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“Lower your voice, Sissy. I don’t want to get caught out here.”
“You act like a child,” I told him. “And you’re the parent, not me! You act like I’m the one in charge. You let me be in charge! I’ve taken care of you for years.”
“You like that.”
“No, I don’t,” I said, and realized that it was true. “I don’t like it, but I thought I had to or you’d leave like Mom did.”
He looked at me and turned red. I thought it was from anger, but then I saw that his eyes looked glassy.
“I know I was a shitty father to you girls, but I wasn’t ever going to leave you,” he told me, his voice very gruff. “I try to do the right things, even if it doesn’t always work.”
“Is that why you blackmailed Aubin into making me her maid of honor?”
“I just helped her make the decision she should have made on her own. If she’d thought about it more, she would have done it without me stepping in.”
“I didn’t even know you were paying attention to that stuff.”
“She wanted that wedding to be perfect. Nothing’s ever perfect,” he said, “but I wanted you to be happy about it, too. I do love you, Lissa.”
“We love you, too. I love you,” I told him. “I’ve been realizing that while I haven’t been taking care of you, you’re still doing ok.”
“I’m ok,” he agreed. “You were right and I’m, uh, seeing someone.”
“Aubin said she’s a sugar mama.”
“What in the hell?” he demanded angrily and he was red again, this time from embarrassment. “She is not. She did some kind of business thing and she did real well in it, but I take care of myself.”
Right. “Are you really moving in with her?”
“She likes me to be there,” he told me. “She enjoys my company.” He glanced around the parking lot, looking for someone who might catch him, I supposed, before he got out of the car.
“What are you doing with the cottage? You said you were thinking of selling it.”
He scratched his head, making his hair stand up. I took a brush out of my dance bag and handed it to him. “All the other people who have sold around our lake made a mint.”
“Don’t do that, not yet,” I said. “Let me talk to Bowie about it. He doesn’t like the apartment too much and maybe we…I don’t know, but don’t do anything with the cottage, ok?”
“It wasn’t just some joke then. Some trick you were playing on Ward.”
I stared. “What?”
“I thought maybe you were marrying that big guy to get back at your old boyfriend, to teach him a lesson about treating you right.”
“I married Bowie because he thought it was a good idea. It was to protect me from Ward and so I wouldn’t get in trouble and get kicked off the Wonderwomen.”
“Yeah?” My dad looked very skeptical. He scratched his head and messed up his hair again. “God damn, that’s a stupid name for a cheerleading squad. That’s why you got hitched up?”
I reached to smooth his hair back down with my fingers and then I looked at him. “No, it wasn’t just for those reasons,” I told him. “I married him because I love him a lot.” I did, and it wasn’t a shock or a surprise to me. I’d known that for a long time. Who wouldn’t love him? He was the best guy in the world.
“That’s good. One of you girls should have a happy marriage. Your sister’s is in the shitter.”
“I heard. What happened?”
“Maybe that meathead she married figured out that she was still just pretending.”
“You don’t think that Aubin loves him?” I asked, but he was done being profound, I guessed. He yawned again and said that he better get inside, that he’d heard they were going to give the leftovers from the buffet to the Woodsmen staff and he didn’t want to miss out.
I had to go to practice, anyway. We had a home game tomorrow, which meant that Bowie would be in a hotel tonight staying with the team. It was weird when he did that, just me alone in the apartment. It wasn’t that I felt unsafe—well, I did feel that way, even though I knew that there were the security people watching. It was so much better with Bowie there.
