I Have Lived and I Have Loved - Willow Winters Page 0,301

of parents, and my two sisters provided the aunt input.

Amanda hopped up onto one of the barstools at the breakfast bar, watching as I whisked up the batter.

“Speak to your mom today?” I asked. I’d learned I couldn’t just launch in and ask Amanda who she was hoping to ask her to the dance and on what basis. No, I had to wait for her to talk. Lucky for me, Amanda was a talker.

“Nope. Not yet.”

I stayed silent, trying to encourage her to speak.

“Bobby Clapham invited Samantha to the dance.”

I gripped the whisk harder but kept my mouth shut. I had to hear her out.

“And I thought that Callum Ryder would ask me, but he hasn’t said anything.”

Fourteen. No one told me dating was going to start this early. Could I call Pandora and agree we would lock Amanda in her room until she turned twenty-one? I could give up work and home school her for a few years, then she could do a college correspondence course. It was an option.

“Callum Ryder, he’s in your class?” I’d never heard her talk about him. Or maybe I had and I’d just taken no notice. Because Amanda liked to talk, I tuned out large chunks of what she said. It was just too much to take in—all the friends, the squabbling, the concerns that would last five seconds. I couldn’t keep up. The stuff I did take in passed through my brain quickly, and I retained almost nothing about her friendships at school. I was beginning to realize such an approach may have been a mistake.

“Oh my God. Don’t you listen to anything I say?” she whined. “Callum moved here from San Francisco last semester. Don’t you remember me telling you?”

“Oh, right.” I nodded, trying to cover up the fact I had no idea what she was talking about. Why hadn’t we sent her to an all-girls school? “And you want him to ask you to the dance?”

A blush crept up her face and a piercing pain shot through my chest. She was too young for all this. “Maybe,” she said. “But only because he’s funny, and I saw him dance once during lunch and he seemed to be able to move in time to the music.”

“So everyone is going as couples?” I tried not to shudder as I spoke. My baby girl.

“What do you mean?” she asked, plucking a grape from the bowl of fruit on the counter.

“If Callum asked you to the dance, he’d pick you up and—”

“No, Samantha and I are going together. You said you’d drive us. You don’t remember?” She splayed her hands in front of her as if I was possibly the stupidest man ever to have lived.

“Yeah, I remember,” I lied. “But I thought you and Samantha were no longer friends?”

“Last week, Dad. Keep up.”

“Okay, explain it to me because I don’t know how these things work. So you’ll see Callum there?”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

The thudding of my pulse slowed. Maybe labelling this whole thing dating was over-dramatic. I poured the batter onto the griddle as I tried to cover my relief. “So do you have your costume yet for this dance?” I asked.

“Costume? You mean a dress? It’s not a costume party.”

I sighed. “Give me a break. Do you have a dress?”

She grinned. “I wondered if you wanted some company in the city this week? You know, we could go shopping maybe?”

“In Manhattan?” I wasn’t sure I was qualified to take her shopping for a dance. I had no idea what would be appropriate. I didn’t like Amanda in the city, and I tried to discourage her attempts to visit me when I was at the Manhattan apartment. New York was no place for a kid. There were far too many bad influences.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Don’t you like the shops around here?”

“I want something no one else will have.” Something in my expression must have caught her eye. “Just because I’m fourteen doesn’t mean finding the perfect dress isn’t important, if that’s what you’re thinking. Perhaps if you ever dated, you’d get it.”

Here we go. One crisis situation always overlapped with another. Amanda was always nagging me about getting a girlfriend. Or a wife. Women were exhausting. Work was easier. Or it was before Harper started.

“I want you to look pretty. Of course I understand that. I have plenty of women in my life.” With two sisters, a daughter, and Pandora, there was no lack of estrogen in my world.

“You always think about it in