AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Carol kept her attention on her sandwich. “I talked to him on the phone. It’s fine. I’m fine. I just wanted spaghetti for dinner.”
Uh-huh. Ruth stared at the top of her daughter’s head. Was there more to the story than Carol was letting on? If it had been something Carol said or did, her former in-laws would be getting in touch with her soon enough. They’d never been known to let sleeping dogs lie.
But they hadn’t said anything when she’d picked Carol up. And Carol had slept all the way back to Antero. Whatever it was must not be recent enough to require a lot of argument.
She’d just put down her sandwich to pour herself more iced tea when the phone rang. They had a landline in the house because the cell coverage was so iffy in the mountains, which meant a lot of telemarketers during dinnertime. Ruth grabbed the receiver without much enthusiasm.
“Hello?”
There was a brief pause on the other end. “Ruth?”
Her breath caught in her chest. She only heard that voice a few times a year, but she knew it well. Unfortunately. “David?”
Across from her, Carol sat up, eyes suddenly bright. “Is that Dad? Let me talk to him.”
Ruth held up a hand to quiet her. Conversations with David required concentration.
“Hi, babe,” David said. “What’s the schedule for the munchkin? Have you got a flight picked out?”
What the hell? And what sane adult refers to his twelve-year-old daughter as a munchkin? “What are you talking about, David?”
“About Carol. About her coming out here.”
Ruth glanced at Carol, whose eager expression was sliding into something closer to suspicion. “Coming out there? To California? I don’t know anything about this.”
“Oh, well, no biggie. I figured since I couldn’t make it down to the folks because of the production meeting, she could come out here, maybe next week. My PA could take her shopping or something. Maybe I could take a day off while she’s here and show her around.”
“Shopping. With your personal assistant.” Ruth took a breath before counting to ten. The only things Carol liked shopping for were snowboards and mountain bikes.
“Yeah, you know, like Century City or Rodeo Drive or something.”
“Carol’s not usually interested in clothes.” She glanced toward her daughter. Carol gave her a furious look, then marched out of the kitchen, probably heading for her room.
“Well, maybe they could go to Disneyland, or Knotts Berry Farm. Someplace like that. And I could get her tickets to see a taping. I figure she’d like that.”
A stress headache was starting at the back of Ruth’s neck. The number of problems—beginning with David’s total cluelessness where Carol’s interests were concerned and extending to his casual approach to looking after his daughter—boggled the mind.
“I’m not sending Carol to L.A. Certainly not next week and maybe not ever. You can’t just jerk her out of her daily life and put her on a plane. She’s only flown once as it is, and never on her own.” Which you would know if you stopped to think about it.
“Hey, she’s a bright kid. She’ll figure it out.”
She took a deep breath. “Did you already talk to Carol about this?”
“Yeah, I talked to her on the phone when she was at my folks’ place. What’s the big deal anyway? She’s not in school or anything.”
The stress headache gave another throb. “The big deal is you didn’t bother to discuss this with me. You didn’t ask me in advance. You didn’t give me a chance to plan, to see if it was possible. To say yes or no.”
“Why are you the one who gets to say yes or no? I’m her father. And I want her to come out here.”
And there it was, that petulant note. The one that once had had the power to drive her to shouting insults at him. “David, you don’t know anything about what’s going on here. You don’t know what her schedule is. You’re asking me to set all of this up in a flash. I can’t do that.”
There was another pause then, slightly longer this time. She pictured David’s pissed off face, the one she remembered, anyway. Lord only knew what he looked like now.
