he was.
After all, it wasn’t as if he’d left them to have some wonderful life of his own. He’d bounced around upstate New York and Pennsylvania, looking for work as a mechanic, which wasn’t easy without a trade certificate or a high school diploma. He’d made a go of it outside Pittsburgh for a while, but then he’d fallen in with a bunch of roughnecks. He’d been in a car with a couple buddies one night, just sitting in the back, drinking a Pabst and listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, when the other two decided to rob a convenience store. He hadn’t even known what they were doing. He’d just been waiting for them to come back when they came dashing out with a bag full of cash. Before he knew it they were racing down the highway with two state troopers in pursuit.
“What could I do?” he’d asked her then, his eyes searching her face. “I copped a plea. I mean, I was there! No one was going to believe that I was just some innocent bystander. So I pled guilty and I served my time. And while I was in jail? Every single moment of every single day, I thought about you. You and your sister.”
The heart Madison had worked so much to harden softened yet again, and one of these days she was afraid it would just crack open. She knew that her dad had been in prison, but Sue Beth had never said that he’d been innocent. Poor Charlie: He’d paid for his stupidity with jail time and he’d paid for his absence from their lives with pain. He wasn’t a deadbeat dad; he was just the unluckiest guy she’d ever met.
“I should have taken you two girls with me when I left,” Charlie had said, “but I didn’t know how. Seemed impossible for me to take care of two little girls without their momma, and Sweetpea, I just couldn’t stay. Your mother—me—we fought a lot. I was afraid of what one of us would do to the other.” He shook his head sadly. “If I could do it all over again . . .”
After that, Madison began contemplating a life with her father. Maybe it could even include Sophie, who was still working that peace-love-harmony act. What if, after all these years, Madison could have a family after all?
She’d made up her mind: She was going to show Charlie that since he’d come back into her life, she’d let him stay there. For good.
The salesman stood and slipped the suit jacket over the blue dress shirt that Madison had picked out to match Charlie’s eyes. “Yes, the fabric is perfect,” she said.
She missed this type of shopping excursion. She used to go to men’s stores with her older boyfriends—well, the single ones; the married ones didn’t like to be seen in daylight with her—but she was in between boyfriends right now. She hadn’t been in Ted Baker for months.
“Very good,” the salesman said and began to pin the sleeves of the coat.
“Sweetpea,” Charlie whispered, motioning for Madison to lean closer. He lifted his arm and a tiny tag attached to the jacket sleeve fluttered near his fingertips. “Tell me this is the year that the suit was made and not the actual price.”
Madison smiled. The four-figure number was indeed the price, but this suit would last Charlie for a long time. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this one,” she said. Pride swelled in her chest that she could buy it for him.
“Doll, it’s a looker, but I don’t have anyplace to wear it,” Charlie said.
“I don’t know.” Madison watched his reflection in the mirror. “This suit would be perfect for a premiere.”
Charlie looked puzzled. “What premiere?”
“I was thinking that maybe you’d want to go to The Fame Game premiere with me.”
Charlie smiled then—a huge, infectious grin. When he didn’t look so pitifully beaten down, he was a handsome man. “Oh, Mads,” he said. “I’d love that.”
“Good,” Madison said and smiled at her father.
Madison handed her AmEx to the hovering salesclerk. “The suit,” she said to him, “and these three ties and shirts. Have them sent to this address.” She handed him one of her business cards with an address scribbled on the back. “How long will it take?”
“A week,” he said.
“Perfect,” Madison said. And that word felt truer than ever.
* * *
Her next surprise was the really big one. Though she’d thought about inviting the PopTV cameras along, or at least a paparazzo or two (Madison and Dad kiss and make up!), she had decided, in the end, to keep the moment private.
She was supposed to drive Charlie back to the E-Z Inn, but instead she turned off La Brea onto Rosewood.
“Doll, I don’t know Los Angeles too well, but this doesn’t look like the way back to my place.” Charlie had lit a cigarette. Madison hated smoke (and the wrinkles it caused), but they’d agreed that he could smoke as long as the top was down.
“It isn’t?” Madison said, all fake innocence.
She pulled down a residential street lined with trees and manicured lawns. Her fingertips drummed the steering wheel with excitement. The place was absolutely perfect: a quiet neighborhood of modest, well-cared-for houses, close to Charlie’s job, Sophie’s apartment, and Madison’s own place. She turned into the driveway of a tiny brown bungalow. There was a white fence half-covered in roses and a front porch trellis practically dripping with bright fuchsia bougainvillea.
“Cute place,” Charlie said and took another puff on his cigarette. “One of your friends live here?”
“You could say that.” Madison smiled as she turned off her car. “C’mon.”
They climbed the front steps together and Madison pulled a key from her purse. She opened the front door to a sunlit room. The living room was modestly but tastefully furnished with a couch, an oversized chair, and a flat-screen TV. The dining area, attached to the bright kitchen, was big enough for a table of six. On the mantel, she’d placed an old photograph of her and Sophie and Charlie together. They were laughing, eating ice-cream cones.
“Do you like it?” Madison asked. Her dad wasn’t getting it. She smiled and a feeling of warmth flashed through her. Her father’s happiness was what she wanted right now most of all.
“What?” Charlie looked around the room. “Yeah, it’s really nice, but—” And that was when he saw the photograph. “Wait a second. Whose place is this?”
“Well, technically it’s mine,” Madison said. “But I want you to live here.”
Charlie gazed around the room in disbelief. “Here? You want me to live here?”
Madison nodded. “If it’s okay, I mean, if you want to, and you like it and—”
Charlie looked at Madison and then back at the picture of the three of them that he now held in his hands. “Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me. Not ever.”
His eyes glistened, and Madison watched as tears welled in them and then slipped down his cheeks. He ran the sleeve of his blue shirt over his face.
“Oh, don’t cry, Dad,” Madison whispered. “It’s just a little two-bedroom house. But it’s got two bathrooms, too, and a washer and dryer, a yard, a kitchen—”
“Wait,”
