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“In Ashley’s pictures. You’re dancing with this hottie with black hair…” She stopped talking, taking in his wide eyes, his jaw, more than likely, on the floor. “Dad?”
The only thing he could think to say, the only coherent thought left in his mind at the knowledge that somewhere in the universe there were pictures of him and Mira dancing together, was “You follow Ashley on Facebook?”
“I’ve followed Uncle Madigan forever, so, yeah. Now I follow Ashley. You didn’t see them?”
He cleared his throat, messed up his hair, scrubbed a hand over his chin stubble. “Uh, no. Can you…show them to me?”
“Suuure.” She eyed him warily while he shoved two pieces of pizza into the toaster oven. “As long as you tell me who she is first.”
Messing up his hair again, he pulled at his shirt collar. “She’s just a friend. She’s a baker. A baker friend. I mean, she’s a friend who also bakes. She owns a bakery. She made the wedding cake. That’s why she was there. For the cake.”
Becks burst into laughter. “Did you honestly just call her a baker friend who also bakes?”
“What? Yes, she’s a baker, and a friend—You know what? Giving your old man shit after he babysat for you all morning is a jerk move. Just show me the pictures.”
Still laughing, she picked up her phone and opened Facebook.
Cole squeezed the edge of the counter in a death grip, his lungs seizing while Becks swiped her finger up the screen. “Just search for Ashley. It’s faster,” he said after she’d swiped four more times and there were still no pictures of Mira. “Click the little magnifying glass thingy.”
“Chill, Mr. Eager. Found them.”
If he were a lesser man, he would have swiped his daughter’s phone out of her hands and run away with it. But he was a mature adult, so he waited with the patience of a flood while she swiped through too many pictures of Madigan and Ashley, Madigan’s parents and brothers, Maude Alice, Davis, Clay, Sam, everyone. Everyone who’d ever existed in the entire world except for—
“Mira,” he exhaled, devolving in real time to snatch Becks’s phone and bring it close. Clicking on the picture, he expanded it, zooming in on the image of Mira in his arms on the dance floor, her head thrown back, laughter lighting up her face. He’d taken exactly twelve pictures of Mira while he’d been in Red Falls—including the one of her looking back at him right before he’d driven away, snow swirling around her like confetti—but he didn’t have a single picture of the two of them together. “Can I have this?” he asked, transfixed by the way her hand wrapped around his, feeling the rush of her body against his all over again.
“My phone? That’s gonna be a hard no.”
Coming to his senses, bit by bit, he handed her phone back and said, “I meant the picture. Can you send it to me?”
“Or you could get on Facebook and send it to yourself.”
The toaster oven dinged, the salt-spice scent of pepperoni pizza filling the air, and Cole pulled a face. “I hate Facebook.”
“Because of Mom?” Becks guessed.
Nancy was all over Facebook. Back when he’d used the app, she was constantly in his DMs, commenting on anything he posted, being the worst reply guy ever. Instagram—which she’d been banned from for posting too many nudes during her “naturist” phase—was safer. “Maybe.”
While Cole put the pizza on a plate and set it on the counter, Becks said, “You know, she hasn’t come over in, like, a month.”
“Have you talked to her?” He filled a glass with ice and water and placed it next to her plate. “You know how she gets when she’s working on something.”Single-minded, self-centered, completely out of touch with the real world.
Tracing a finger over Ruby’s sleeping form on the monitor, Becks said, “No. She knows where her granddaughter is if she wants to see her.”
“Speaking of people who might want to see Ruby…”
Her gaze slid from the monitor. “Seriously, Dad?”
“What? I’m only wondering how things are going.”
“He’s trying, I guess. But it’s still weird.” Pushing the monitor away, she said, “Sometimes I wonder if I’m too good at being alone.”
Cole gave her a tight smile, because she wasn’t wrong. Becks had gotten an apartment downtown with her friends the day she’d turned seventeen, too fed up with the Cole and Nancy shitshow to stay in their house a second longer than she’d had to. He’d missed her like a lost limb then, and having her back now made him feel whole again. He adored being a grandpa. He loved having these kinds of conversations with her that they’d never really had before. And yeah, he had to admit, he enjoyed feeling needed in some small way, when Becks had probably neverreallyneeded him in her entire, fiercely independent life.
But he also knew Ruby’s dad was beating himself up about the choices he’d made after she was born—if the frequent phone calls, weekly flower deliveries, and daily Amazon boxes filled with baby toys were any indication. Cole half-expected the kid to show up in their driveway any day now wearing a sad brown trench coat with a boombox blaring “In Your Eyes” over his head.
“Josh messed up,” he told her. “But I think he knows he messed up. I’ve got your back no matter what you decide, but I’m rooting for the two of you. The three of you, actually.”
Pulling her plate closer, she said, “I know you are.”
