Ranar swayed, sighing heavily as he hung up the phone.
This was the part of the job he disliked the most. Weddings were stressful, but he thrived under pressure and some weeks, during the height of bridal season, he looked forward to the nonstop crush of bouquets and table arrangements andheadpieces. He would work all through the night for some weddings, ensuring every piece was perfect and ready for pick-up by morning, and then start the whole process over again for the next bride.
Funerals were a different story. It was hard enough constantly being confronted with mortality, a creeping reminder that he would be tasked with making arrangements for his own parents sooner than later, sooner than he liked, a reality he kept pushing into the corner. Hard enough to be reminded of life’s fleeting nature for strangers, but so few of the customers that came through his door were strangers at all.
He had lived in Cambric Creek his entire life, save for the few years he’d left for university. He wasn’t offering rote condolences on the loss of some nameless, faceless outsider to his life. These were neighbors, the parents of friends, people who had been coming in and out of his family’s shop since he was a naglet; trolls and goblins and orcs he’d known all his life. This wasn’t a stranger’s funeral wreath he’d be creating that afternoon — he’d gone to elementary school with Torvah and her siblings, graduating with one of her younger brothers. Her mother had come in regularly when his parents’ had still come into the shop each morning . . .
Ranar shook away his spiraling line of thought.Just do your job. Since the morning he’d run into Sumi outside the coffee shop, Ranar felt as if the whole world was pranking him, that one little nugget of good luck and fortuitous happenstance paying him back in black dividends. The past week and a half since had been one long tension headache, manifesting in a lack of sleep and a sharp ache in his temple, but things were finally,finallylooking up.
His cell phone buzzed at the edge of the counter and he sprung to snatch it up, a text notification he had been breathlessly anticipating all morning.
I’m so readyyyyyyyy!
Do I get to work in the shop?
Can I help customers?
Her exuberance was palpable, and his lungs clenched, heart aching. She was almost home. The last thinghehad wanted to do as a child was help customers in the shop, but Ruma was champing at the bit. Not that there were many customers who actually came in, but still.
If that’s what you want to do, you can be counter girl all summer.
Another buzz, almost immediately.
Yusss. We’re gonna cook.
Ranar squinted.Cook? Cook what?He would cook whatever she wanted, every day for as long as she was there. Before he could agree, another message appeared on the screen.
We’re about to start boarding!
Her plane would be landing that afternoon, an airline employee escorting her from the gate all the way to the car that would be waiting at the curb to whisk her away to Cambric Creek, depositing her directly to his door; the details of the hand-off painstakingly spelled out in the custody agreement and arranged by her mother.
Text me before you take off, okay? And then as soon as you land. And before you leave.
Actually, why don’t you just call me on video now, I’ll do the whole flight with you.
You can hang up when you’re pulling the driveway.
It was an exaggeration of what he would have preferred, but only just. When the phone rang a second later, he answered it before the ringer melody had a chance to get out more than a few notes.
“Daddy, you’re giving helicopter. We’re lining up now! I get to board first with the old people.”
Ranar laughed, his heart squeezing at the sound of his daughter’s voice. “Good. Hopefully they’ll seat you next to one of those old people. They’ll sleep or read the whole time. If anyone bothers you, tell them you’re venomous and that you’re being transported to a juvenile detention center, got it? And tell the flight attendant. Tellallthe flight attendants.“ His smile stretched at the sound of her outraged laughter.Just a few more hours and she’ll be home. “I’m not kidding, text me when you land. Do you have any checked bags, or—“
“Nope. Just my carry-on. I figured you can buy me new stuff when I get there.”
He snorted. Despite living full-time with his extremely serious ex-wife, their daughter had somehow inherited his sense of humor. “Yeah, whatever. Okay, that’s perfect. They’ll take you straight to the car, right? Text me when you leave. It’s a straight shot on the highway from the airport, call if your driver gets off at an exit so I can hunt him down. Call mommy from the car, you know she’ll want to hear that you arrived safely. I’ll see you in a few hours, okay? Love you, Noodle.”
She was right, he was forced to agree, after hanging up the phone. Hewasoverprotective. Ranar couldn’t help it. It was nerve-racking knowing that she was getting on a plane alone, exacerbated by the distance between them, and he wouldn’t relax until she was safe and sound in his arms.
Allowing his ex-wife to move halfway across the unification with their daughter had been a decision he had agonized over, but as he had told Pinky when she’d asked, what was best for Ruma was the only thing that mattered.
PinksPosies&Pearls:It must be hard having your daughter so far away.
Did you move away from them? or . . .??
It had been the nosiest, most personal question either of them had ever asked the other, a fact she knew, judging by her emojichoice. He’d hesitated. They had an unspoken agreement not to poke into each other’s real lives and identities, and so far, neither of them had ever revealed anything about themselves that could do so. Plants and superficialities that somehow revealed the truest, most honest facets of their souls, but nothing that could be easily plugged into a search engine.It’s not like you’re the only divorced father in existence.
ChaoticConcertina:My ex moved away for a job opportunity.
