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“I don’t think Aunt Izzie left it out on purpose, if that’s what you mean. She was really mad when she caught me going through it.”
“It was Mom and Dad letting you know that you can raise Casey’s baby just like Dad raised Hank’s baby.”
Chapter 48
“Nice place you have here, Nikki,” Hank said. Two months had passed since the warm August day when he’d told me he was my father. Since then, we’d gotten together twice. Both those times, Aunt Izzie and Arianna had been with us. Tonight, we were alone.
He handed me a bouquet of red sunflowers. Last month, when we’d had dinner together at Declan’s, I’d told him they were my favorite. I was touched he’d remembered.
His gaze rotated around the room, taking in each object as if he were looking for clues to my personality in the paintings on the walls, books in my bookshelf, and knickknacks on the end tables. When his eyes landed on a set of shiny black coasters designed to look like hockey pucks with the NHL logo in the center, he smiled. “I have these in the condo in New York. See, we have some things in common.” He looked so pleased that I didn’t bother to tell him Kyle had bought them.
As I made my way to the kitchen to put the flowers in a vase and pop dinner in the oven, Hank slid into Kyle’s recliner. Seeing him sitting there made me twitchy. I fought an urge to ask him to move to the couch. Kyle should have been sitting in that chair. He should have been here with me, getting to know Hank.
When I returned to the living room, Hank was holding a Polaroid. He studied it with a pained expression that turned to a smile as his eyes met mine. He extended the picture toward me. The white borders hadturned yellow with age, and there was a pinhole in the top center as if the picture had hung on a bulletin board for years.
I expected the image to be of him and my mom, but I was wrong. A ten-year-old version of myself smiled up at me. A younger Hank had his arm wrapped around my shoulder and a big cheesy smile on his face.
“That was taken at the Stapleton County Fair,” he said.
“You took me on a ride.”
Hank smiled. “You remember that?”
My parents, Dana, and I had spent the day at the fair. Hank had been there in a charity booth, taking pictures with fans and selling autographed photographs of himself. Right before this picture was taken, my father and I had ridden the Tilt-A-Whirl while my mother, holding two-year-old Dana, looked on. By the time the ride ended, she and Hank sat on a bench together. I wanted to ride again, but my father said he was too dizzy, so Hank took me. When the teenage ticket taker saw Hank, the boy’s face had turned bright red, and his hands had shaken so much he dropped the ticket. “You’re Hank Pendleton,” he’d said.
Hank nodded. “I am.”
“You were my favorite. Sorry about the knee.”
Hank winked at me. “You’re riding with a celebrity, kid.”
My father had originally refused to let Hank take me on the ride. The two had words. My mother had intervened, and my father begrudgingly agreed. Had that really happened, or was I making it up based on what I knew now?
Either way, in that moment in my living room, as I saw that tattered Polaroid that Hank had treasured for three decades, my entire perception of him changed. I saw him as a man who had been betrayed by his best friend and made an unthinkable sacrifice for a woman he had once loved. The familiar feeling of guilt over the horrible way I had treated him for the past five years bubbled up in me.
“You kept this picture all those years.”
“I actually have a painting of it hanging in the office in the place in New York. Your aunt painted it for me.”
A wave of sadness rolled over me. Tears flooded my eyes, and I fled the room to check on the chicken before they broke free. Hank followed me into the kitchen and eased himself into a chair. “You okay?”
I sat down across from him. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around how you were able to forgive my parents.”
He cocked his head. “Well, like I told you, I didn’t treat Gianna right at the end. It wasn’t easy, but forgiveness is a choice. I had to forgive them and myself.”
“But why did you choose it?”And why can’t I?
Hank’s eyes locked with mine. “Are you and Sebastian still trying to work things out?”
I fidgeted in my seat, wondering if I was easy to see through or if he knew me better than I thought he did.
The timer buzzed. I jumped out of the chair and pulled dinner from the oven.
“Smells delicious,” Hank said.
“Chicken rollups. I hope you like goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes.”
“You can never go wrong with either.”
