The Parent Trap(62)

For a few seconds, he thought she might refuse, but then she peeled off her jacket and draped it over the back of a stool and sat down.

He unwrapped the loaf of bread he’d made that morning and took butter, cheese and condiments out of the fridge. “What would you like to drink? Is water okay?”

She only nodded. Okay, still not talking. That was fine. At least she wasn’t talking to him at home instead of who knows where it was she’d been going. He still needed to get to the bottom of that, but first things first. He filled two glasses and passed one to Kate. Then he carved off thick slabs of sourdough, spread them with butter and sliced the cheese.

“Would you like mayo on yours?”

Another nod. No problem. This time, no matter what, he would not lose his cool.

To keep calm, he only needed to think about those hours spent not knowing where she was, about how lost she’d looked sitting in that stark, impersonal room at the police station. About Sarah telling him she was part of his village. He had a second chance with both of them. This time he wouldn’t blow it, because he might not get another.

After Kate finished slicing vegetables, he layered everything together, cut the two sandwiches on the diagonal and set them on plates. He forked dill pickles from a jar and added one to each plate, slid one in front of Kate and settled on a stool at the opposite end of the island with his. He watched her tuck into the meal and was glad he hadn’t let her disappear upstairs to lick her wounds. If she’d had anything to eat since lunchtime, it had likely come from a vending machine at the ferry terminal.

He gave her a few minutes to eat while he took that time to polish off half of his own sandwich and contemplate how to approach this. The direct approach, he decided, was the only way to go.

“I overreacted yesterday and I owe you an apology for that. I’m sorry.”

Kate’s eyelids fluttered in surprise, suggesting that was the last thing she’d expected him to say.

He pressed on. “If I’ve made you feel as though you can’t talk to me about the things that interest you or tell me how you’re spending your time, then I haven’t been doing my job as your father. I hope you know that your mother and I both love you very much,” he continued. “And we’ve both been doing a lousy job of showing it.”

She crunched a pickle, sputtered a little, then gulped some water. “Then how come she didn’t let me visit this summer?”

“I can’t answer that.” And there was no way he would speculate, not out loud and certainly not for his daughter to hear. Besides, that’s not where this conversation was headed. “But I can tell you that the problems your mother and I were having, our reasons for getting a divorce—” and there’d been plenty of them “—none of those things had anything to do with you. You’ve only ever been our smart, beautiful daughter and we’ve always been insanely proud of you.”

“So why did you get divorced?”

“Because your mom and I realized we didn’t want the same things anymore. Her career was taking off. She was always busy, and she was away a lot.”

Kate’s eyebrows shot up. “So it was her fault.”

“No, it wasn’t. I was proud of her, I still am. She’s always known what she wanted, she knew what she needed to do get it, and she went for it.” And it was those same traits in Kate that had him feeling so conflicted. “Your mom had an amazing career and there’s no way I would have asked her to give it up. But that kind of hectic life, always being on the go, the long and irregular hours...I couldn’t make them work for me.”

“Even before she moved out, when she was out at night and working late and stuff, I used to go to bed and wonder if she was ever coming home again.”

He’d thought the divorce was the low point in his life, but with this revelation his emotions spiraled to dark new depths. To think he and Kate had been worrying about the same thing and he had never picked up on it. He’d convinced himself that Georgette was the self-centered one. Not so.

He found himself wondering what sort of advice Sarah would offer.

She’s grieving. You were grieving, too.

Was it possible they’d both been grieving the loss of a wife and mother before she was actually gone?

“I used to lose sleep over it, too,” he admitted. “If I’d guessed you were going through the same thing, I would have talked to you about it. I guess I thought you were young enough that you wouldn’t notice, and that you were too young to be dragged into the world of grown-up problems.”

“Seriously, Dad? I’m not a little kid.” Her tone was forceful but it was laced with humor, too, and that was the first bright spot in what had been a very dark day.