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“How did you two meet?” my grandma asked.
“Uhhh,” Mason and I answered in unison, eyeing each other.
“I feel like there’s going to be a good story there,” Angie said with a wink. She and my dad exchanged smiles as I scrambled to come up with an explanation.
“Sorry, we’ve never been asked that before.”
“We need to work on our story, don’t we?” Mason asked, looking me in the eye. I felt his hand on my knee beneath the table.
I turned back to Paislee. “He volunteers in my classroom. Because I teach his daughter.”
“Or the truth,” Mason said with a laugh. “That works, too.”
My grandma gasped at this latest tidbit of info. “You have a daughter? How sweet!”
“So she’s a kindergartener, then?” Angie asked. “That’s such a fun age.”
Mason talked about Finley while we ate, spilling about her jellyfish obsession, the fake YouTube channel, and her tendency to cheat at Candy Land. He charmed them all with his stories—and even Rylee was smiling.
“We’d love to meet her, wouldn’t we, Troy?” Angie asked, looking at my dad.
“We sure would. You should bring her sometime.”
I held my breath, but Mason didn’t even flinch. “Sure, she loves meeting new people.” For all he knew, there wouldn’t be a next time, but he was playing along, anyway. He sat through dinner and answered their questions like a champ, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he was actually having a good time.
After dinner, we migrated into the living room for dessert. We sat around eating pie and Angie forced my half-sisters to talk about their recent athletic accomplishments. My dad seemed to have an active interest in their sporting events, a detail I couldn’t help but notice. “She scored the winning shot just as the buzzer went off in their last game,” he said, nodding toward Paislee, who was blushing. She couldn’t take her eyes off of Mason.
“And I can’t even dribble a ball and walk at the same time,” I said. Everyone laughed.
Angie took everyone’s plates to the kitchen, and Mason got comfortable on the couch beside me, interlocking his fingers across his abdomen. “So I have to ask—do you have any old embarrassing pictures of Kendall I need to see?”
My dad grinned, but his eyes were fixated on the floor. “Uhh… well, I’m not sure.” It dawned on me that my dad probably didn’t have many photos of me around. Why would he? My mom kept the old photo albums, and it’s not like my dad took many pictures of me himself. Mason looked like he wanted to crawl into himself, likely sensing he’d struck a nerve. After a moment, though, my dad pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
He handed a tiny photo of me to Mason, who immediately smiled upon viewing my crooked teeth and frizzy hair. “Oh, wow,” he said, glancing up at my face.
“I know. It’s a wonder what orthodontia and learning how to use a flat iron can do,” I mumbled. My sisters giggled, craning their necks to see the picture in Mason’s hand. He flipped it around so they could take in my awkwardness, too.
Angie returned to the room to ask the girls to help her and my grandma in the kitchen. I began to stand up, but my step-mom pushed down on my shoulder. “You’re a guest, so don’t you lift a finger. You stay here and visit with your dad, sweetie.”
My dad angled his swivel recliner toward us, casually pushing it back and forth with one foot. I wondered if this felt as awkward to him as it did for me. He propped his elbow on the armrest and held up his chin. “There’s this one picture of you on that overlook in Tennessee. Remember when we got up at five to watch the sunrise? God, you loved the mountains.” He turned to Mason. “This girl was eight years old, but she outpaced me on that morning hike. She was afraid the sun was going to beat us.”
“Didn’t know you were outdoorsy,” Mason said, eyeing me with a smirk.
“I was then.”
“She sure was,” my dad said. “I wish I could look at the pictures from that trip again. And,” he said, pausing to clear his throat. “I wish I could see some pictures from your middle school and high school years, too. The years I missed.”
I stared down at my shoes, surprised he was the one who brought up his absence. At least he could admit he missed out on a portion of my life. It gave me hope he wouldn’t try to gaslight me into thinking he was the world’s greatest dad.
But that hopeful feeling was short-lived.
“More than anything, I wish your mom hadn’t convinced you and your sister I was the bad guy. She had both of you hating me without even understanding why.”
My lips slowly parted. I fought the reflexive urge to defend my mom, instead focusing on the assumption my sister and I were too naïve to recognize what was really going on. “Jamie and I understood the situation perfectly,” I said coldly.
My dad inhaled. “Can I have a chance to explain myself?”
I just shrugged. Mason’s hand found mine on the couch cushion between us, and though I didn’t turn my head, I could feel him watching me.
