Dad lets go of me after the longest hug in Bander family history. No wonder, considering this has been our longest time apart.

“I hope you haven’t had dinner yet,” he says petting my braids. “I booked a table downstairs.”

Downstairs must be the hotel’s restaurant.

What with all the drinks and gummy bears I’ve consumed this afternoon, I’m not hungry, but I won’t ruin Dad’s evening by saying no to his invitation.

“At what time?”

“About now.”

“Great,” I say. “Let’s go.”

“So, how do you like living and working in Paris?” Dad asks once we’re seated.

I smile. “A lot.”

He doesn’t look pleased to hear that.

“Sophie,” he says in a tone that bodes nothing good for me. “I won’t beat about the bush. I’m concerned.”

“Is that why you flew in?”

He nods.

I poke and push my food around the plate, waiting for Dad to continue.

“How’s Catherine?” he asks instead.

Stalling, eh? “Mom’s doing great. She got the post she’s been vying for, so she’s happy.”

“Good,” he says. “Is she seeing someone?”

I lift my eyes from my plate. Dad wears his poker face, but I detect emotion in his eyes and a bit of anxiety in his voice.

Interesting. “No,” I say. “She isn’t. Why are you asking?”

“Just curious.”

Don’t read too much into this, Sophie.

They’ve been divorced almost a decade, and I’ve lost count of false alarms and broken dreams of their reunification. It just isn’t happening.

Mom loves her movie critic’s job, especially now that she got hired by the biggest daily in the country. When she lived with us in Key West and Dad called her Cat, she submitted movie reviews to dozens, maybe hundreds of periodicals, but her English wasn’t good enough to allow her to express herself with the same witty elegance she does in French. She landed other jobs—and hated them. She tried to be a stay-at-home mom and hated that, too. She missed her parents and friends. And she loathed the Keys weather ten months out of twelve.

While Dad’s business expanded and took more and more of his time with every passing year, Mom became increasingly withdrawn and sad. Her doctor gave her antidepressants, but they didn’t seem to help much. With hindsight, I don’t think Mom was depressed. She just never managed to make Key West her home.

When I turned fourteen, she announced she had to go back to France or she’d go crazy. She begged Dad to follow her. He refused.

The rows they had that year! He’d tell her she was capricious and irresponsible to ask him to abandon a flourishing business and uproot me just because she didn’t like the fucking weather. She’d call him self-centered and unfeeling, since he couldn’t see it was a matter of survival for her.

After months and months of arguments, they finally agreed to disagree. Mom was returning to France, Dad was staying put, and I was asked to choose.

Talk about impossible choices.

In the end, I stayed with Dad. It wasn’t just about picking him over Mom. It was choosing what I knew and cherished over the unknown. I loved my school and my friends, our big house on Elizabeth Street, the shows on TV, the cheerleading, the beach…

“Your daughter?” someone at the table on our left asks Dad, breaking me from my reminiscences.

A stylish woman in her mid-forties is looking from me to Dad.

He nods.

The woman gives Dad a coquettish smile. “Stunning, just like her dad.”

I take a closer look at her. Blonde, fit and well groomed, she’s clearly flirting with Dad. Her friend, a plump brunette of about the same age is scrutinizing Dad’s hands for a wedding band.

I smile politely, struggling not to roll my eyes.

This happens all the time. Dad gets hit on by women of all ages, colors, and sizes. He’s held up well—in fact, very well—but it’s not just that. He has that Denzel Washington air about him—poised and strong with the tiniest hint of intensity and an even tinier smile hiding in the corner of his mouth.

It wreaks havoc with women’s brains.

The funny thing is he doesn’t seem to care. Since the divorce, he’s had a dozen dates and a couple of short-lived relationships, but nothing serious. When I ask him, he says he has no time and he’s already married—to his job.

“Thank you,” he says to the blonde and turns away without a second glance.

I search his face. “Spit it out, Dad. What are you so concerned about that you flew all the way here, abandoning ship at a busy time?”

He studies his food for a moment before he looks me in the eye. “I worry that you’ll decide to stay here at the end of your internship.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The way you speak about that boy, Noah Masson.”

“The boy is twenty-seven,” I say. “And you’re totally overreacting. It’s just a summer fling… er, summer and fall fling. I haven’t changed my plans.”

“Yet,” he says. “You haven’t changed them yet. But I can see it coming a mile away. You’ve never sounded so… into someone before. In fact, you’ve never been into someone before.”

I wave my hand dismissively. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

He sighs. “Anyhow. The other reason I’m in France is that I’m invited to a high-society wedding next weekend. Will you accompany me?”

I arch an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you had high-society connections here.”

“I have many connections in many places that you aren’t aware of,” he says. “So will you come? I wouldn’t want to go alone.”

“Sure. I’ll keep you company, Dad. It’ll be my chance to wear that big-ticket gown I brought with me and never had an opportunity to show off.”

“The one you wore to your graduation? I love that gown,” Dad says.

“Me, too.”

When we’re done, he walks me to Mom’s where I’ll be sleeping over tonight. My place is farther away, and Noah’s is across the city. Besides, it would be too awkward asking Dad to put me in a cab so I can spend the night with a man. A man he clearly disapproves of.

Luckily for me, Mom doesn’t.

“I’ve never seen you so into someone before,” she says at some point in our now-traditional kitchen table confab.

Funny how she gives a positive spin to the words Dad had uttered with horror earlier tonight.

“It may turn out to be nothing,” I say.

“Sure. But it may also turn out to be something beautiful and lasting. You have to let it blossom.”

“Dad worries I’ll give up on my future to be with Noah.”

Mom says nothing.

“Isn’t that what you did?” I ask, before adding, “And regretted it?”

She takes a heavy breath. “I never regretted marrying your dad, or having you. It’s just… I know how much you and Ludwig love Key West, but that place was slowly killing me.”

I take her hand over the table and give it a squeeze. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to—”

“I saw Ludwig earlier today,” she says, interrupting me.

“You did?”

They haven’t met in ages.

“The years have been kind to him,” she says, smiling.

“So have they been to you.”

“That’s what Ludwig seems to think, too.” She pushes a strand behind her ear. “He said I looked just as smashing as when he first laid eyes on me.”

I can’t believe my ears—or my eyes. “Mom, you’re blushing.”

“No I’m not. Anyway, it doesn’t mean anything.”

I cock my head. “What’s the deal? Did he just show up on your doorstep?”

She laughs. “Nothing so dramatic. He called and said he was in Paris in a hotel not far from me and asked if I wanted to have a coffee for old times’ sake.”

I wait for her to tell me more about their coffee, but she changes the topic.

As I listen to her talk about the latest movie she saw and the review she was writing for it, I can’t help wondering if my parents still have feelings for each other.

The other thing I wonder about is whose hunch about Noah will carry the day. Will our fling turn into something more? Will I change my plans and stay in France so I can be with him? Or will he be willing to move to Key West to be with me?

Sheesh.

I should learn to live in the present moment, and stop building castles in the sky.

They’re known to crumble at the slightest puff of wind.