I figure it out, I’ll tell you.”
“Oh, dear,” she said on a rush of real compassion. “You do care, don’t you?”
He rocked back, that same hard stare not disguising the faint shock in his eyes. “You thought I didn’t?”
“Some parents don’t, you know,” Grace said gently. “How was I supposed to know?”
He frowned. “I was hunting for her.”
“That didn’t mean you loved her.”
David Whitcomb made a guttural sound. “It’s hard as hell to love her.”
“But you do.” Why she was so certain, she couldn’t have said, but she would have bet her paycheck that this man was hurting right now. “Please.” She stepped back. “Come in.”
He hesitated, then gave an abrupt nod and stepped over the threshold, the glance he gave toward her living room wary.
Grace took a guess at the reason. “Linnet’s upstairs.”
Another nod was the only response, but he seemed marginally less tense when she led him into the kitchen of the compact town house. “I was working on dinner,” she explained.
She had gradually and completely remodeled since buying the place after Roger’s death. The pale colors that seemed to be standard issue these days had struck her as cold, echoing too much the bleakness of grief. Now the floor of the kitchen was tiled in terra-cotta, the countertops in peach. She’d stripped and stained the cherry cabinets herself, until they glowed to match the antique table in the small dining room. Touches of copper, baskets and rough-textured stone-ware all added to the warmth of her kitchen.
As she went to the stove, she covertly watched her guest. His expression showed surprise and, she thought, reluctant admiration.
“Can I pour you some wine?” she asked.
He stood by the table looking awkward, a state that was probably rare for a man with his presence. “Thank you,” he said.
When she handed him the glass, she was careful not to let their fingers touch. Why, she couldn’t have said.
He took a deep swallow, then met her eyes. “This isn’t a good time. Why don’t I come back?”
“And what are you going to say to Claire in the meantime?” Grace stirred the sauce simmering on the stove top. “No. Actually, right now is fine. Dinner won’t be ready for fifteen or twenty minutes, and Linnet is occupied with homework. Let me say my piece.”
His frowning gaze continued to hold hers. She kept stirring to give herself something to do.
“Linnet tells me Claire has run away several times.”
He gave another of those sharp nods that seemed to be his speciality.
“Apparently going to live with her mother is not an option?”
“No.” For a moment it seemed he would say nothing more, but finally he added grudgingly, “My ex-wife is an alcoholic. She is also seeing a new man who is apparently not interested in being a stepfather.”
“Oh.” Poor Claire, Grace thought sadly. She’d been wrenched from a drunken mother who had lost interest in her into the care of this remote, uncommunicative man who admitted it was hard to love her.
“Claire is convinced her mother needs her.”
Grace stirred, processing the information. “I see.”
“Do you?” His gaze was ironic.
“Well, no.” She hesitated, knowing she was crossing an invisible line but choosing to do it anyway. “What I don’t understand is why she is so determined not to live with you.”
“You haven’t been fed stories of abuse?”
“No-o, not exactly.”
He gave a rough laugh that held no humor and turned from her to stare out the window at her tiny brick patio. “Do you want to know the honest-to-God truth?”
She felt unforgivably nosy, but… “If I’m to become involved…yes. Yes, I do.”
“Then here it is. I don’t know. I have no idea why my own daughter hates my guts.” He faced her, expression raw. “I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t buy that.”
Did she? Was it possible to be genuinely ignorant of where you had taken such a monumental misstep?
“I don’t want to ask,” Grace said slowly, “but will you tell me more of the background? How long you’ve been divorced, for example?”
He picked up the wineglass from the table, looked at it, set it down. “Six years. Claire was seven. Miranda’s drinking was a problem between us, but she didn’t drink and drive, and I thought Claire was better with her. I thought, for a girl, that her mother was important.”
At last Grace put down the spoon. “And Claire?”
He shook his head. “There was so much tumult, I just don’t know. I assumed she’d rather stay with her mother.” Sounding stiff, he added, “Obviously now she wants to be with her, so I guess I was right.”
Or very, very wrong, Grace thought but didn’t say.
“I assume you continued to see her.”
He began rubbing the back of his neck. “Not as often as I should have. I was transferred up here from the Bay Area. I talked to her on the phone, but when you’re not living with someone it gets harder and harder to think of anything to say. She was supposed to spend summers, but Miranda had her in swimming lessons and an arts program, and I work long hours, so—” his eyes closed briefly “—I took the easy road.”
“She never came?” Grace couldn’t help sounding shocked.
“Oh, two weeks here and there. It was…not comfortable.” His eyes met hers, his hooded. “I’d take time off, but she didn’t want to do anything. She was always sullen. I thought it was her age. Or later I figured it was me. I wasn’t real life for her. Eventually—” he grimaced “—I realized that real life was doing the grocery shopping and coaxing her hungover mother out of bed in the morning and making excuses to the boss if she couldn’t. The first couple of years, Claire would show off her report card. This past couple, she stopped. I found out that’s because she had so many tardies and unexcused absences, she was flunking. I flew down for a visit at the end of the last school year and talked to teachers and Miranda. Claire threw a fit, but I packed her up and brought her home with me. She’s been trying to run away ever since. And that,” he said, “is the whole pathetic story.”
“I’m sorry.” She stirred uselessly again. “This must be very difficult.”
“Being her father?” he asked ironically. “Or admitting to you how inadequate I am?”
“Well, both.”
He said something under his breath that she suspected was profane, and then took
