The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,17
let you know,” he said, tracing the outline of my lips with his thumb for a moment.
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, propping myself up on my elbow. “Are you going to write me a postcard or something?”
Topher smiled at this. “Every day,” he said, matching my tone.
I laughed at that and pushed myself off the couch. I left first this time, returning to the party and hoping that nobody could tell anything had happened, that I didn’t look different at all.
• • •
Three hours later, I yawned as I headed up the driveway to my house, Palmer waving to me out the window of the minivan. Bri had asked me if I wanted to sleep over at her place—Toby was, of course—but I’d said no, mostly because Bri’s evil, ancient cat, Miss Cupcakes, seemed to have some kind of feline vendetta against me.
I let myself in and walked across the foyer, turning off lights while running through my checklist in my head. I’d get ready for bed, go over my packing list for Young Scholars one more time, then—I heard a creak of the floorboards behind me and whirled around, my heart hammering.
There was nobody right behind me, but in the long hallway that led down to my dad’s study, I saw my father standing in the study’s doorway, peering out at me. “Andie?”
I let out a shaky breath and took a step closer to him, squinting in the darkness. The only light was coming from the room behind him, stretching out a long thin line against the floor. “Hi,” I called, holding one hand up in an awkward wave and then immediately dropping it again. Now, in hindsight, it seemed ridiculous that I was that startled to hear someone else in the house. But I’d honestly forgotten he was here.
My dad took another step toward me, then stopped, both of us pretty much staying at our ends of the hallway. He ran his hand over the back of his neck, blinking at me like he was surprised to see me too. “I hadn’t realized that you . . .” He cleared his throat, then started again. “I guess I thought . . .” But this sentence trailed off too, and he pushed his shirtsleeve back to look at his watch. “It’s late, isn’t it?”
“Um, I don’t know,” I said, stopping myself before pointing out that he was the one with the watch.
“It’s after two,” he said, and I nodded, realizing that sounded about right.
“What were you doing up?” I asked, even though this really wasn’t that unusual. When my dad was home, he worked late most nights. And the weekends that I took the train to D.C. to stay in the apartment he kept in Dupont Circle—visits that always were accompanied by carefully crafted social media messages about how I was going to see my dad—I sometimes didn’t even see him; he was in his office or at meetings the whole time.
“I had to put some things in order,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “There’s a lot I’m leaving half-done, and I want to make sure that it’s taken care of.”
I nodded and took a step back toward the staircase. “So . . . ,” I started as my dad took crossed his arms over his chest.
“Is this when you normally come in?” he asked, sounding more confused than anything else. “Joy was okay with it?”
I bit my lip hard, to make sure I wouldn’t laugh. I’d never really had a curfew to speak of. Ever since I was twelve, there had been a revolving crew of vaguely related people who’d come to stay and help out with me. There had been an actual nanny hired when I’d first come back from Camp Stepping Stone, the summerlong grief camp my dad had sent me to right after the funeral. But when his opponent during that election found out about it, he started using it in his speeches as a way to trash my dad, saying that he would never hire outsiders to take care of his children. So the nanny had been let go, and I’d had the first of many distant relatives come to stay. This had ended the controversy, thanks to Peter’s spin—my dad was just bringing in family to help out during a difficult time. It was pretty hard to demonize that, the grieving widower doing the best he could, even though his opponent kept trying, which