that head slowly wagged back and forth in the disappointed nod with which she was very familiar.
Well, it wouldn’t work anymore. She wouldn’t be manipulated by old routines. Yes, Neil Darrow was still her father. But here at the store, their dynamic had to be different. She had to lay down the law right now, day one, that she was an adult. A peer.
Sydney shoved at the hair falling forward past her ear. Which made her realize she’d forgotten to put on the rubber gloves.
Since when was hand-washing—which she of course had remembered—not good enough to rip off lettuce leaves?
Frustrated with the situation, the lettuce, and herself, Sydney dried her hands on a dishtowel embroidered with a grinning crab.
“No, Dad. I told you that I’m not going within six feet of the bait. That barrel of minnows is just creepy.” They were in a holding pen for their death. Eww. Equal parts depressing and disgusting. “When I agreed to come and sub in for Gram for three months, it was with the stipulation of certain conditions, remember?”
“I thought you were kidding.”
Sydney was shocked. Rocked to her core shocked.
Did he truly not understand what a huge deal this was? That she’d come back to Chestertown at all, let alone for three whole months?
How disruptive it was to her life, her career, to take a sabbatical and bury herself in this backwater town?
How soul-crushing?
“You thought I was kidding?” she asked in a flat tone. Because at this point, it was either strip all the emotion out of her voice, or let it fly with a screech of sour snippiness. Which wouldn’t really underscore her whole treat me like an adult and not your daughter request. “Really? How many times have I come home in the last dozen years?”
Quietly, he said, “Not enough.”
And then he put down the…boat thing…he was holding and came over to envelop her in a hug. A hug that felt so right, so grounding, so wistful for all the ones she hadn’t gotten from him over the years.
Damn it.
She couldn’t be mad about the minnows. Not when she knew how much he’d missed her.
To be fair, she’d missed her dad and grandmother and sister tremendously. Even her brother Campbell, more or less. But Sydney hadn’t ghosted them as she globe-trotted. She video-chatted with them regularly, and always had. Staying in touch was important. She was a daddy’s girl, through and through.
So Sydney sank into the hug. Reveled in it. Decided that it balanced out the horror show of the salad spinner.
“I love you, Dad. But I mean it. You and Campbell have to deal with everything in that smelly, fishy corner of the store. I’ll stay up here and handle the money. Fumble my way through the food. Heck, I’ll even shovel the sidewalk the next time it snows. Without any grumbling! But I’m not going near the bait corner.”
“Stubborn Syd.” He yanked at the messy braid she’d fastened with a twist tie off the bread bag so that he didn’t force her into a hair net. “Always so sure you know what’s best.”
“Not by a long shot.” That made it sound like she always thought she was right. And the hard left turn her career—and her life—had just taken proved how little she knew. “But I do know what’s best for me.”
Glancing down at the bulging paper towels and the half-plucked lettuce, he shook his head. “It’s only day one. Working in the shop is like riding a bike—it’ll come back on autopilot if you relax.”
Wow, he knew just how to go in and plumb the depths of her nightmares. First the worms and minnows, and now the horror of remembering—and settling into—working at the Mercantile.
Being stuck in their small town.
Being stuck in the town that her mother had abandoned her whole family just to get out of…
“Don’t count on me relaxing until my bags are packed and you’re driving me back over the Bay Bridge to BWI.” But Sydney said it with a winsome smile, to take the sting out of the words. “My autopilot isn’t set to tending a store. Autopilot for me is zipping around the world. And you know darn well I could never cook.”
“That’s for sure.” A high, barking laugh burst out of him. “Remember when you tried to make brownies? You shook the measuring cup to level it and got flour over every nook and cranny of the kitchen.”
Yeah. That had been one of her lesser cooking misdemeanors. “I’ll try, Dad. But