“And you said—you said in your book that we were so close. That you have to work at a relationship and that you’re proud of ours.” I took a shaky breath, knowing I was coming to the end of what I was going to be able to say. “But it’s not like that anymore. It’s not, and I don’t know why. I don’t know . . . what I did.”

My dad was staring down at the floor, his shoulders hunched. He nodded, just once, not looking at me, then turned and walked past me without a word. He walked to the end of the hallway, then opened the door to his study and went inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

I drew in a shaky breath, not sure what I was expecting but feeling somehow that being left alone, after all that, was so much worse than if he’d yelled at me.

On legs that felt wobbly, I walked slowly up the stairs to my room and headed directly for my bed, kicking off my flip-flops and pulling my quilt up over my shoulders. I curled into a ball and closed my eyes tightly, wishing harder than I ever had before that when I opened them, I’d be back in the farmhouse. My mom would be downstairs, and my dad, too, both of them waiting for me, and everything else that had happened had just been a nightmare, the worst kind of bad dream, but nothing that could possibly be true.

But when I opened them, I was back in my beige room, with everything broken in pieces around me. I closed my eyes again and pulled my covers over my head.

Chapter NINE

“Andie?” there was a double knock on my door, and before I even had time to respond, it cracked open an inch. “Can I come in?”

I looked up from where I was still curled on my bed. After a few hours I had made myself get up. I’d taken a long shower and finally changed out of Clark’s clothes and back into my own. Even though I’d left my phone on the kitchen counter, I hadn’t wanted to leave my room—I wasn’t sure what I’d be walking into downstairs. It was like I’d just broken every unspoken rule we’d had, and I had no idea where we went from here—or what it looked like. And maybe it looked just the same, which was somehow the worst possibility of all.

“Okay,” I said, as the door swung open all the way.

My dad didn’t come inside, though, just stayed in the doorway, standing on the threshold, his hands in his pockets. “Want to get some ice cream?”

? ? ?

At Paradise Ice Cream I looked across the table at my father. We were sitting at one of the wrought-iron tables on the patio with our ice cream—mint chocolate chip for my dad, cookie dough in a waffle cone for me. We’d driven over here in almost silence, talking only about the logistics of where to go, if he could change lanes, if I could see a parking spot.

“How is it?” he asked, gesturing toward my waffle cone with his spoon.

“Pretty good,” I said, taking another bite. “Yours?”

“Not bad,” he said, scooping up another spoonful. We ate in silence for a moment, and I looked around the nearly deserted patio in the fading afternoon light. It seemed we’d picked a good time to come—it was a little after five. I knew from experience that around seven, post-dinnertime, the line would be out the door. But right now we had the place practically to ourselves. “So,” he said, taking another bite, then pushing his cup slightly away from him and looking right at me. “I thought we should talk about this afternoon.”

I looked at him and nodded, realizing that after years of knowing my father’s speeches by heart, being able to anticipate every turn of phrase, I had no idea what was about to come next.

“I’m sorry, Andie,” he said, his voice raw. “I truly am. I don’t think I realized . . .” His voice trailed off and he cleared his throat. “If I’d known how you felt, I would have made a change long ago. And of course I should have. It’s no excuse. But . . .” He sighed and looked out over the parking lot. In the grass along the side of the road, I could see fireflies begin to wink on and off, not many yet, not so you could take them for granted. “My life’s been about forward motion,” he said, his voice quieter now. “It has to be in government. You have to think about the next day, the next problem, and keep moving forward. And I’ve been so focused on trying to get back to where I was . . .” My dad let his voice fade as he looked out again, seeing something that I wasn’t. He shook his head, then looked at me. “I wish you’d told me about Daniel Rizzoli.”

I shrugged and took a careful bite of my cone. I hadn’t wanted to do it while he was talking, like I would somehow have been interrupting. “I didn’t think there was anything you could do.”

“I could have yelled at him for a few hours, though,” my dad pointed out, and I smiled for what felt like the first time in a long time. “It might have made both of us feel better.” He pulled his ice cream cup closer to him but didn’t take another spoonful, just looked at me. “But I still wish you would have told me.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice quiet. I wished I could have told him too—wished he was someone that I could tell things to. But I had no idea how to say this out loud to him.

“So,” my dad said, pulling a pen from his shirt pocket and drawing one of the rainbow napkins toward him. “I thought we should devise a strategy.”

“A strategy,” I repeated.

“You were right,” he said, clearing his throat as he drew a series of diagonal lines on the border of the napkin—his version of doodling. “I haven’t been around as much as I should have. I’ve missed out on so much. And of course you’re upset about it. As you should be. . . .” He stopped and tapped the pen twice on the napkin, then looked up at me again. “So we have a problem.” He set down his pen and picked up his spoon again. “And I thought we could devise a plan for how to correct it.”