I looked at it. “Chicken salad. The Waldorf one, with grapes and walnuts.”
My dad opened it, gave it a sniff, then handed it to me. “Congratulations, you get to eat with your father.”
“Yay,” I said, then leaned down to get a fork out of the drawer. “What are you having?”
He found another container. “Mac and cheese, apparently,” he said.
“That’s a pretty good consolation prize,” I said, passing him a fork.
“Not too shabby,” he agreed.
We ate in silence for a minute. I hadn’t realized just how starving I had been and the chicken salad was really good. “So,” my dad finally said. “Tonight.”
“Tonight,” I repeated, still shoveling in food. He passed me a napkin. “Thanks. Yeah, tonight was . . .”
“Tonight sucked,” my dad said, and I started to laugh hearing him say that. “What?” He smiled at me. “Isn’t that the slang you kids are using? The lingo? Do I sound hip?”
I just shook my head. “The only hip I hear is the sound of yours breaking.”
“Ohhhh!” he cried, like I had just made a three-point shot from the free-throw line. “That’s a good one. Let no one say that my daughter doesn’t have a few zingers in her back pocket.”
“Yeah, well, I get it from my dad.”
“Yes, you do, kid.”
I took another bite of salad and chewed. Hearing him call me “kid” reminded me of what Oliver had said about his dad. “Maureen wants to do this TV show,” I said. I hadn’t been planning to say anything, so I was as surprised as my dad was to hear me say that. “To find Keith. Oliver’s dad. It’s like a crime show or something, but Oliver doesn’t want to do it.”
My dad just nodded and shoved the food around in his container. “Did he tell you that?”
“Yeah. He says, um, he says he really misses his dad. Like, as much as he missed his mom back when he first disappeared.” It was getting a little more difficult to chew and I set the salad down, suddenly not as hungry as I had been.
“What do you think?” my dad asked me.
“I think that Keith should go to jail or whatever. I mean, he did a really bad thing. But at the same time . . .”
“Punishing Keith punishes Oliver, too?” my dad guessed, and I nodded.
“It’s just hard to see him feel this bad,” I said. “Like, he didn’t do anything but he keeps getting hurt, anyway. I don’t like watching him go through this.”
My dad set down his food, too, then hopped up on the counter next to me. “So. You and Oliver.”
I looked up at him, surprised. “Me,” I said. “And Oliver.”
“Those are two very different sentences, Emmy. Look,” he added quickly before I could protest. “I saw you two at the table tonight. I know there was a lot going on, it got chaotic there, but I saw you two looking at each other. And I know what I saw.”
I was blushing furiously now, untucking my hair from behind my ear so my dad couldn’t see my face. “He’s always been my friend,” I said. “Even when he wasn’t here, okay? And he still is, even though we’re . . .”
“No, I know, sweetie. But Oliver has a lot of pain right now, and I don’t want you to take his burden on yourself.” My dad stroked my hair, eventually uncovering my face, and I let him.
“Dad, it’s, like, ten years too late to worry about that,” I said.
“I know,” he said again. “You saw a lot. Your mom and I tried to protect you from most of it, but Oliver was your friend and he disappeared and there aren’t many ways you can hide that from your kid.” He was still stroking my hair. “But I don’t want you to stay in that place forever. And I don’t want Oliver to stay there, either. You kids have a chance to move on.”
“It’s sort of hard when . . . when you don’t know how.” The words hurt even as I said them and realized how true they were. I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been worried or scared for Oliver. How do you move on from that? I could feel tears pricking at my eyes. Do not cry, I told myself. Do not cry, do not cry, do not cry.
“Well, that’s growing up, isn’t it?” my dad said. “You don’t always have to know. And things aren’t always fair. You just have to keep moving forward. A step in one direction.”
“Do you think Maureen should do the TV show?” I asked after a few minutes, while my dad rubbed my back.
“I think.” My dad thought for a minute. “I think that both Maureen and Oliver want answers that they might never get. And they need to figure out how to deal with that.”
I looked up at my dad. “Tonight, when Oliver and I were talking, I said I’d still love you, even if you kidnapped me. I really would. I get how he feels.”
My dad smiled. “That’s the nicest and most sociopathic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” I said, then wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him tight. I suddenly wanted to tell him everything—UCSD and surfing and kissing Oliver at the party—but I stopped myself.
One thing at a time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The buzz at school started quietly at first, like one tiny mosquito that kept floating around near you, but always just out of reach so you couldn’t squish it. Then it got progressively louder after lunch, and by the time school ended, it was like someone had smashed a wasps’ nest full of gossip onto the floor.