“You work too much,” Elena tells him.
“So I’m told.”
“By your daughter, who also works too much.”
“I learned from a professional.”
I close my eyes.
Frank’s gaze shifts toward me through the screen.Immediate softening.
“Antonia.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“You say fine when you’re not sleeping enough.”
Elena points a wooden spoon at the screen triumphantly. “See? This is intimacy.”
“Please stop narrating my life.”
He laughs pleasantly.
Frank arrives twenty minutes early.
Of course he does.
My father has never been late to anything in his entire life, including his own wedding according to family lore, and Elena somehow still seems surprised when the buzzer rings while she’s only halfway through plating appetizers.
“Oh, God,” I mutter. Elena smooths both hands down her black sweater dress like she’s about to walk onto a stage instead of open the door to a retired NHL referee with terminal emotional restraint.
“You’re panicking,” she says brightly.
“I’m experiencing anticipatory regret.”
“That’s chemistry.”
“That’s not what chemistry is.”
The buzzer sounds again. Elena points her wineglass at me. “Behave.”
“I live here too.”
“That remains under review.” She glides toward the intercom before I can stop her.
“Frank?” she says into the speaker, voice instantly warmer.
The answering laugh through the crackling system is low and familiar enough to make me blink. “I was told there’d be dinner.”
“There might be if you compliment the chef.”
“I already brought wine. I assumed bribery was part of the process.”
Elena presses a hand dramatically to her chest and buzzes him in. “Oh, I like him.”
