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He was also solicitous, his face haggard, angling out of his truck and jogging to where she was making her way to him, sliding an arm around her waist and holding her to his side as he escorted her to the passenger seat of his truck.
In other words, his puzzle came together quickly. Nice truck, he made money. Nice body, he took care of himself. Younger than his lover, he was confident in what he liked, who he was, and smart enough to find a woman who was also smart, but further mature enough to know the same. Ravaged expression when he’d probably never even met Malorie, but he knew Lana loved her like she was her own mother. All of that meant he was head over heels for this woman.
Which, so far, watching that was the only bright spot in my day.
We barely got back inside when Bohannan demanded, “I want to know everything she told you.”
“I think you need to talk to your daughter first.”
His eyes went to the ceiling, he nodded, then moved to the stairs.
I was making us sandwiches for lunch when he got back.
By the way, the police had left at about 10:30.
It was now 2:46.
“She heard,” Bohannan said, strolling in, face his normal neutral but this time subtly laced with equal doses of annoyed and troubled.
The annoyed part was partially explained when he slid Celeste’s phone on the counter by the bread.
“Oh boy,” I said, eyeing it.
“Her phone was blowing up. Everyone wants to know if she saw anything and what we’re doing.” He leaned the side of his hip into the counter. “She also informed me she’s going to the party tonight, which is still on. That isn’t a surprise. It’s the perfect opportunity to spread gossip and rumors. That, and teenagers are drawn to anything that tests their immortality.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
“She wasn’t thrilled when I told her she was not going. We had words. She didn’t like my words. I didn’t like hers, and I’m the boss. So now she’s grounded until Monday. Since it’s Friday, that didn’t go over too good. I’ve been briefed that’s torture, and don’t I know Will is especially going to need her now. I said if Will needs her, he can come to the house, and I’ll pour him a Coke. At that juncture, she shared Will is ‘anti-parent,’ and I have to respect that…considering. I told her I could get that, but I’m not his parent, I’m hers, and she’s not going to that party or seeing Will unless he comes to the house. She said something I didn’t like a whole lot more than all the other shit she was saying.” He tapped her phone. “And now she’s grounded from her phone too. She ‘pretty much’ hates me and ordered me from her room until she can stand to look at me again. I obliged.”
That “anti-parent” part was interesting.
“I’ll give her some time to cool down and then go talk to her,” I mumbled.
“We need to do this because you and I are doing this,” he announced.
I was kind of following, but I let him speak on before I commented.
“In this house, you don’t get off easy from a hissy fit. And don’t give me shit. When the boys had them, I called them hissy fits for them too. They hated that.”
I bet they did.
I smirked.
One side of Bohannan’s beard twitched before he kept going.
“What I’m saying is, there is no good cop, bad cop sitch when it comes to that. I’ve heard some of the greatest minds speak about a full spectrum of facets of psychology. I get hormones. I get peer pressure. I get developing psyches. I get kids are sponges soaking up everything around them, the vastness of which it’s a wonder their heads don’t explode, and they haven’t developed the mechanisms to filter out what they don’t need, especially the shit that’s harmful. I get that high school is a microcosmic cesspool of all that, and I swear to Christ, with some of the things I’ve seen and read, I sometimes wonder why we make our children endure it. But she doesn’t disrespect her dad. It’s not that I feed her, clothe her, put a roof over her head, and I’m older than her. It’s because I love her. I don’t do a fucking thing except out of love for her. And if she can’t respect that, then she’s going to learn.”
“You could have just said, ‘there is no good cop, bad cop sitch, if she’s acting up, we’re both bad cops,’ and I would have got the message,” I joked.
He stared down at me.
“But you even manage to turn bitching about your daughter being mean to you into something badass,” I concluded.
“All her life, from when she was a little girl, but especially recently, when I was alone with it and she needed her mother most of all, I had no one to unload this shit on or talk it through with.”
