“You look different,” Sloane had observed from her corner of the oversized sectional, legs tucked under a blanket despite the August heat. She always ran cold, even before cancer, and her blue eyes missed nothing, especially when it came to me.
“I’m exhausted. Three-thirty wake-ups will age a person.”
“It’s not that.” Molly had tilted her head, studying me with the same focus she gives her flower fields. “You look really good, Avs. Have you been taking vitamins or?—”
“It’s the baking,” I’d cut in, afraid I might do something truly mental and spill my guts under my best friend’s gentle interrogation. “Physical labor and creative output are verytherapeutic. Maybe I’ll write my own self-help book to inspire the masses.”
They’d accepted it, or at least pretended to. Nobody asked about my progress on the bucket list, which was a blessing since I had nothing to report. Joy isn’t a line item you can check off a to-do list.
But I’m pretty sure I’d felt it watching Jeremy flip pancakes and then solving a crossword puzzle together over coffee. It was perfect and wonderful and scared the crap out of me. I know better than to tie my happiness to a man.
The cloth catches on the espresso machine’s drip tray, snapping me back to the present. I rinse it out in the small sink and drape it over the faucet just as a throat clears behind me.
I spin around, customer-service smile already in place, but it disappears the instant I see my father standing on the other side of the counter. He’s thinner than I remember, his handsome face deeply lined, dark hair threaded with gray that wasn’t there before prison. But the smile is exactly the same. It makes my gut churn. That smile enticed elderly people to trust him with their life savings, and made his daughter believe she was a princess.
I grip the edge of the counter like I’m Tom Cruise holding onto that cliff face in the secondMission Impossiblemovie. And there’s nothing to catch me if I fall.
“Baby girl.” He opens his arms like we’re at a family reunion, the last decade and a half of his incarceration a minor blip on life’s radar.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper, trying not to reveal my swirling emotions.
“Can’t a father visit his daughter?” His eyes sweep the bakery, cataloging everything the way I imagine him inventorying a mark’s living room. I hate that I wonder what he sees. “Cute shop.”
“Why aren’t you in Connecticut?”
“Finished my obligations there.” His tone is casual, like he’stalking about wrapping up paperwork. “You’ve been busy. New job. Lots of potential.”
The word potential sounds salacious on his tongue. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do.” His smile used to make me feel special. Before I understood it was a weapon. “Jeremy Winslow. Your friend’s brother with all those zeros on the end of his bank account.”
My blood turns to ice. “How do you know about Jeremy?”
He lifts a shoulder, like the information found its way to him through osmosis and not thanks to whatever network of lowlifes he maintained from behind bars. “I keep tabs, Avah. It’s what fathers do.”
“Most fathers do it from the bleachers at soccer games, not federal prison.”
His smile doesn’t waver. My dad absorbs hits like a sponge absorbs water, and through it all, he just keeps smiling and wanting and taking.
“I have a business opportunity that would benefit Jeremy—all of us really.”
“I don’t have any sway with him,” I answer, proud of how sure of that I sound.
He brushes an invisible speck from his sleeve. “A beautiful woman can accomplish amazing things when she puts her mind to it. It’s a lesson I wish your mother had taught you.”
“Leave Mom out of this.”
“How is she? Still in Florida playing Mah Jongg every Tuesday?”
“She’s fine, and not interested in hearing from you either.”
His expression flickers, a coldness surfacing behind his eyes before the salesman mask snaps into place. “I’m heading back east for a meeting, but I’ll be in touch.” He taps the counter twice with his knuckle, like he’s closing a deal. “Think about what I said.”
The door to the shop opens just as he gets there, and he holds it for Winnie with deferential courtesy. She thanks him without asecond glance, but he catches my eye over her shoulder and winks. Then he’s gone.
My hands are shaking, so I grab the dish cloth again—like that can mask my reaction—as I attempt to force air into lungs that have forgotten how to work on their own.
“Looks like you’ve got everything under control here.” Winnie sets her purse on the counter, and that’s when I notice her eyes are red and my fingers aren’t the only ones trembling.
