he and not a little kid anymore. He stumbled backward at the force of her embrace. Meaghan was the more gregarious of the two, an athlete and honor student. Erin was small, like her mother, and more reticent. Crawford didn’t get a lot from her in terms of affection and had given up trying to figure her out. She was who she was and probably more like him than he cared to admit. Erin waited for her sister to finish before standing on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. They hadn’t brought any bags since this was only a day visit; he had missed his Saturday-night visit with them but had made sure he could spend the entire Sunday with them.
Meaghan grabbed his hand. “Did you catch the skel?” she asked. Their mother had explained to them why their father had had to cancel his usual Saturday visit.
He turned to her, surprised. “Skel? Where did you hear that word?”
“I saw a documentary about the NYPD on television and they used that word a lot.”
He shook his head. “Okay, that’s not a word we’re going to use in normal conversation. Got it?”
She nodded. “Got it,” she said, flashing a grin that was identical to his.
Erin slipped her hand into his free one, smaller and more fine-boned than that of her younger sister. “What do you want to do today?”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “Well, Bea suggested we attend the Divine Mercy Hour at Trinity Church, but I told her we had a full day of Stations of the Cross on the agenda.” The girls chuckled; Aunt Bea was an old-time Catholic and hated the fact that Crawford didn’t enforce a weekly mass ritual on Sundays. His time with them was precious; he didn’t want an hour eaten up going to church. “What do you want to do?”
They walked across the wide-open space of Grand Central, the girls looking up every now and again to get a look at the beautiful planetarium scene on the domed ceiling; they never tired of it. Crawford ushered them up the great staircase that led to Michael Jordan’s The Steak House on the right and the Campbell Apartment on the left, an intimate bar and bistro that he had never been to but had passed a hundred times. The girls told him that they were starving and wanted brunch. They exited at Vanderbilt Avenue and walked a block and a half to an Irish pub.
They took a booth away from the bar and toward the back of the restaurant. Crawford let them choose where they wanted to sit; they chose to sit together, across from him, where they could both see him.
The waiter appeared and asked them if they’d like a drink. Crawford looked at his watch and saw that it was just after ten. He ordered the girls their usual glasses of water and a coffee for himself.
Erin cut to the chase. “Mom said you’re going ahead with the divorce.”
Meaghan shot her a look. “Nice going. Can we have a drink before we get into all of that?”
Crawford sighed. He and Christine had a relatively good relationship, amicable mostly, but sometimes, she let the girls in on things that he would just as soon keep between them. She was very open and, admittedly, he was a little closed. It had been one of the things that she had grown to dislike in him, but it was who he was and he was not great at change. He spread his hands out on the table, looking down at his fingers instead of into their eyes. “We’re moving forward with the divorce,” he confirmed. Technically, that was true. But they still had the lengthy annulment process in front of them before everything was finalized. He didn’t think Christine was signing the divorce papers until the process had at least commenced.
Erin’s eyes filled with tears, something that he didn’t expect.
“Hey,” he said, grabbing her hand. “Don’t cry. Everything’s fine.” He touched her cheek with his other hand. “Nothing’s going to change. Everything is going to be exactly the same except that we won’t be legally married anymore.”
Meaghan put her arm around her sister. “We’ve talked about this a lot, but she still thinks there’s a chance.”
Crawford was puzzled. A chance?
Meaghan explained. “That you’d get back together.”
He hadn’t considered that either of them would ever think that was a possibility.
Erin wiped her eyes with her napkin. “I’m sorry, Dad. It just makes things so final.” She