Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway Page 0,72

to make sure you get there safely.”

Maureen nodded, then took two quick steps forward and grabbed me in a hug. I suspected that its fierceness and strength was meant for Oliver, not me, but this wasn’t the first time I had felt that way. For the first few months after Oliver went missing, she would hug me so hard that it made me wince.

It was just frightening to think that even now, with Oliver home and safe in his bedroom, Maureen still reached for me instead of him.

“Your daughter is very smart,” Maureen said to my mom as she pulled away, then rubbed her thumb across my cheek.

“Yes, she is,” my mom said, then gave me a wink as she pulled the sliding door open for Maureen. I could hear Maureen say something to my mom, but she was already outside, and I waited until my mom shut the door behind them before making a hasty escape out of the room.

I found my dad in the kitchen. Or, to be more exact, I found my dad’s socked feet standing behind the open refrigerator door. There was a lot of muffled shuffling sounds, followed by a clatter. “Dad?”

He poked his head around the door. “Oh, hi,” he said, like I had been there all along. “Are you starving? I’m starving. I don’t know about you, but that wasn’t the most relaxing dinner.”

“Are there leftovers?” I asked, coming into the kitchen and boosting myself up on the countertop. Unlike my mom, my dad didn’t shoo me down.

“Are there leftovers?” he repeated. “Is that a joke? Have you seen your mom’s organizational skills?”

“I caught her using the label maker once,” I told him. “She said she wasn’t, but I know she was.”

“She was,” my dad agreed. He rummaged around, then pulled out a Tupperware container. “What do we think this is? Guess correctly and you win it.”

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