“They also helped send NASA to the moon. There’s even a movie about it!”
“I’ve seen it,” Brittany says enthusiastically. “It’s really good.”
“Dad said I could watch it tonight after I finish my homework.”
“There are other movies about amazing women in science,” Brittany says as I walk behind her to grab a bucket of ice to fill the bin. “I’m off on Saturday. Maybe we could have a girl’s day. We can paint each other’s nails and watch movies.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Jane responds with a small voice. “My nana and papa want to see me this weekend.”
I pull to a halt at the doorway and start to go back to confront her. The first I heard of this was less than an hour ago, which means the Labelles have been contacting my daughter directly and bypassing me. Fury builds in my chest. How dare Evelyn try to circumvent me to get to Jane. I’ll have to talk to Nanny Faye and make sure she doesn’t allow Jane to talk to them when I’m not around. I’ll have to—
“Do youwantto see them?” Brittany asks.
Even though I’m eavesdropping, I want to hear my daughter’s answer. I’ve asked her before, but she’s intuitively figured out that I don’t like her grandparents, so I can’t be sure she’s being truthful when she says she tolerates her visits.
“Is it wrong that I kind of do?” she asks quietly, and my heart sinks.
“Of course not,” Brittany says carefully. “They’re your grandparents.” But she was friends with Millie since we were in high school. She knows the Labelles and all the crap they pulled back then.
“They have a lot of money,” Jane says, seeming to choose her words carefully.
It feels like my heart has just plummeted off the top of Big Jump Mountain. The brewery is profitable, but we’re not even close to being rich. Jane has never had the newest and best electronics or expensive clothes, but she’s been happy.
Hasn’t she?
I can’t listen to any more of their conversation, so I abandon my plan to refill the ice bins. I feel like there’s a giant crack in my relationship with my daughter, and I’m not sure what to do about it. If the Labelles press her to move in with them, will she want to? This past summer, she balked at the idea, but now…? Does she think they have the money to buy her the computer she wants? She’s too young to realize that gifts from the Labelles come with strings. Strings Millie found too tight to bear. She cut off nearly all contact with her parents for a reason. It only reinforces that it might be best to cut off all contact with them now. Despite what the attorneys think.
Last summer, I felt confident in what she wanted, but now…
Jane’s face appears in the doorway. “I’m going upstairs to do my homework.”
“Okay,” I say. She starts to move away, but I call out, “Jane?”
Her face reappears. “Yeah?”
“I love you.”
She stares at me in surprise, and it’s like a knife to my heart.
There’s no denying I’m not a touchy-feely kind of guy. Millie softened me, made me into a more demonstrative man, but part of me shut down after she died. Still, I tell Jane that I love her when I go up to put her to bed at night, and I provide her with everything she needs to be safe and protected. Right now, it doesn’t feel like enough. Brittany’s right—Icanchange. I need to.
After a five-second delay, Jane rushes toward me and wraps her arms around my neck, hanging onto me for several seconds before she whispers, “I love you too, Daddy.”
Daddy.She hasn’t called me Daddy since she started kindergarten and said only babies call their fathers Daddy.
I wrap my arm around her back and hold her close for several more seconds until she starts to wriggle free.
She backs up but still stands less than a foot from me, so I reach out and cup her cheek. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me, Janie. Nothing else matters but you.”
Tears fill her eyes, and she whispers, “I know, Daddy.”
Then she turns and heads upstairs.
