CHAPTER THREE
“Dad!”
Noah winced at his daughter’s near shriek. “Hang on a sec, Dave,” he said, covering the mouthpiece of his office phone as Sara burst into his office with all the overwhelming energy of a twelve-year-old. “I’m on the phone, Sar.”
She rolled her dark eyes at him and flopped down in his visitor’s chair, slouching until her chin touched her chest. She was wearing the yellow sweater she’d lobbied her mother for and a chunky turquoise necklace.
“Let’s keep the old high school as a Plan A for the shelter. It’s already got the empty space, and we won’t have to waste time and energy clearing it out. Check with the fire station and see how many cots and blankets they have, and we’ll figure out where we can get more.”
He hung up and gave his daughter his full attention. “Why aren’t you in school, young lady?”
“Daaaad! The hurricane?” Sara pointed out the third-floor window where rain was already falling. “They let us out early so we could get home safely and help bat on the hatches.” She kicked her pink and yellow rain boots out and crossed them at the ankle.
“Batten down the hatches,” Noah corrected automatically, shuffling papers of town business that he could afford to set aside while dealing with what looked as though it would be a direct hit from a Category Two hurricane. And with the Connecticut River in their backyard, they were facing some serious flooding.
“Whatever. If you give me money, I’ll grab some stuff at the market.”
Noah rose, automatically reaching for his wallet. “Can you let me know what the bread and water aisles look like?” He’d already put out an informational sheet on provisions and emergency procedures to the town. But Merry, Connecticut, was traditionally overly optimistic when it came to nearly everything. Being city manager here was both a constant joy and battle trying to get residents to understand the less-than-positive consequences of their choices.
“I’ll text you,” Sara said, hopping to her feet and snatching the cash out of his hand.
“I have to finish up a few things here. Meet me at home in an hour?”
Sara was too busy texting to respond. Noah covered the phone screen with his palm. “Excuse me, daughter.”
With a dramatic sigh, she tucked her phone back into her backpack. “Bread and water aisle. Be home in an hour. I got it, Dad. You’re the one who’s always late.”
She spoke the truth. It seemed that his job was never done.
“Watch the bucket,” he warned, side-stepping a snowman tin one of the residents had donated to help catch the leaks that had begun plaguing the ceiling of his shabby office last spring. Town Hall was in dire need of a facelift.
“Is your mom ready for the storm?” he asked her as he walked her to the door, skimming a hand over her ponytail. “Is she okay with you staying with me?”
She swung the doeskin tail out of his grasp and shrugged. “I guess.”
He added it to the long list of rejections a father of a twelve-year-old suffered.
“Did she get my memo?”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Dad, why don’t you ask her? You have her number. I gotta go.”
“Be safe,” he called after her.
“I’m getting donuts,” she yelled from the stairs.
Noah ran his hand through his curling hair and watched her skip down the stairs. Sometimes it baffled him that he’d known his daughter for all of her twelve years yet at times they were complete strangers. He was officially one of those dads who didn’t “get it.” Sara had gone from his adorable princess who raced down the stairs to greet him every day to the fiercely independent near-teen who now seemed to care more about magazines and reality TV than being a well-rounded human.
He still caught glimpses of the little girl who captured his heart about two seconds after she was born. But most hours of the day were now spent in a constant battle of homework and parental nudging to make good life choices. He loved her more than anything in the world. He’d do whatever it took to protect Sara from bad decisions and frivolous diversions. Even if it meant she was constantly annoyed with him.
Noah’s desk phone rang again, and a second later his cell phone echoed it. He sighed. He had less than twelve hours to make sure every one of Merry’s citizens were safe before Hurricane Veronica made landfall. He rubbed his tired eyes under his glasses. It was going to be a long night.
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Sara’s gaze wandered to the living room windows where the incessant rain pelted. The roar of the storm surrounded them, and Noah wished he would have gotten the roof redone like he’d planned this summer. The three-story Victorian monstrosity on the hill was too big for just the two of them. Six bedrooms, five bathrooms in dire need of updating, and two freaking formal parlors. Purchasing it had been a whim, despite the fact that Noah never had whims. But in the midst of a polite divorce, he and Sara had spotted the for sale sign one day. She’d fallen in love with the fanciful mess in a way that only an imaginative six-year-old could.
Noah blamed Sara’s princess phase and his desire to ease the transition to two separate families for the choice of real estate. Not that he minded the house. Its creaky, crooked doors, cozy nooks, and football field-sized kitchen had a certain charm, a character that made it impossible not to like.
