Page 58 of Worth the Trouble

“Is that what tonight was? Finding out his price?”

“Tonight was finding out whether he had one.” Her father went to the window. The parking lot ended at the tree line and past that the mountains were a darker dark. “Everyone does, Cecelia. I’ve bought councils. I’ve bought governors’ aides. I have never once, in thirty years, had a man put my own money back on my side of a table and pay for his own dinner.”

“Good.”

“It doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything, and you know it, or you’d be on the phone to Billings instead of standing at a window.”

He didn’t turn around. He didn’t answer. She waited it out, and the waiting was the new part, and she was getting better at it.

“You’ve held that money over me since I was nineteen,” she said. “The trust. My salary. Every apartment I’ve lived in and every suit in my closet. I never once asked what it cost me. I thought that was loyalty.” She took a breath. “Tonight you tried to spend it on the one person in my life you don’t own. That’s not looking after me, Dad. That’s making sure nobody else can.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No. It’s accurate. You taught me the difference.”

His hand went to the back of the desk chair and stayed there. The envelope sat beside it, six inches from his fingers.

“Take it, then.”

She’d been braced for a lot of things. Not that.

“It’s yours. He said as much and he was right.” Her father picked it up and held it out, still creased. “Your trust. Released. Do what you want with it. Rent an office over a flower shop, if that’s what this has all been for.”

She looked at the envelope. She looked at his hand, which wasn’t as sure as it had been at nineteen, or at the council, or across a tablecloth at the Aviary.

“No.”

“Cecelia.”

“Not like this. Not as an apology you can’t say and a leash you can’t put down.” She stepped back from it, one step, so there’d be no mistake. “I told you in that suite across the hall that we were both about to find out what I’m worth without you. I meant it. You don’t get to end the experiment because you didn’t like tonight’s results.”

Her father’s arm came down by degrees. He set the envelope on the desk again, on the same stack, and squared it to the edge the same as the laptop, and it came to her that he didn’t know what else to do with his hands.

“The hearing,” she said. “Are you going to present?”

“I don’t withdraw, Cecelia. You know that. I’ll stand up in that gymnasium and make the case, and they’ll vote, and I’ll live with it.” He said it to the window. “I’ve lost before. I don’t make a habit of it.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I’d assumed.”

“Front row. Their side.” She let him have that. “Not against you. I want to be where you can see me. I’ve spent my whole life standing behind you. I’d like you to know what I look like from the front.”

He turned from the window then.

He looked older than he had in the hallway, and he’d looked old then. His eyes went over her face as if he were reading it for a change, and he must have found whatever he was looking for. His shoulders came down and stayed down.

“You’ll wear the gray suit,” he said.

“I’ll wear what I want.”

“It’s what you wore to the council.” He almost smiled. “It’s a good suit. I bought it.”

“I know. I’m keeping it.”

She went to the door. She had her hand on it when he spoke, and it was the hallway again, the man who’d lost his footing once and found it.