Should I head for KFC?” he joked.
His effort at levity lifted the corners of Lissa’s mouth ever so slightly. For a moment, he was tempted to push the joke. But this was probably the longest sentence his eighteen-year-old daughter had spoken to him in months, and at least she’d looked him in the eye.
I should be thankful she’s even agreed to be here. She skipped my birthday last year.
“Dad, salad’s ready. Should I toss it with the dressing?”
At Melanie’s question, his youngest daughter’s tiny smile faded. Patrick’s hope for the evening faded right along with it.
He could remember a time when the two girls—no, Mel was a young woman now, and Lissa, for all her immaturity, was nearly one—were not so polarized by sibling rivalry. But then the divorce and everything that had gone on between Jenny and him had destroyed any closeness. The girls had wound up in either their mom’s corner—that would be Lissa—or their dad’s—that would be Melanie.
Just once he wanted them to forget who had sided with whom and be a family.
Melanie hadn’t been happy about Patrick’s birthday request, he knew. She’d planned on taking him out to dinner and, he suspected, not asking Lissa to join them. Which was understandable. Lissa had ignored more than one of his birthdays.
Except when she wanted something. So what did she want now?
In a desire to mend fences between him and Melanie, he said, “Your cake looks so good, Mel, that I’m tempted to skip the leafy greens altogether.”
She beamed, his approval lessening some of the tension in her still-necked posture. “It was a cinch, Dad. Coconut, your favorite.”
“He likes German chocolate, too,” Lissa observed as she drained a piece of chicken before dropping it on the plate Patrick had given her.
“No, Mom likes German chocolate. Why is it that you can never remember—” But Melanie didn’t finish what she was about to say. “The coconut’s all right, isn’t it?”
“I’m easy to please. Coconut, German chocolate—doesn’t matter to me. But yeah, coconut’s my favorite.” Patrick figured that if this strained atmosphere went on for much longer, his dessert would be Maalox, not cake.
If just he and Lissa had been having this conversation, he would have come straight out and asked her why she was even here. What had made her say yes this year when he’d asked her to spend his birthday with him? Was he foolish to hope that her coolness toward him was thawing?
He jammed his hand into the silverware drawer, smothering an oath when the tine of a fork poked him.
Damn Jenny, anyway. She was the one who’d left. She was the one who’d thought their marriage—their family, what was left of it, anyway—should be scrapped. All because some other guy listened to her. Listened.
Tonight it seemed that he was about to lose Melanie by trying to salvage what was left of his relationship with Lissa.
But if he’d learned anything, it was that you were never guaranteed tomorrow. That and you’d better take advantage of what you had today. Maybe Lissa felt the same way. Maybe her first semester at technical college had rammed home how quickly time flew and how things could never stay the same.
Lissa, in college now. This was the year Annabelle should have graduated from high school.
The silverware in his fist slipped out of his grip and landed with a clatter on the floor. Everybody jumped at the racket.
For an endless moment, Patrick felt his eyes shift from Melanie to Lissa and back again.
Then Melanie chuckled. Lissa joined in and Patrick laughed himself, but out of relief.
“Boy, we’re strung tight,” Patrick told them.
“Long day.” Melanie went back to tossing the salad. “I swear, the phone at my office rang nonstop all afternoon.”
“At least you’re an accountant and you work in an office. You’re not stuck ringing up groceries. Man alive, but I got chewed out for carding somebody who wanted to buy beer,” Lissa said. “I wish I could quit. I have to keep this job, though, and my other job to earn the car down payment because somebody won’t co-sign a loan for me.”
Patrick caught Mel’s knowing older-sister eye. “Oh, poor baby,” she sniped. “Maybe if you had actually done what you were supposed to do and showed a little responsibility, Dad would have a little confidence in you.”
“I am responsible! What do you mean?”
“The internship you flaked out on. If you can’t get your papers in on time, how can Dad expect you to make a car payment on time?”
“Dad!” Lissa whirled to face Patrick, and jabbed the fork at him. “You told her I missed the deadline?”
Mel didn’t wait for Patrick to respond, just jumped in. “Yeah, he did. How else was he supposed to explain his sudden change of heart? You’re eighteen, Lissa. Grow up, why don’t—”
“Mel, that’s enough.” Patrick stepped between them. Now he regretted having mentioned Lissa’s sad story to her elder sister.
The chicken grease hissed behind them. Lissa broke the stare she had locked on to Mel to attend to it. Her smug look as she turned toward the stove irritated Patrick.
“Lissa, Mel’s right about one thing. You need to be more responsible. It’s not just the internship paperwork. If you’re serious about a job in the nursing profession, you have to manage a lot of deadlines, and that’s part of the reason your teachers set them—”
“It’s hard, Dad.”
Her whine sent his blood pressure up just a tick more. “Yeah, maybe. But when Mel was your age, I never had to worry—”
“Perfect Mel with her perfect husband and her perfect house and her perfect job. Never-screws-up Mel. Never-try-anything-so-you-don’t-screw-up Mel.” But Lissa’s mutter was barely audible. He shook his head toward Mel to stop her retort.
More silence. Patrick grabbed some plates and would have put them down on the small table in the kitchen, but Mel took them from him.
“It’s your birthday, Dad,” she said. “Even if Luke had to work and we can’t all be here, we can eat in the dining room, okay? It’s a celebration.”
Patrick ignored the derisive sound Lissa made at the mention of Mel’s state-trooper husband. “Okay.” He headed for the dining room with his stack of plates. Over his shoulder he called, “I can top both of you on the bad day at work. Today was my first and last day as a bus driver—and I had to break up a fight.”
“You? Drive a school bus?” Lissa laughed and was leaning back against the cabinet when he returned. “This I gotta hear.”
“Why is it that everybody gazes at me like that when I tell them I drove a school bus?” He let mock irritation color his words. “What? I don’t appear competent to drive a bus?”
He
