Halfway through his first slice, he said, “Your mom’s been in love with New York as long as I’ve known her.”
In love with New York. In love with Justin. They weren’t exactly the same thing, but she didn’t have the heart to say so.
“And you didn’t drag me here,” her dad continued. “That’s the first thing you got wrong—I came here. Probably should’ve come a long time ago. For sure I should’ve come a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You have to understand, I knew Nancy from when we were kids. We went out in high school. I thought she was going to marry me.”
“She did marry you.”
“Yeah, she did, but she didn’t want us to buy a house and start a family until she got a chance to go to art school first. She went down to live in Milwaukee.”
“I didn’t know Mom went to art school.”
He just made a face, like, You kids think you’re supposed to know everything. “She told me she wasn’t ready to settle down until she got her shot at trying to make something with her talent, so I’d drive up and visit her weekends. I was still in Madison, finishing up grad school. She seemed happy. She had this guy in her classes, her new best friend. He was in love with her.”
“Justin.”
“Tell you the truth, I felt sorry for him, he was so far gone, and Nancy completely uninterested in him except to talk about art.” He took a big bite from the end of his second slice, dripping oil onto the paper tray, then glanced at her. “Quit making that face. She’s not with him. That’s another thing you got wrong.”
“I saw them together, drinking. They looked together-together.”
“What are you, Nancy Drew? Your mom’s known Justin a long time. Maybe they looked to you like they were together because you always think the worst thing’s going to happen, so that’s what you saw. Or maybe it looked like that because a professional woman’s occasionally got to flirt with a man to get what she deserves from him—something you’ve had more than one occasion to discover yourself, doing deals all over Manitowoc and Two Rivers, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“So either way, point is, I’m not worried about it. Eat your pizza.” He reached into his wallet and withdrew a ten. “Here. For when you want another slice.”
?
??It’s that good?”
He just grunted and shoved another bit into his mouth.
Allie tried it, then set to devouring her food. She went up to the counter for another. She tried to get her head around the idea that her dad wasn’t worried about it.
That her mom wasn’t cheating, hadn’t been cheating all these years.
It was a lot to take in.
She slid back into the booth. “So how did it happen?”
“How’d what happen?”
She pointed two thumbs at her own chest, and her dad sighed. “Your sister, I love her, but she was an incredibly difficult baby. Hardly slept, wanted to nurse all the damn time. Your mom lost a lot of weight, got quiet. These days I think they’d have flagged her for that postpartum depression. But back then, nobody talked about that stuff. She went off to New York like she sometimes did, stayed longer than I thought she would, and when she comes home, she tells me what happened. A mistake, she said. Wouldn’t happen again.”
“That’s horrible. How could you even…” Her dad scowled at her, and Allie didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “I mean—”
“It was one time, a long time ago.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Justin got one night with your mom, and he got to be a famous artist. I got thirty years and you girls. I always thought I got the better end of that deal.”
“But don’t you think—”
He pointed his slice at her. “I don’t know why you’re trying to argue with me about this. You don’t throw away something that’s always been good because one of you’s hurting. Hurting bad. You just don’t.”