However, the projects that he’d promised himself he’d tackle had taken a backseat to raising his daughter and keeping his town under control.
A town now under siege by a hurricane that seemed hell-bent on swamping them.
“House wins,” Noah said, drawing Sara’s attention back to their game.
She glared at his cards, adding them up in her head. “Cheater! You busted. I win!”
Noah grinned and ruffled her hair. He’d taught her blackjack back in the day to help sharpen her math skills, and she’d become quite quick with the cards. He hoped it wouldn’t someday come back to bite him in the ass.
“Dad, I’m quitting college to become a blackjack dealer on a cruise ship.”
“So, how’s school going? Are you still having trouble with fractions?”
Sara flopped over backwards to sprawl across the rug. “Dad, can we please talk about normal stuff for once?”
Noah frowned. “School’s normal. Isn’t it?”
Sara’s sigh of frustration was Emmy-worthy. “Dad, you treat every conversation like some chance for a life lesson. Can’t you just be human every once in a while?”
“I’m your father,” he reminded her. “It’s my job to make sure—”
“Yeah, yeah. That I don’t destroy my future by making bad decisions now,” she parroted his own words back at him with more than a hint of sass. “I get it, but why can’t we talk about other things too?”
“Like what?”
“Like how about this giant hurricane that’s drowning Merry? How are we going to help people and fix stuff? What’s going to happen to the Christmas Festival? Or why haven’t you dated anyone in forever?”
“Geez, kid. I thought we’d wade into real stuff with a talk about favorite cheeses or something.”
“Cheddar. Next,” Sara deadpanned from the floor. She was wearing the ridiculous mermaid scale pajamas he’d gotten her for Christmas the previous year. Mellody, his ex-wife, had helpfully sent him the link suggesting their daughter would love them.
Noah cleared his throat.
In so many ways, Sara was still a little girl. He’d thought he’d been protecting her by keeping her out of storm prep. “Well, there’s going to be flooding. We know that for sure. I’m worried about how much the water will rise overnight. The lower end of town by the park is going to have the most damage, and the fire department contacted everyone there to make sure they know that the old high school will be open as a shelter.”
Sara sat up and slumped against the ottoman.
“Are you worried?” Sara asked, her pretty brown eyes assessing.
He hesitated for a second. “Yeah. Are you?” A gust of wind rattled the front window.
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to be fine—”
“I’m not worried for us. We might have a leaky roof and stuff, but we’re on a hill. I’m worried about April. She lives across from the park. And what about Mrs. Pringle? She’s all alone in a wheelchair. Remember how bad her basement flooded this spring?”
Noah sighed. He’d stopped by Mrs. Pringle’s house on his way home and begged her for a solid ten minutes to let him take her to the high school. He’d even offered up a guest room in his house. At eighty-one, the woman was impossibly stubborn. He’d made sure her name was at the top of the fire department’s welfare checklist for the morning.
“If people are in trouble, Sar, we’ll help. That’s the best thing about Merry. We’re all in this together. We’re going to be okay, and that means we can help everyone else who needs it.”
She weighed his words and stared into the flames of the fireplace behind him.
“Okay. Now, why aren’t you dating?”
“Where is this coming from?”
“Mom’s engaged to Ricky.”
Noah rolled his eyes. He was well aware that his ex-wife was getting remarried. And to be fair, he had no complaints about her choice in husband—besides a grown man still going by the name “Ricky.” He seemed nice enough and certainly treated both Mellody and Sara well. As long as Sara didn’t suddenly start calling Ricky “dad,” Noah planned to have a polite relationship with the man.
“What does your mom being engaged have to do with anything?”
Sara gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I thought maybe you were still like pining over her or something.”
“Did you think we were going to get back together?” he asked, a headache forming between his eyes at the thought of his daughter being disappointed.
“Geez. No. I just think that Mom’s happy now. But you’re not. So why don’t you go find someone who makes you happy?”
“People don’t make other people happy,” Noah pointed out.
“Life lesson,” Sara stabbed her pointer finger at him accusingly.
“Sorry.” Noah hid his smile.
“You never have fun, Dad. I worry about you.”
“I have plenty of fun,” he argued.
“No. You don’t. You work, and you lecture me, and you worry about stuff. Zero. Fun. Ever. I kinda wonder if maybe you don’t know how to have fun.”
Noah did the only thing a father could do when faced with such an accusation. He hit his daughter in the face with a pillow.