“You and your sister need to come over in the morning,” he told her.
“Why?” She tried not to wonder whether Danny would be upstairs in her brother’s apartment tomorrow morning, but she couldn’t help it. Unless he’d changed his shift schedule, he wasn’t on day tour tomorrow and there was a possibility she’d run into him. While she wanted to see Danny, she didn’t want to see him with her entire family present.
“What do you mean why? My daughters can’t come visit me? I barely got to talk to Lydia at the bar, and there’s something I want to talk to her about.”
Ashley could hear the underlying annoyance in his voice, and she wondered how her sister had managed to piss their old man off already. “I’ll tell Lydia when she gets home.”
No, she wouldn’t, but she’d leave her a note. Between lying awake dwelling on her screwed-up marriage and not working nights at the bar, her sleep patterns were scrambled and she was waking up with the sun. To keep from turning into a zombie, she was going to bed earlier than she had since middle school.
“How are you doing?” her dad asked, and his voice was as close to tender as it could get.
“I’m doing okay.”
“Are things any better? Between you and Danny, I mean.”
“We’re working on it.” Another lie, this one slightly bigger than the last. “It’s going to take time.”
“You take too much time and you’ll get used to being apart, and I know that’s not what you want.”
It wasn’t what she wanted, but what her marriage had become wasn’t what she wanted, either. As tempting as it was to call Danny and tell him she was sorry—that she’d temporarily lost her freaking mind—and that she wanted him to come home, that wasn’t going to solve the problem. When the relief faded, she’d still want something from Danny he seemed incapable of giving her.
“I’m not going to rush this, Dad. If we’re meant to be together, it’ll work out.”
She heard his snort loud and clear over the phone. “You make it sound like kind of destiny crap. It won’t just work out. You have toworkat working it out.”
Ashley bit down on the sarcasm burning to be let loose. Mr. Marriage Counselor, he wasn’t. “I know.”
“He’s a good man, Ashley.”
Tears blurred the television screen. “I know that, too.”
“Good. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
As usual, he hung up without giving her a chance to say goodbye, and Ashley tossed the phone onto the coffee table. Then she flopped over onto the pile of clothes and squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to cry again, dammit.
But her father’s voice wouldn’t get out of her head. “He’s a good man,Ashley.” And the pile of laundry had nothing of his. Her shirts. Her underwear. Her socks. None of his, which for some reason made her feel incredibly alone. And this time there was no stopping the tears.
Chapter Five
LYDIAWALKEDUPthe cement front steps of the Kincaid family’s three-decker the next morning and paused in the shade of the deep porch. Not surprisingly, Ashley had declined to accompany her on this trip, which was the answer to a summons from their father.
She’d seen him at Kincaid’s, but they hadn’t really had the chance to catch up. It wasn’t an easy place to have personal conversations without withdrawing to the windowless, claustrophobic office Lydia avoided whenever possible.
Not that they’d be having a heart-to-heart. Tommy Kincaid wasn’t much for those, and he probably wouldn’t ask much about her life in New Hampshire. Quite frankly, she wasn’t sure why he’d asked her to stop by at all.
She knocked and then walked in without waiting for an answer. Her dad would be in the battered leather recliner that was so perfectly molded to his body, nobody else could comfortably sit in it.
Their first-floor unit was definitely stuck in the ’80s. Her mom had started making some noise about updating it, but then they’d gotten the diagnosis that changed their lives. And, because her parents weren’t the kind of people whodiddoctors, they’d gotten it too late. Lydia wasn’t sure if it was some kind of shrine to her mom or if her dad was just lazy, but nothing had been changed since then that hadn’t worn out beyond use or been broken.
She went into the living room, wishing she’d stopped for a coffee along the way. At this hour, there would probably be a couple of inches left in her dad’s coffeepot, but it would be cold. And unless she’d seriously misjudged his ability to adapt to an ever-changing world, he didn’t have a Keurig yet.
“Hey, Dad.”
“There’s my girl.” He lifted his face so she could kiss his cheek, setting the remote control on the arm of the recliner so he could squeeze her hand. “It’s nice having you back behind the bar. You always did have a way with the customers.”
“At least somebody thinks so,” she said, thinking of her job in Concord. Beer and burgers just came more naturally to her, she guessed, sitting on the couch.
“I heard you showed up at the house yesterday to cause a scene,” he said, and she realized that was the motive behind the summons. She was here for a lecture.
