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I snorted. “He did not say those words.”
“No,” Dad agreed, “he said something a little bit less charitable, and if he’d been standing closer, I would’ve smacked him upside the head. Your brother’s always been kind of a dick.”
Wide-eyed, I swung my head in Dad’s direction.
“What?” he asked, settling further into his chair. “A dad always knows when their kids are assholes. All of you have your moments, but I have to admit, you have less of them than your brothers.”
I swiped a hand over my mouth. “I really wish we could’ve recorded this so I could play it for them when I wanted to ruin their day.”
“Why do you think I said it when no one is listening? You can’t prove anything, Cameron, and I’ll deny it with my last breath.” He gave me a knowing look. “Which will happen sooner than you think, so don’t test me.”
It was unsettling to converse with someone so casually about the end of their life.
He’d been making those comments for almost an entire year, and they poked at the tenderest parts of my skin—sharp and clawing and uncomfortable. My dad wasn’t uncomfortable with it. He’d made peace, and it was clear.
So we never guilted him for saying it. Never changed the subject when something hard or difficult came up. We just let it be what it was—one of the hard things in life that you couldn’t avoid no matter how badly you wanted to.
“What else are you doing today? Just working at the house?”
I sighed. “For part of the day. I doubt Ivy will be there. She didn’t seem keen on looking at the house.”
Dad made a thoughtful noise. “Her grandparents were nice people. I remember her mom.”
“Do you?”
“A bit. Your mother probably does too. We didn’t cross paths much before she left town. Pretty. Smart. A lot of ambition. More than this town could handle.” He pushed on the arm of his seat and sat up further, waving me away when I got up to help. “And that’s okay too, you know? Not everyone’s cut out to live in a small town.”
“I think Ivy takes after her mother in that regard,” I said.
Dad nodded. “Maybe so. I’m sure it’s still hard for her to be here. Just because this place isn’t an anchor for her past doesn’t mean it’s not heavy to carry.”
My dad always had this way about him—thoughtfully considering the way people carried their struggles, never judging them for it.
I’d tried not to think about Ivy too hard as I worked on her estimate until my eyes were gritty and red, and I planted face-first into bed well after midnight. Tried not to think about the real version of her that got out of that car.
But I could only compartmentalize so much. Whatever she’d shown me when we first met was her too.
She just didn’t want it to be. And I had to decide what I wanted to do with that.
When we stood in front of that house, her staunch refusal to go inside told me everything I needed to know.
“Remember that dog Poppy found in the woods when she was like … five?”
Dad nodded, a smile ghosting over his lips. “Marvin was a menace. To everyone except your sister, of course.”
He sat rigid in the corner of the barn for the first week we had him. Whenever someone approached too closely, he’d growl deep in his throat. Never bared his teeth. Never bit anyone. But he held his body in perfect stillness, never relaxing, never settling down.
Poppy used to sit in that barn and watch him, as calm as we’d ever seen her at that age. She’d toss chunks of food and wait patiently for him to eat.
It took two weeks for the dog to seek out the smallest piece of affection. By that point, she’d named him Marvin, for reasons none of us understood. Marvin took a few steps toward Poppy and me, as she sat next to me and told me to hold really still. I kept my hand steady, and he finally pressed his head against my fingertips.
We had him for seven years, and he slept in Poppy’s bed every single night once we knew he’d be okay in the house.
“What made you think about him?”
“Thinking about fear, I guess,” I admitted. “How we all react a bit differently when something scares us.”
Dad leaned over and patted my hand. “Once you get old like me, you’ll realize there’s very little in this world that we should truly be afraid of. Most of it is self-induced, or someone else’s issues taking up space in our head.”
