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“I'm glad to hear it.”
I snagged another slice of bread to soak up the sauce on my plate. “So much curiosity about Mom’s love life. You obviously miss her.”
He didn’t respond right away. “I’ll always care about your mother.”
I sensed his hesitation. “But?”
He shrugged. “But nothing. She’s an important part of my past.”
“Like me,” I said quietly.
“No, Paige. You are very much a part of my present. But your mother… I’m sure I don’t have to tell you she’s guarded. It’s hard being close to someone who hides so much of themselves.”
I nodded in understanding. For as long as I could remember, my mother had kept secrets, sometimes for no apparent reason. It was impossible to gauge her opinion on anything unless she wanted you to know how she felt. In a rare moment of candidness, she’d once confided that my grandma had made a habit of using her as a decoy while she shoplifted. My mother had been taught to choose her words carefully from a tender age.
“I’m the complete opposite,” I said, pulling the elastic from my hair, “for better or worse.”
“I’d say for the better.” His gaze tracked my fingers as I combed them through the smooth, dark locks. “God, you’re beautiful.”
Something like pride trilled through me. “Um, thanks.”
The force of his stare and the feeling behind it made my heart stutter. For a brief moment, I imagined pressing his palm to my chest so he could feel the rampant beat.
“I hope that doesn’t make you uncomfortable. It shouldn’t. You’re stunning, and you’ve always been stunning. I still have sketches I made of you as a child. There’s one hanging in my studio right now. People ask me all the time, Who’s that gorgeous child with the wide eyes? And I tell them, that’s my daughter. That’s my little girl. You look so much like your mother did at your age, only not as hardened. You’re porous. You know how to let people in, and there’s beauty in that translucence. There’s radiance.”
My arm hairs stood on end. I’d always wondered what had happened to all those drawings, proof of the times I’d sat like a stone until my father’s hand grew tired. No matter how much my back ached or how numb my legs felt. I’d welcomed the suffering, because I wanted him to look at me.
I had no way of knowing if he thought about me when he was away during the week, but for as long as he sketched me, I was the center of his universe. It was exhilarating being on the receiving end of his concentration, like drunkenness, or falling in love. Not that I had much experience with either.
“I miss sitting for you,” I confessed, wondering if he missed it, too. “Mom lets me draw her sometimes, but she fidgets.”
“She always did.” He studied me for a long while. “She doesn’t know you’re here, does she?”
I stiffened. “She knows I’m in New York.”
“But she doesn’t know you’re here to see me.”
Busted. I took a long drink of water to buy myself a moment. “She thinks I’m staying with a friend, which is true enough. Anyway, I shouldn’t need her permission to see you.” I picked up my fork but didn’t feel like eating. “I haven’t told her about the texts or the emails. I don’t know why, exactly. It just feels…private.”
He speared a bite of my gnocchi and chewed slowly, his gaze never leaving me, not even when he lifted his Coke to drink.
“Paige, I want you to know how sorry I am for disappearing on you. I understand if you don’t want to hear this, but I need you to know that I never stopped loving you.”
My stomach dropped into my Doc Martens. I didn’t want to believe him. At the same time, I wasn’t sure how it was possible to still love this man after all the broken promises and missed birthdays and Christmases and graduations—but I did.
And if I could love him after everything he’d missed, then maybe it was possible that a part of him still loved me, too.
I had planned on saving my interrogation for another day, but with his assertions of love clouding the air between us and the question burning a hole inside me, I couldn’t hold back. “Dad, where did you go after you left?”
He raked a hand through his hair. “I did some traveling after The Family series took off, but for the most part I’ve been here, working.”
“Working so hard that you couldn’t find one free weekend to come see me? Or five spare minutes to make a call?”
“It was complicated.”
“How? Explain it to me. Because I’m having a hard time understanding why you’d suddenly give a shit.”
“I’ve always given a shit, Paige. My leaving didn’t change that.” He rubbed his forehead. “I wish I could give you answers because you deserve them. I have no right to ask for your forgiveness, but if you could somehow find a way to make peace with my silence, I promise I’ll make this summer worth your while. And, for what it’s worth, I promise to never leave you again. Not unless you ask me to.”
