That’s when Mrs. Allen got aggressive and tapped me on the shoulder. Hard.
I took another step back. “Time to go.”
“Congrats on your wedding,” Cooper said with a little salute. “And don’t forget what the firefighters say.”
“The firefighters?” I said, falling for it. “What do they say?”
Cooper tilted forward just a little, likeYou got this. Then, with an infuriating micro-nod, he said, “Stop, drop, and roll.”
Three
WHEN I STEPPEDinto the sanctuary to take my dad’s arm, my dad wasn’t there.
Of course.
It was my Grandma Dodie instead. Standing proud for duty at five-two.
Had I been foolishly thinking that my dad would show up for the most important day of my life? That was on me.
What was I, abeginner? My money should’ve been on Dodie from the start.
She held out her elbow gallantly when she saw me—cute as a dumpling with her little white halo of hair.
I took her arm, but I had to stoop a little.
I smiled big at the whole sanctuary of guests who had turned to gaze at me as I whispered, “Where’s Dad?”
“He missed his flight,” Grandma Dodie whispered back, the same way.
“Of course he did,” I said, brightening my smile.
“He’s hoping to make the reception,” she offered.
“Don’t bet on it.”
Now I was itchyandangry.
Typical. My absentee dad. He hadone job—and now my grandma was doing it.
Per usual.
He’d already missed the rehearsal dinner. He’d missed 90 percent of the first-ever brunch with the Richmonds, too—taking a work call ten minutes in and then pacing around a side garden on his cell for the rest of the meal.
Not to mention he kept calling them the Richlands.
None of this was shocking. He was a vestigial parent, after all.
He had three children, and he could barely keep them all straight. He didn’t know our birthdays. He always mixed up what schools we went to. He consistently got our ages wrong. It was a parlor game at this point: quizzing our dad on basics he should already know and then triumphing as he got every one wrong.
If you can really call moments like that “triumphs.”
Anyway, it was fun, in a way. He deserved it.
Ashley once dared him to say our middle names—and he missed all three, while our mom looked on, her head tilted in wonder. For Ashley, he tried Elizabeth, Isabel, and Henrietta before my mom finally cut in with, “It’s Rose, sweetheart. After your mother.” I got Martha, Bonnie, and Julia before we explained that mine was Dorothy, after Grandma Dodie—my mom’s mom. For our brother, Pete, he insisted on the very random name Timothy for a while before trying a whole host of others like it was a literal guessing game—“Miles? Franklin? Steven? Paul?”—until Pete finally put him out of his misery and said, “It’s Raleigh, Dad. Afteryou.”
My father wouldn’t retain this education, of course. None of it would stick.
In six months we could do it all again, no problem.
