened, but for the most part, we avoided the topic. This was at my father’s insistence. He said he knew Tanya the Attorney but that he wanted to stay in touch with Tanya, his daughter.
Since I not only enjoyed the reprieve from work but thought it was a sweet gesture, I tried to stick to his declaration.
We chatted about mundane details of our days as he put the finishing touches on dinner. Instead of eating in the formal dining room toward the front of the house, we usually ate in the breakfast nook in the kitchen.
As we sat down with plates of pasta and glasses of wine, my father studied me.
“What?” I asked, slipping a fork wound with fettuccine in my mouth.
“You look…different.”
I looked askance at him as I chewed.
“You look happy,” he continued. “Almost like you’re glowing.”
I wasn’t sure how, but I managed to swallow the pasta without choking. “Glowing?”
“Are you…are you pregnant?”
“What?” My voice rivaled a screech.
“Not that I’d be upset. I mean, you’re about to be thirty-four this year, so it’s about time I had a grandbaby. Since Tessa doesn’t seem—”
“Dad, I’m not pregnant,” I declared, sweeping up my wine glass and taking a huge drink.
“I should hope not since you’re drinking wine and that would be bad for the ba—”
