He held up his hands. “Not implying. Just saying if you’re out that late again with a boy, you’ll be on the first flight back home and locked in a boarding school.”
Normally, I’d spit and hiss and argue, but his threat about boarding school wasn’t new—he’d overused it when I refused to eat broccoli or didn’t make my bed—but today, I simply didn’t care if he limited my freedom.
It was all the same anyway.
“Uh-oh. Must be serious if you’re not rising to that bait.” Dad sat forward, linking his fingers between his woollen breeches from set. “Speak.”
I bit my lip, my gaze wandering to the frozen screen where the actor playing Jacob was locked in position, looking at the sky with tears on his cheeks.
Should I ask or not?
Was it my business, or should I leave it alone?
When I couldn’t figure out my decision, Dad tilted his head in frustration. “Not like you to be tongue-tied.”
I sighed. “You don’t like me talking about it.”
He stilled. “Doesn’t matter. If you need to discuss whatever is bugging you, then spit it out. I know I was hard on you when you were little, but you’re a young woman now. Anything you want to know…I’ll do my best to tell you.” He gulped dramatically, the comedian-actor taking over from the serious. “Unless it’s about sex, then it’s a totally different story. That topic doesn’t exist. As far as I’m concerned, you live in a world where you don’t know what boys are.”
“Ha ha.” I gave him a quick smile. He’d already sucked up his nerves and given me the sex talk when I was younger. He’d done it himself, rather than enlist Keeko. He was a good father. A great father.
I was so lucky.
Plucking lint from my jeans, I muttered, “Okay then, um…well, you know how when we lost Mom, it changed us. We…I don’t know exactly. We just changed.”
He nodded, leaning back in the chair. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“Well…do you think losing his dad changed Jacob?”
Dad mulled over my question. He genuinely gave me time instead of brushing it aside like he did when I was a child. “Undoubtedly.”
“Do you think it’s broken him as a person?”
He sighed. “Who can say what each person can tolerate? You and me, we decided that we wanted to keep going, regardless if your mother left us. We had each other to lean on.”
“Jacob has his mom. Why isn’t that enough?”
Dad rubbed his nose. “Who’s to say it’s not?”
I gave him an exasperated look. “I know it’s been a while since I’ve seen him, but he was hurting back when I stayed with them. He hurt a lot, Dad. I don’t think you grow out of that.”
He stroked the thick weave of his trousers, taking his time to reply. “Each person suffers in their own way. His loss was different than ours. His dad was sick. Just playing that role drained me to the point of depression. Knowing you’re going to die, all while fighting it until that very last moment…it couldn’t have been easy living in that environment as a kid.”
“Mom was sick too. Mentally.” I dropped my gaze. “But she chose to leave. Maybe that’s the difference.”
Dad looked away, clearing his throat as if his own pain still punctured his heart. I hadn’t been the only one Mom chose death over. She’d left Dad, too.
How could she be so cruel?
We sat in tense silence for a few seconds.
“Anyway,” I said a bit too loudly. “Watching this movie just made me think of the Wilds, that’s all.”
“Are you sure that’s all?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why are you so concerned about him? You haven’t seen him in years. He’s twenty-one now. He’s not the kid you knew when you rode there.”
“I know.”
“How he’s dealing with the death of his father isn’t your concern.”
I slouched, pulling a turquoise cushion onto my lap. “I can still worry about him.”
Dad narrowed his eyes. “Look, all I’m saying is don’t worry about things you can’t change. He’s living his life. You’re living yours. That’s all you need to focus on.”
But that was the thing…I didn’t want that separation.
I wanted friendship.
I wanted him to answer a stupid letter once in a while and prove that he saw me as someone valuable and not a nuisance.
That would never happen, but at least dreams were free. “Okay.”
That response was pathetic. It made me look pathetic, sound pathetic, overall pathetic.
He stared at me for a second too long, perhaps reading my secrets that, despite practically being a stranger to Jacob, I was intrinsically tied to Cherry River in ways I couldn’t explain.
Thanks to Dad, I was set for life. I had an income of my own. Contacts and offers and a career any young actress would kill for. But it couldn’t change who I was at heart. And I was a girl insanely envious of a farm boy who woke with the dawn and worked with earth and sky all day.