Chapter 2

PRESENT DAY

 

“I’m getting married.”

I nearly spit out noodles, tomato sauce, and ricotta cheese dramatically when my father says the very last thing I ever expected him to say in a million years. You don’t expect your sixty-three-year-old father to announce he’s getting married. You might expect him to say his gout is acting up, or he’s going to move down to Florida, or he’d like to turn in early after dinner. Getting married? Is he kidding me?

“Married?” I manage, as I choke down a sip of water from one of my father’s chipped ceramic cups.

Dad nods. “That’s right.”

It’s not that my father and I aren’t close. I come to his apartment every Sunday night for dinner, and he helps me out a lot with childcare because he’s retired and I’m destitute. We talk in a friendly way, usually about Lily or how my job is going. But let’s be honest—most women don’t feel comfortable confiding in their father about their dating life. And vice versa.

So I don’t tell him about my personal life and he doesn’t tell me about his. Of course, my personal life has been so nonexistent since Theo that I just assumed the same was true of his. As far as I knew, my father hadn’t been on a single date since my mother died. It comforted me to think that way.

Apparently, I’ve been completely wrong. My father is a player. How could he do this to my mother—the love of his life?

“Grandpa’s getting married!” Lily looks thrilled. “Can I be the flower girl?”

“Of course you can, my angel,” Dad says to her.

I push away my fleeting concerns of how much a flower girl dress is going to set me back. There are much more pressing things to worry about.

“Are you okay, Bee?” Dad asks.

My father has always called me “Bee.” He is absolutely the only one in the world who is allowed to do that—Theo tried it once and I let him know in no uncertain terms it was not okay (I wish I’d been as persuasive about his cheating). “Bee” is the first letter of my name, but also, when I was little, I had a round face and yellow hair, and Dad always said I looked like a bumblebee. My hair has since darkened to more of a chestnut shade like my mother’s used to be, and thanks to my poverty diet, my round face is a lot narrower than it used to be. But to Dad, I’m still “Bee.”

“How can you be getting married?” I feel like I’m about to burst into tears. “What about Mom?”

Dad frowns and the wrinkles on his face deepen. “Bee, Mom’s been gone for nine years.”

Technically, he’s right. But here we are, eating dinner in the two-bedroom apartment that he and my mother purchased together, eating at the creaky wooden table she picked out, drinking from cups she bought at Pottery Barn. How could she not constantly be on his mind? How could he move on? I repeat: she was the love of his life.

You can’t move on from something like that. You can’t. I should know. A horrible accident took the love of my life away from me, and look what happened. Theo happened.

“Her name is Gwen,” Dad tells me.

Gwen? What kind of name is Gwen? I’ve only known one Gwen and have nothing but bad associations with the name. I dislike her already.

“You’d really like her,” he says. “She made this lasagna.”

I look down at my plate of flat noodles in disgust. I can’t believe I’ve been eating Gwen’s lasagna. How could my father not have told me? I’d never have touched it.

“How did you meet her?” I ask.

“Through mutual friends.”

My father has friends? God, so many revelations tonight.

“I like lasagna!” Lily says happily. “When can we meet Gwen?”

Never. Please let the answer be never. She can marry my father as long as I never have to see her or look at her.

“Actually,” Dad says, “her son lives in Manhattan but he owns a cabin down in Maryland and she invited the three of us to spend a week out there.”

I slam my fork down on my plate. “And you expect me to drop everything and go down to Maryland? I have a job, you know. I can’t just… jet off to Maryland.”

Dad smiles crookedly. “Yeah, but Lily’s spring break is in a week, and you told me you were taking the week off with her. So I thought that would be a perfect time to go.”

Damn it. He actually listens to things I say to him.

“I’m sorry this is coming as a shock, honey,” he says softly. “I was afraid to tell you about Gwen or any other women because I thought you might… get sad. I know how close you were with Mom and… you know I miss her so much too…” He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “I love Gwen though. And I’m certain you’ll like her too.”

It’s hard to look at my father’s face and not agree to go along with this. It’s not like losing his wife has been easy on him. And he took care of her the whole time I was off in college. I’ll always regret that I wasn’t there for her those four years. I kept offering to come back, but they kept telling me no. Stay. Enjoy college, Bee.

“Fine,” I mumble. “I guess a week in a cabin wouldn’t be horrible.”

Dad beams at me. “I think you and Lily will have a great time. Gwen’s son also owns a boat, so that will be fun. Wanna go on a boat, Lil?”

This guy owns a cabin and a boat? Wow, he must be loaded. Maybe he’s single. Probably not. Guys with spare cabins and boats don’t tend to stay single long, in my experience.

As Lily and my father discuss the upcoming week, I have to admit, I’m not dreading it. Maybe a week away is just what we need right now.