The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,87

like she never even existed.” I was full-on crying, wiping my nose with the back of my hand and not even caring. I could barely see my dad any longer. He was just a fuzzy shape behind the tears I wasn’t even trying to blink away.

“And you said—you said in your book that we were so close. That you have to work at a relationship and that you’re proud of ours.” I took a shaky breath, knowing I was coming to the end of what I was going to be able to say. “But it’s not like that anymore. It’s not, and I don’t know why. I don’t know . . . what I did.”

My dad was staring down at the floor, his shoulders hunched. He nodded, just once, not looking at me, then turned and walked past me without a word. He walked to the end of the hallway, then opened the door to his study and went inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

I drew in a shaky breath, not sure what I was expecting but feeling somehow that being left alone, after all that, was so much worse than if he’d yelled at me.

On legs that felt wobbly, I walked slowly up the stairs to my room and headed directly for my bed, kicking off my flip-flops and pulling my quilt up over my shoulders. I curled into a ball and closed my eyes tightly, wishing harder than I ever had before that when I opened them, I’d be back in the farmhouse. My mom would be downstairs, and my dad, too, both of them waiting for me, and everything else that had happened had just been a nightmare, the worst kind of bad dream, but nothing that could possibly be true.

But when I opened them, I was back in my beige room, with everything broken in pieces around me. I closed my eyes again and pulled my covers over my head.

Chapter NINE

“Andie?” there was a double knock on my door, and before I even had time to respond, it cracked open an inch. “Can I come in?”

I looked up from where I was still curled on my bed. After a few hours I had made myself get up. I’d taken a long shower and finally changed out of Clark’s clothes and back into my own. Even though I’d left my phone on the kitchen counter, I hadn’t wanted to leave my room—I wasn’t sure what I’d be walking into downstairs. It was like I’d just broken every unspoken rule we’d had, and I had no idea where we went from here—or what it looked like. And maybe it looked just the same, which was somehow the worst possibility of all.

“Okay,” I said, as the door swung open all the way.

My dad didn’t come inside, though, just stayed in the doorway, standing on the threshold, his hands in his pockets. “Want to get some ice cream?”

• • •

At Paradise Ice Cream I looked across the table at my father. We were sitting at one of the wrought-iron tables on the patio with our ice cream—mint chocolate chip for my dad, cookie dough in a waffle cone for me. We’d driven over here in almost silence, talking only about the logistics of where to go, if he could change lanes, if I could see a parking spot.

“How is it?” he asked, gesturing toward my waffle cone with his spoon.

“Pretty good,” I said, taking another bite. “Yours?”

“Not bad,” he said, scooping up another spoonful. We ate in silence for a moment, and I looked around the nearly deserted patio in the fading afternoon light. It seemed we’d picked a good time to come—it was a little after five. I knew from experience that around seven, post-dinnertime, the line would be out the door. But right now we had the place practically to ourselves. “So,” he said, taking another bite, then pushing his cup slightly away from him and looking right at me. “I thought we should talk about this afternoon.”

I looked at him and nodded, realizing that after years of knowing my father’s speeches by heart, being able to anticipate every turn of phrase, I had no idea what was about to come next.

“I’m sorry, Andie,” he said, his voice raw. “I truly am. I don’t think I realized . . .” His voice trailed off and he cleared his throat. “If I’d known how you felt, I would have made a change long ago. And