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“My dad called,” I manage.
“Hmm,” he says. “Still not happy with us leaving, huh?”
“Nope,” I sniffle.
His fingers tangle in my hair, stroking. “Do you want me to give him a call?”
I’m simultaneously horrified and a little turned on that he’s willing to speak to my father for me. It would be nice to let them talk through it on their own, but there’s a lot of history and difficult dynamics happening here, and he doesn’t know about any of them.
No, this is my mess to deal with.
“Can you just hold me while I fall asleep?” I whisper.
“Of course, baby.”
I wipe my eyes and squeeze them shut. My forehead rests against his chest, his hand on the back of my head. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around us but the flimsy tent walls, I’ve never felt more safe.
CHAPTER TWENTY
COEN
That night, she’s quiet as we lay together and listen to all the sounds around us. A coyote yaps and sets off a distant storm of responses. A loon shrieks over the lake. Doves rustle along the line hanging low over the bathrooms. Then, there’s her soft breathing at my side. And a sniffle.
“You alright, baby?” I ask.
She smiles, turning her head to look at me. “You don’t have to say it all sexy like that.”
“Like that?”
She drops her voice. “Like…you alright, baby…like you’re John Wayne or something.”
I laugh softly. We both sober.
“Are you okay?” I ask again.
She turns to face the ceiling, fingers twined together. I let her sit and think for a while, and the longer she thinks, the more serious she gets. Finally, she rolls to face me, curling up in a little ball and propping her cheek on her folded hands. I turn and brush her hair back.
“What, baby?” I ask, keeping my voice soft. I don’t want to push her away.
She blinks, lashes wet. “Can I tell you a terrible secret?” she whispers.
My stomach clenches, and a number of awful scenarios run through my head. Keeping my face impassive, I nod.
“Yeah, of course.”
She clears her throat, and her jaw works. There’s a second when I think she’s going to lose her nerves.
“My parents split up because my dad cheated on my mom,” she says.
It takes me a second to absorb that. Out of all the things she could have said, this isn’t the worst, but it’s the most surprising. I kind of assumed if there was infidelity, it would have been the other way around, given that the girls live with Bill. Granted, I don’t have a lot of experience around fathers myself. Mine was a no-show for the entire thirty-six years of my life. When I finally tracked him down, he was dead.
“Really?” I say.
She nods, giving me a humorless smile. “Yeah. It was when Serena was about four. I was seven. I had just had my birthday.”
I wait, watching her eyes go in and out of focus as she thinks.
“You want to talk about it?” I ask.
