Pining For You (Jasper Falls 4)

Some of the rowdier uncles were already getting that crazed, combative look in their eyes that usually led to a wrestling match on the front lawn. Skylar could tell by watching their body language, who was gunning for a battle and who was hoping to escape the day unscathed.

Staring out the window behind the sink, Skylar scanned the yard where the kids played. Her gaze snagged on her dad, standing alone by the cars, notes spread out over the hood of their family’s SUV, rocks acting as paperweights so they didn’t blow away as he hunched over his scribblings searching for answers he’d been desperate to find.

“Mom, did anyone tell Daddy it’s Sunday and he’s supposed to have the day off?”

Her mom joined her at the counter, her stare following Skylar’s. She sighed. “He’s just so worried about his deadline. If they don’t get that grant funding, he’ll be crushed.”

It wasn’t news to discover her parents had struggles. Skylar suffered no illusions that life got easier as people grew older, mostly because her parents never sheltered her by hiding how hard they both worked. But her dad needed a break.

The man worked non-stop. Even when he was present, he wasn’t fully with them. His mind was always on work—more now than ever before.

Setting down the damp tea towel, Skylar grabbed a cookie off a cooling tray and pushed out the back door. She skirted the testosterone fest on the porch and worked her way through the Jenga-jammed cars in the driveway. Vehicles were puzzled together like tight Tetris blocks, and the disorder made her twitch.

Her dad was too engrossed in his work to hear her approach. “I brought you a cookie,” she announced, a few feet away.

He looked up, brow pinched, and a look of disorientation in his eyes as if he forgot he was standing in a driveway at a family dinner.

She set the cookie and napkin on the hood of the car, her eyes sparing only an impersonal glance at the columns of medical coding covering his notes.

“Thank you, pumpkin.”

She rested her hip against a headlight and crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought you took off today.”

He sighed and scooped up the cookie. “I’m just trying to figure out some last minute changes before we push the proposal through.” He took a bite of the cookie and paused, shutting his eyes to truly savor the homemade perfection. “Did Gran make these?”

“Yup.”

“You can tell. She sneaks walnuts into them no matter how much Aunt Col bitches that no one likes nuts.”

No one liked Aunt Col’s cookies.

The front door slammed and a car started on the other side of the house where she couldn’t see. The vehicles were so jammed together, it could have been anyone borrowing a car to run into town for an errand. In a family this big, no one had any real claim to private property or privacy, so if car keys were left lying about, grand theft auto was practically invited.

Skylar glanced at the pages of scribbled notes spread across the hood of the car. Her dad gave up working in the lumberyard to follow his dreams of becoming an epidemiologist, but few people in their family truly understood the work he did, so she imagined it got lonely at times. She wished she understood his work more so that they might have more things to talk about.

He spent nearly a hundred hours a week isolated in his lab, doing research and writing grant proposals with his team. She hardly saw him anymore, and the older she got, the less he seemed able to bond with her. Her heart longed for the simplicity of the days when he used to push her on the tire swing and call her his little pumpkin.

“Why don’t you come hang out with everyone, Dad? Sometimes walking away from a project for a little bit puts things into perspective. Maybe you’ll see the answers you’re looking for when you come back—refreshed.”

He grinned and pulled her close, pressing a kiss to the top of her hair. “When you say things like that, you sound too grown up to be my little girl.”

“I am a grownup, remember?”

“Never,” he teased. “To me, you’ll always be four years old, with rosy cheeks and pig tails. My little pumpkin.”

She patted his arm. “Well, this four-year-old’s going to grab a beer.” She pushed a doting kiss onto the dark stubble of his cheek. “Don’t stay out here too long.”

“A few more minutes and I’ll be in.”

She nodded, knowing a few minutes would turn into another hour and then some. He’d stay focused on his work until he lost daylight or was called inside for dinner, whichever came first.

Things were getting rambunctious around the deep fryer, so she skipped stealing a beer from the cooler on the porch, not wanting to get roped into some pissing contest about whose truck, buck, or gun was bigger and better. Her uncles might all be grown men, but when they got together, they had a habit of regressing to competitive little boys.