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“I’m coming to your house for New Year’s.”

“Yeah.”

That’s it. He doesn’t say anything else about it. I don’t ask.

“Ten-forty,” he says. “Don’t be late.”

He hangs up.

My dad is still up when I go down for water at ten. He’s in the front room by the tree with a glass of something brown. He’s just sitting there, looking at the tree, which I’ve never seen him do in my life.

He looks up when I come in.

I almost go back out.

I stand by the doorway with my water. He looks at me for a while. Then he looks back at the lights.

“She has a good head on her shoulders,” he says.

I don’t say anything.

“Tessa.” Like I might not know who he means. He takes a sip from the glass. “She listens before she talks. Most people don’t. Most people are waiting for their turn. She actually hears what you said first.”

He looks at his glass.

“I like her,” he says.

I stand there in the doorway with my water, and I don’t know what to do with that. He didn’t like Emma. I don’t think he cared for Palinski or any of my other friends from high school. I doubt he’ll say it about Kennebeck or Barnes.

“Okay,” I say.

He’s quiet for a while.

“Don’t rearrange your life for someone,” he says.

There it is. He doesn’t say it hard.

“I’m not,” I say.

“You’ve worked for this since you were six years old, Rafferty. You’ve worked harder for it than anyone I’ve ever seen work for anything.” He sets the glass down on the side table. “I don’t want you to start making emotional decisions now. Not this close.”

I look at him. At the back of his head, going thin on top, which I never noticed. At his hand on the arm of the chair.

“She’s not asking me to,” I say.

He turns his head and looks at me.

“No,” he says, like he knows her well enough to know. “No, I don’t think she is.”

He turns back to the Christmas tree.

“Go to bed,” he says. “You’re driving to the airport in the morning.”

I go.

She’s off the phone when I come back up. The guest room door is still open. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed in the pajamas with the stars on them with my dad’s book open on her knees.

She looks up.