“Deal. BYODF.”
He arched a brow.
“Bring your own dog food.”
Laughter floated from the driver’s window over the Bronco’s noisy engine. “Got it. You’re a real human being, you know that, Paige?”
I’d heard that a lot when we were kids. His highest praise. It made me feel warm inside.
“We’ll see you Wednesday,” he shouted, pulling out of the driveway.
God help me, but I was already looking forward to it.
Chapter 10
Hopefully whatever called Seb away wasn’t serious enough to get him another black eye. My worries about him bled into worries for Jazmine, so I texted her a couple of times before she finally answered, later that night:I’m fine, just tired. Sorry I blew up. My arm’s bothering me. Going to take a pain pill and go to bed. Talk soon? Xoxo
Pain did make a person grumpy and irrational, I supposed, and maybe she truly did need some rest and space for the time being. But now that Seb had confirmed my suspicions about Jaz’s feelings for Benny, I was hurt she hadn’t confided in me and made mental plans to try to get her to open up.
The next day, I babied my hurt ankle and laid out on the beach behind the cottage with a book—one about women in modern art, written by a Harvard professor who’d be teaching a class in the fall that I’d already registered for. It was a dry, academic text, but that only made concentrating on it a challenge that I enjoyed. Mainly because it distracted me from the fact that to actuallyattendthis professor’s class, I’d have to eventually face my father.
I poked around online and found him. At least, I found his place of business. Mr. Rufus Lee was “Grand Rapids’ leading commercial real estate broker.” He sold office buildings. Entire floors of skyscrapers. Stadiums. And Seb had been right: he’dwon a bunch of sales awards. If I had a working car, I could drive the hour to Grand Rapids and walk into his real estate offices. Though, eventhinkingabout doing that made my stomach cramp.
However, this was not an optional task if I wanted to get my degree from Harvard, and I knew it. So I took the coward’s way out and filled out the contact form on his business’s website, R. Lee and Associates:
Dear Mr. Lee,
I have some legal paperwork that needs your signature and was hoping to find a time when we could meet in person. I’m at the lake for the summer and can meet you in Grand Rapids. Let me know where and when is good for you.
Regards,
Paige Malone, your former daughter
I added my phone number and a postscript instructing him to feel free to text me for more information, then I sent it and felt the biggest sense of relief, and right behind that, a prickling anxiety. Because now I had to wait for a reply. I refreshed my email a gazillion times the first hour, then I gave up and tried not to think about it.
He’d respond eventually, I assumed. I knew businesses sometimes took a while to respond to inquiries, so I figured I’d just wait. And for the time being, I had plenty of other things to occupy my time and thoughts.
By the time Wednesday morning rolled around, there was still no reply; however, I’d woken with an idea about our treasure huntthat I couldn’t get out of my head. So when Seb drove up in the Speed Buggy, I met him out front.
“Mornin’,” he said, blue eyes glittering in the sun. When he opened his door, Punkin jumped over him from the passenger seat and leaped outside. “Dammit, Punkin! Mud on my shorts?”
Punkin wasn’t paying him any attention. She barked at me once and wagged her tail. Her teeth were snaggled, and her tongue hung out goofily.
“Why is she just staring at me?”
“She’s wishing that you’ll succumb to her seductions and pet her,” Seb said, hauling an enormous bag of dog food out of the back of his Bronco. There were a lot of tools back there now, too.
“You know what they say, Punkin. Wish in one hand...”
“Ignore the mean lady,” he told the dog, slinging the dog food bag over one shoulder. “She doesn’t want what I brought her this morning on the dash.”
While Seb carried the dog food inside, whistling for Punkin to follow, I looked inside the front of the car and spotted a pair of plastic coffee cups topped with pink straws, sitting in a paper holder from Grind-and-Shine. The orders were written on the side of the cups: iced white chocolate mochas. One had added coconut milk.
He remembered?
I smiled to myself for a moment, feeling happier about that than I probably should have, then schooled my face to remain neutral and carried the cups inside. Seb was in the kitchen, already filling up a bowl on the floor with kibble. I’d never seen a tail wag so hard. Punkin stuck her entire big head inside Nana’s old bread-dough bowl and woofed it down.
“Slow down, girl. You’re embarrassing us, acting like I never feed you,” Seb said, looking up as I approached. “Ah, you found our morning fuel.”
