“Oh, I retired a long time ago.” The woman shot an adoring look at my father. “I used to be a model, but then I met Leo, and that all changed.”
“A model?” Amaya leaned in curiously. “That sounds fascinating.”
“It really was,” she sighed, and before I knew it, the two of them were lost in a conversation about the fashion industry while my father looked on approvingly. As the food arrived and the conversation lulled, he jumped in to talk to Amaya himself.
“So, Amaya, what else did you bring to the table?” he asked, looking at her intently. I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
“Dad, she’s not a business deal. She’s my wife,” I reminded him, but he ignored me. Damn, sometimes I wondered if I was the only one in my family who knew how to act like a human being. Maybe my relative normalcy had come from my mother’s side, but I had been so young when she’d died, I could barely remember her.
“Well, on top of my librarian skills,” Amaya cocked her head, “a ferret.”
“A ferret?” My dad spluttered, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. Maybe we had something in common. That had pretty much been my internal reaction when she’d shown me that thing as well.
“Yep.” Amaya nodded, and Dad chuckled. A laugh—that was a good sign.
“And how exactly did you end up with a ferret?” he ventured.
Amaya launched off into the story of how she came to have him, after a family Jolene used to know through one of the schools she attended found a litter of them around the back of their garden and had done their best to pawn them off on anyone who would take them. She had been too soft-hearted to say no, and before she knew it, she had to housetrain a ferret on top of everything else.
The story amused my father, and he laughed so loudly a couple of times, the whole restaurant seemed to be shooting him dirty looks. In the midst of the story, I remembered that my new stepmother’s name was Karen and finally felt myself begin to relax. I could manage this. It might have been weird, but I could do it.
The food was good, and Amaya was bright and perky and everything I needed her to be, given that my father would eat me alive if he got a sniff that I had married someone totally wrong for me and the family.
By the time dinner was drawing to a close, my father was giving me these looks and nods that told me everything I needed to know about his opinion on Amaya. When she got up to go to the bathroom, he delivered his approval on a silver platter.
“I like her,” he announced, as though that was the most important thing in the world.
“Well, that’s handy since I’m married to her,” I shot back, and he rolled his eyes.
“Son, I’m trying to approve of your wife. Just let me,” he ordered, and I managed to smile. I was still so tense at the notion of how I’d thought this night was going to go, I was having a hard time unwinding myself, but this was good news, the news I’d been hoping to hear.
“You should keep her around.” He nodded in the direction she’d gone in. “I can tell she suits you.”
I bit the inside of my cheeks and tried not to make a comment about most people sticking at their respective marriages for more than two years at a time, but I thought better of it, considering she was only meant to stick around for a year. She returned to the table and squeezed my hand, playing the ever-attentive wife.
“Well, I think I should get the check.” My father leaned back and waved over a waiter.
“Thank you for this evening.” Amaya smiled at the two of them graciously. “I had a lovely time.”
“We should go out and do lunch sometime,” Karen suggested, and Amaya nodded. I wasn’t sure whether she was just playing or not, but she seemed genuinely enthusiastic.
“I’d really like that.” She smiled. I couldn’t imagine the two of them going out together. Karen was likely another in a long line of gold diggers for my father, and Amaya had never come across that way to me, which was somewhat ironic, given our setup but still. Maybe the two of them would become best friends and that would be that. My whole life had shifted a few degrees out of place, and now anything was possible.
“Thanks for dinner,” I offered my father, knowing if I attempted to pay he would take it as a personal insult.
“We’ll be around to visit the two of you soon,” he half-warned, half-threatened, and I hid my groan of annoyance. At least he liked her enough to want to see us again. That was a start. Though maybe it would have been better for everyone had he hated her so much, he’d sworn never to spend another minute with her. Then, at least, I might have gotten a moment’s peace.