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“I’ll have to delay my retirement for a few years.”
My fucking mother.
“How many?” I pushed suspiciously.
“Honey, I don’t work construction. I sit at a desk. It won’t be hard for me to work until I’m seventy. Seventy-five even. And I enjoy what I do. My clients certainly will be pleased I intend to tack a few years onto my tenure. And it’ll give me a chance to give changeover plenty of time, then take a back seat and just do the work and let your cousin take over management. He’s very new now, but by then, which, mind you, is years away, I’ll have had the opportunity to be certain it’s in good hands.”
Dad had two younger sisters. He’d been beside himself when my cousin Noah had expressed interest in joining the family firm when he was in high school. Noah had since passed his CPA exams and had started working for Dad a couple of years ago.
“She kept our home. She took care of you kids,” Dad continued. “I’m not about to let her walk away with nothing.”
She also cheated on you and made your life miserable with her bitterness.
“It’s not my business,” I mumbled.
He reached across the table, so I put my knife down and took his hand.
“I love how much you love me. I love having your support. It means everything to me, Elsa.”
“I love you with my whole heart, Dad.”
“Well, I hope you have some space there for your mom.” He gave it a meaningful pause. “And your brother.”
I frowned. “I’ll do my best not to be too confrontational with Mom.” That was weak, but it was all I had in that moment. “But you’re going to have to let the me and Oskar thing go. If he represents her, we’re done. I mean…Dad, how can you ask that? It’s not cool what he’s doing…toyou.”
“He’s my son.”
Why was my father such a good guy?
Why?
“And he’s your only brother,” he continued.
“He won’t be, if he goes through with representing her.”
“You have a niece and nephew.”
“I’m sure they won’t return the birthday and Chanukah presents I send.”
“Elsa—”
“Dad, he’s never been nice to me. He’s never been brotherly. You and Aunt Deborah and Aunt Ruth get together, and you act like teenagers, laughing and telling stories about growing up. You should see Hale’s face when he talks about Chloe and Sasha and Matt. He justexudeslove for them. He thinks the world of them. I don’t have that.” I squeezed his hand. “And that’s okay. It’s not your fault. You tried. I could see it. Feel it. But it just wasn’t there. Some families aren’t close. And it isn’t a good thing to try to force it. I don’t mean to hurt you when I say, he’s no loss. In fact, I understand what you mean. If I don’t have to try with Oskar anymore, it’ll be a relief.”
I saw his pain at that, wished I hadn’t said what I said, but he wiped it clear when he gave my hand a return squeeze, let me go, and changed the subject.
“Perhaps now we should talk about Hale.”
Ugh.
“Okay, since we’re coming clean tonight, you should know, Hale agreed to be my fake date the night we came to dinner,” I confessed.
Dad’s chin ticked into his neck.
“I know. It was Fliss’s idea. It was a lark. He offered to run interference, and I took him up on it, I’ll admit, mostly because it’d get under Oskar’s skin.”
“So…what? You’re just friends?”
“No. The fake date became a real date. Stuff then got weird. We sorted it out. And we’re dating. For real now.”
