AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Adaline grinned, hooking a friendly arm through Ivy’s and gently steering her inside the house. “Okay, so explain this cussing us out offer,” she said. “Normally, Greer is the scary one, but we could probably make room for one more.”
“Good Lord,” I mumbled under my breath. Forget worrying about any mistakes I might make; my sisters were going to send her running before I could ever screw this up.
I joined Ian as he leaned up against the house behind Dad’s chair. He watched Isla.
“Erik has a baby,” he stated.
“Indeed he does.”
“Like … a mini version of him,” he continued. “Do you think she’ll be an obnoxious know-it-all like he was? Or is there enough Lydia in there to temper the worst parts of his personality?”
I gave him a wry glance. “I can’t help but notice that you’re intelligent enough to ask these questions when Erik isn’t here to smack the shit out of you for insinuating it would be a negative thing that his child would end up like him.”
He snorted, but the look in his eyes was fond when he studied the baby. “Weird to think about all this, isn’t it? How we’ve all changed. The way our lives are different now.”
Dad glanced back at Ian. “Except you and Parker. If it wasn’t for Ivy, I’d be oh for three with my boys finding someone who’d put up with their shit.” As I laughed, Ian shook his head. But Dad’s face was stern. “And quit talking crap about your older brother. I’ll have no insinuations that my granddaughters are anything but perfect.”
Poppy blew a raspberry into the baby’s neck, and she giggled. “This is half our problem, Isla,” she said to the little girl even though she couldn’t understand. “Dad has given us girls an almost reckless amount of confidence because he thinks we’re just the best thing ever created.”
“That’s because you are,” Dad insisted.
Ian rolled his eyes.
The sound of a car had all of us pausing because it wasn’t the dark SUV that Erik and Lydia left in.
It was Parker.
Ian and I traded a loaded look, and Poppy took the cue immediately. “Olive, why don’t we go see if Grandma Sheila has a sandwich ready for you, okay?”
She took one last lingering glance at the approaching car, and then gave me an encouraging smile before she hustled the girls inside the house.
“Want us to go in too?” I asked Dad, settling my hand on his frail shoulder.
His chest rose and fell in a slow breath.
Finally, he shook his head. “He’s your brother. You’re my sons. I want a moment with the three of you.” Then he paused, only the slightest tremble visible in his chin. The car pulled up to the front of the house, and Dad inhaled slowly, not speaking again until the tremble was gone. “Don’t be hard on him,” Dad said firmly, looking first at Ian, then at me. “I mean it.”
Ian tucked his chin into his chest, but managed a short nod.
I did too.
Dad lifted his chin. “I want to be standing,” he told us. “I’m gonna hug my son without being in this stupid chair.”
“Dad.” Ian sounded unsure.
I gave him a look. “Just help him up. I’m gonna go out to the car.”
Ian blew out a slow, measured breath, but nodded slowly. My brother had been gone for so many years, so much of Parker becoming the man he was now happened while Ian was across an ocean.
Ivy had asked me if I was okay, and as I walked down the front porch steps, my eyes meeting Parker’s through the windshield of the car, I didn’t feel okay.
I thought about the framing of a house as I came closer and watched my little brother study our father on the front porch. You had to build it intentionally, with correct angles, the right spacing and proper load bearing capacity, if you expected it to hold up everything it needed to hold.
For months, I’d kept that frame intact because there was no other option when the people around me needed everything to stay upright.
Needed me to stay upright.
Parker’s eyes stayed on Dad, and his jaw tightened. Greer’s husband Beckett—privy to just about every level of subtext currently weighing on our family—got out of the vehicle immediately, and only paused to give me a firm handshake before going off in search of his wife and daughter. I waited by the front of the car while Parker turned off the engine and slowly opened the door.
