But if it was a lie, he would have told me. He’d have warned me that she was going to spin this story about some neighbor. He’d have told me not to give it another thought. He’d have told me about his father’s eyes and explained that was why mine were greenish and his were blue. He’d have said all of that to me.
But he hadn’t. He’d told me it was okay to love her. Why would he do that after she told him she wanted to take me away? He’d yelled at her over the phone. He’d been mad and…and…afraid.
Maybe she hadn’t told him. Maybe it was a lie just for me, to make me doubt him and cling to her. Maybe she knew better than to try and lie to him about something like that. Maybe…
I picked up the key and closed it in my fist. It could all be a lie. It could be. It could.
I nuked us both a slice of lasagna. When Dad came back he hugged me again and told me all about his trip while we ate. I was only half listening, even when he related the bidding war he got into over my Spitfire. It was so awful, looking at his face and being terrified that all of the little things I’d thought I’d gotten from him might come from some stranger. Wondering if he felt the same way looking at me, had always felt that way and I’d never known it. It had been only ten minutes and I was making myself sick.
“So, the sunburn. Are you going to try and tell me the Vanderhoffs ran out of sunblock?”
I forced a laugh and rattled off an excuse about how much fun we’d been having at Sunsplash and hadn’t remembered to reapply.
Dad smiled and started telling me a story about the last time he remembered getting sunburned so badly he couldn’t walk for days. “Maybe we should move to Oregon, huh? All that year-round cloud cover?” He stood up and took our plates.
“Yeah, maybe. We could franchise the shop.”
Dad’s laughter from the kitchen made everything hurt less. And then I killed it.
“We wouldn’t even have to tell Mom. We could just pack up and go.” Through the pass-through into the kitchen, I saw Dad stop in front of the fridge. “No forwarding address. New phone number. It would just be you and me and she couldn’t find us.” I watched him stand there, immobile, while I spoke. I leaned forward on the couch trying to see him better. When he moved, it was like a projector starting up again, sound and picture lurching back together.
“I think I’d miss the sun, wouldn’t you?”
The sun visibly hated me at that moment but I smiled and nodded when he came back. Yes, the sun. That’s why we couldn’t go. Nothing about the fact that I might not be his, that maybe he couldn’t take me if she didn’t want him to. That she might try and take me away, split me in half between them.
“But if I wanted to go, if I wanted us to go somewhere away from here, could we?”
Dad came back with two bowls of ice cream and inexplicably propped my feet up on a pillow, his cure-all for anytime I was sick or hurt. He tucked me against his side in a way that actually hurt my skin, but felt good anyway. “We could go anywhere you wanted.”
We watchedSportsCenterafter that, and I never once felt the urge to escape to the roof.
CHAPTER 32
The upside of Dad getting me a Spitfire was everything. I didn’t have to worry about Daniel (much) or brood about Sean (obsessively). I didn’t even have to agonize about Mom (ad nauseam).
Because finally I had something in front of me that I knew exactly how to fix. And I had Dad with me.
He seemed lighter too after that. I think that since he’d brought me something he’d known would make me happy, he couldn’t help but be happy himself. He wasn’t quite grooving around the garage yet, but that might have been because he hadn’t beaten me to the shop when the Spitfire arrived. And when I say arrived, I mean it was towed. It didn’t actually have four tires, or windows, or a steering wheel.
Or a transmission.
Dad’s grin matched mine. “Pretty great, isn’t it?”
It was better than great. It was late nights and long weekends. It was Dad and me, and Hall & Oates, and fingernails that might never be clean again. I don’t think I’d ever been happier in my life.
Yeah, Daniel and Sean and Mom were still circling, but some dreams were so sweet they demanded to be savored.
And damn it, the Spitfire was sweet. Or it would be when Dad and I were done with it.
I beat a drum solo on Dad’s back waiting for him to lift the hood so I could see my baby in all her glory.
Yeah, well, that was a stretch. Dad had prepped me for the gorier details, but the live show was still a bit stunning.
“Did you find her in a tub full of ice with stitches around her gut?” When Dad frowned at me, I added, “You know, because her organs have obviously been harvested and sold on the black market.”
“Always with the jokes. I warned you she’d been pretty well stripped.”
“Yeah, but…” I leaned in through the driver’s nonexistent window. “Somebody actually took the pedals. Who does that?”
