“That’s, um, great, Dad. Congratulations.”
“I’m off to celebrate, but thought I’d call to say hi. I know you’ve been trying to reach me. Whatcha up to, kiddo?”
For some reason, the happier he sounded, the more I wanted to cry. I was a terrible daughter. I really was. Who begrudged a grieving man a bit of happiness after so many years of pain? Did I expect him to sit here with me in this graveyard, mourning a woman he couldn’t have until the end of his days? Wouldn’t Mom want him to be happy now that she was gone?
Of course, she would.
And I did, too.
But it was still hard.
You can be happy too. I heard her thick Greek accent along with the thought.
Ronan’s cheerful smirk rose in my mind’s eye.
“Actually, I came to see Mom today,” I managed. “I, um, wanted to see her before I left.”
“Oh, that’s nice.” Dad’s voice was immediately more sedated at the mention of Mom. “Wait, where are you headed?”
I took a deep breath. No going back now. “I’m actually… moving. to Boston.”
There was a long pause. “You’re—Boston? Wow. Since, ah, when?”
I picked at another dandelion, grateful he couldn’t see me fidgeting. “It’s been in the works for a bit. I needed to find someone to run the shop for me, train them, all of that. But it’s all done, and so I’m off. Tonight, actually.”
“Tonight? Laney, why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” There was a slight tension in his voice he was trying to hide. The instinct of a once-protective father battling with the knowledge that he didn’t really have the right anymore to pass judgment on my decisions.
“Well, I did try to call you, Daddy, but… you’ve been busy too.” I didn’t want to blame him. It wasn’t his fault. But it sort of was, wasn’t it?
“Hmm. I guess… sure.” He was quiet for a few moments. “So, why Boston? Just need a change? Or, wait, are you going back to school, kiddo? Gosh, that would be great?—”
Of course, that’s why he thought I was leaving. He had needed a change. Had needed to run away from his grief, his daughter, his entire life just to manage. Why wouldn’t he assume the same of me (even if it was a little bit true)?
“No, I’m not going back to school,” I said a bit more curtly than I really needed to be. “I, um, got married, and he lives there. In Boston.”
This time, the silence on the other side of the line was deafening. A thunderstorm of absolutely nothing.
“Dad?” I ventured after a full minute had passed. “Are you there?”
“I—yes, Laney. I’m here. I guess I just don’t know what to say.”
The background sound of his car suddenly died, and I recognized the shift between being on speaker and him talking directly into the phone. He’d pulled over. I’d finally shocked him into giving me his undivided attention.
“Tell me everything,” he said in a tone I hadn’t heard since I was seventeen and scraped all the paint off the side of his Subaru against a parking garage pillar.
He didn’t sound like my buddy. He sounded like my dad. And the crazy thing was, I liked it.
I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my chin on them while I spoke. “His name’s Ronan Black. He’s a businessman, but he studied Classics, like me. He’s from a big Irish family that owns a big corporation, and he now he heads it all up. Third of four kids. He’s…” I found myself taking another deep breath. Trying to explain everything Ronan Black in a nutshell was harder than I thought. “He’s funny and smart and kind and generous. We met in Vegas when I was there for Megan’s bachelorette party and got married on a crazy whim. But then we realized that maybe we really liked each other, so when he asked me to give it a real try, I said yes.”
“You got married in Vegas on a whim two weeks ago?”
“Almost three,” I corrected him lamely. As if that made it any better.
Now he sounded more concerned than hurt. “Laney, that’s not you.”
He wasn’t wrong. That night, I was Not Laney. Right now, I was… well, maybe I wasn’t the daughter he knew either. Then again, I wasn’t sure he had known me for a while now.
“Maybe it’s not,” I said. “But I’ve made my decision. I just wanted you to know before you saw it in the papers or someplace. His family is kind of a big deal in Boston, so there’s going to be a formal announcement or something like that once I get there. I didn’t want you to be surprised.”
