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“This is ingenious,” she said. “Did you design it?”
He nodded, continuing to stare at his shoes. “You don’t have to pay me. I want you to have it.”
“Absolutely not.” She dug through her purse for her wallet and then pulled out a twenty. Although twenty didn’t seem like enough for all that he had done for her. “Look,” she said, “I know this probably isn’t any of my business, but do you have a place to sleep? I mean, I know how expensive this neighborhood is and—” She stopped when she realized how arrogant she sounded. “What I’m trying to say is…if you need a place to stay, I have an extra room.”
His head came up. “What? Are you crazy, Olivia Harrington?”
It wasn’t just her name that had Olivia looking closer. It was the familiar voice that went with it. A voice she’d thought she would never hear again.
“Dad?”
Her father pointed a finger at her. “Don’t you Dad me, young lady. What were you thinking asking some stranger to live in your house? Why, I could be some kind of lunatic who kills you in your sleep, for all you know.”
Olivia was struck speechless as she stared into her father’s green eyes. Then she took Deacon’s advice about letting your emotions out and got pissed. “What was I thinking? What were you thinking?” She pointed a finger at his finger. “You haven’t contacted me once since I was nine, and then you show up at my house masquerading as a lemon juicer salesman? Urrgh! I hate men! All men!” She turned and strode back toward her house. Then stopped and came striding back. “How could you do that to me? How could you do it to Mom?”
She was yelling, but she didn’t care. “For years we thought you were dead and here you are selling lemon juicers.” She pointed the juicer at him like a gun.
“Lower your voice, Livy,” he said as he glanced nervously around.
“No! I’m not nine years old anymore. And I won’t take orders from a father who couldn’t even call me to tell me he wasn’t injured or sick.”
His gaze settled on her. “But I am sick.”
Some of her anger drained away. “You’re sick?”
He nodded. “That’s why I didn’t contact you. It was better if you thought I was dead.”
She tried to think of a disease that would keep you away from your daughter for twenty years. “Leprosy?”
A smile tipped the corners of his mouth. “I wish it was that simple.”
The front door of the house across the street opened, and an older woman in baggy pajamas and UGG slippers stepped out. “Is that man bothering you?” she yelled. “Because if he is, I’ll call the cops.”
Olivia pulled her gaze away from her father long enough to answer the woman. “No, he’s not bothering me, ma’am. But thank you for checking.”
“Are you sure? Or is he making you say that?” The woman held up her smartphone as if taking a picture.
Since Olivia didn’t want to end up on Facebook or the front page, she took her father’s arm and pulled him back toward her house. “Come on. I’ll make you some coffee.”
She put in the code, and the garage door opened. And she was halfway to the door when she realized her father wasn’t following her. Instead he stood in the driveway as if he couldn’t bring himself to step over the line that divided the driveway from the garage.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He paused before taking a hesitant step. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Once inside her house, he became even more fidgety and nervous. He refused to let her take his coat and sat perched like Jonathan Livingston on her kitchen barstool—as if he were ready to take flight.
“I don’t drink coffee,” he said. “It reacts badly with my medication.”
Since it was late and she probably shouldn’t have any either, she put the empty carafe back in the coffee maker and sat down across from him. She studied him and wondered why she hadn’t recognized him sooner. Despite the beard and a few extra wrinkles around his eyes, he looked the same. No signs of decaying skin or flesh-eating disease.
“So why?” she asked. “Why did you leave? And why didn’t you ever contact me?”
He fidgeted with the buttonholes on his coat. “I wish it was easy to explain.” His gaze bounced around the room until it landed on a picture of her and Michael standing in front of a Christmas tree. “I wanted to be there.” His gaze returned to her. “But it was better for you that I wasn’t.”
“Funny, it didn’t feel better. I was devastated when you left. I thought it was my fault because I didn’t do well in school—because I couldn’t stay focused.”
“No!” He rose from the stool and shook his head. “It was never you, Livy.” He hit himself in the chest. “It was me. I was the one who couldn’t live a normal life—who couldn’t be the father that you deserved.”
