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“A bunch.” She scratched her hands through her hair, over the crown of her head, trying to shake out some focus. “I had absolutely everything wrong. Like, everything. How did that happen? What kind of idiot am I?”
Her dad glanced at her. “You’re no idiot. You just work yourself up occasionally and act on the wrong ideas. Your heart’s always in the right place.”
“I guess.”
“You want this kind of thing to mean there’s something wrong with you.”
“No.” But she glanced up at him, and realized when she did that she was waiting for him to tell her what it was. As though her father had ever done that.
He hadn’t. Not once in her whole life had he told her what he thought was wrong with her. His basic assumption, always, had been that she was okay. And she was.
She was fine.
He reached out and rubbed her shoulder. “You’ve got a good head on you, Alison.”
“For business, maybe.”
“It’s your same head for everything. If you run into trouble, try applying what you know a little more liberally.” His phone chimed. “Muhammad’s here, it says. You see him? It says it’s a black Prius.”
“He’s right there.”
“Great.”
The car pulled up to the curb. They got in, confirmed their destination, and Muhammad pulled away from the curb.
“Can I ask you something?” Allie said.
“Fire away.”
“What if I found out, somehow, that Justice spent a lo
t of money recently at a very fancy store that sells jewelry. And what if we can’t find mom, and you don’t get to talk to her before Justin does whatever it is he plans to do on Saturday, and it turns out that what he plans to do involves some forty-something-thousand-dollar purchase from Harry Winston that Mom doesn’t know about, maybe in the shape of an engagement ring?”
The words began to sound ridiculous before she even completely finished saying them, and her dad seemed barely able to attend to her question, so absorbed was he in the passing sights.
“Dad?” she asked after a full minute had passed.
“I don’t want to find your mom,” he said. “She’s probably neck deep in problems to solve right now. She doesn’t need me showing up and making myself one more.”
“So why did you get on the plane?”
“You girls wanted me to. And anyway, it’s our anniversary, Allie. If I’m going to be married to your mom another thirty years, I figure there’s no better way to get started on the right foot than to finally see Nancy Van Der Beek in action.”
Allie leaned back in her seat. Tried to identify how she was feeling. Why she felt a little choke in her throat.
Love.
All of it. The love that had always been there, coming at her, in a big whirl.
All those times that her dad had driven her to Sal’s and waited for her in the car forever while she poked around looking at antiques. Her mom getting after May to do something practical with her art degree, even as she framed her work and hung it on the walls of the house. Her parents fighting after her mom came back from New York because her dad just wanted the whole world to get how great she was. May laughing with her after she ran away from her wedding.
Winston with her in the shower, in his bed, in her heart.
Love and love and love.
Chapter 23
“Oh my God, walk.” Beatrice stood in the middle of the street, waving them forward with both hands. A car bore down from half a block away, moving entirely too quickly for Winston’s comfort, but Bea didn’t even flinch when the horn honked. “You guys are like turtle people.”
