Paige said nothing.
“If you won’t tell me what’s going on,” he said, “how am I supposed to fix it?”
“Oh, Daddy.” Her eyes softened. “I’m not asking you to fix it.”
“But that’s my job. I mean, what do you want me to do, here? Punch someone?”
A flicker of a smile graced her mouth. “I don’t think that would help, in this case.”
“But I’d do it. You know I would. Or do you want me to swear I’m not going anywhere? That I wouldn’t leave you even if the world was ending, even if your mom and I fight sometimes?”
Her eyebrows crooked. “No. Not that. I already know that.”
“Well, what, then?”
“Just. . .” She reached over the table for his hands, then squeezed so hard his bones creaked. “Promise you’ll always be my dad. And I don’t just mean if you find someone new. I mean... in general.”
He missed a beat, then another. “That’s a given. That goes without saying.”
His reassurance didn’t seem to relax her. Tense lines appeared around the corners of her eyes. “So you promise?”
Jesus, she sounded so vulnerable. Like her whole existence hinged on his answer. “Of course I promise. I’ll write it in blood, if you want me to. But I’d sooner jump off a building than stop being your dad. So it’s a moot point.”
Her grip loosened. Finally, he’d said something right. But goddamn, he had no idea what this conversation was actually about. From what he could tell, Aubrey’s letter merely lurked at the fringes of Paige’s disquiet. Something else had shaken her to her roots.
“Okay,” she said, steadier. “I’m okay.”
“Are you?”
She reclaimed her hands and smoothed out her T-shirt. “Yeah. I think so. Or I will be. And I promise I’ll tell you everything. Once I sort through some stuff.”
He shook his head, which someone had stuffed full of cotton. “You’re not in danger, though?”
She smiled faintly. “No.”
“Okay, good. And... you’ll turn in your biology assignment?”
She tucked her lip under her teeth and dropped her eyes. “I’d rather not.”
His breath shortened. That damned assignment. Did that lead back to what had freaked her out so badly? “Juan said you’ll be lucky to pull a C-minus without it, so I think you kind of have to.”
“Right.” A cheerless laugh. “Okay, then. If you really, really want me to.”
He studied her, hard, as if he might stare his way through the conversational fog. “I do.”
“Okay.” She heaved a sigh, got up, and kissed his cheek. She carried her plate toward the kitchen, then turned in the doorway. “And Daddy? This thing with you and Aubrey, it doesn’t bother me. Not now that I’ve gotten over the shock. I mean, she’s amazing, so I can see why you...”
He stiffened, and she trailed off, her cheeks flaring all over again. “Anyway, sorry to be so weird. I’m just gonna go lie down, okay?”
“You’resureyou’re not pregnant? Because you could tell me, if so. You wouldn’t be in trouble.”
She sighed, but a current of amusement undercut the sound. “That’d be impossible. So yeah, I’m sure.”
“Yeah. Okay.” His response came out on autopilot.
Paige drifted from the room, but Nick didn’t move. He sat at the table, staring past his cold food, unseeing.
The conversation replayed in his mind, over and over. He tugged on a different thread each time, examining where each led, until a picture came together in his head.
