Paris Is Always a Good Idea - Jenn McKinlay Page 0,4
that all of that isn’t erasing Mom?”
Dad stared down at me with his head to the side and his right eyebrow arched, a double whammy of parental disappointment. He wrapped his scarf about his neck and pulled on his gloves.
“You know what? I don’t know if Sheri will take my name. We haven’t talked about it,” he said. “As for the house, I am planning to sell it so we can start our life together somewhere new.”
I sucked in a breath. My childhood home. Gone? Sold? To strangers? I thought I might throw up. Instead, I polished off one of the mimosas.
“Sheri and I are getting married in three months,” he said. “We’re planning a nice June wedding, and we very much want you to be a part of it.”
“As a flower girl?” I scoffed. “Whose crazy idea was that?”
“It was Sheri’s,” he said. His mouth tightened. “She’s never been married before, and she’s a little excited. It’s actually quite lovely to see.”
“A thirty-year-old flower girl,” I replied, as tenacious as a tailgater in traffic. I just couldn’t let it go.
“All right, I get it. Come as anything you want, then,” he said. “You can give me away, be my best man, be a bridesmaid, or officiate the damn thing. I don’t care. I just want you there. It would mean everything to Sheri and me to have your blessing.”
I stared at him. The mild-mannered Harvard math professor who had taught me to throw a curveball, ride a bike, and knee a boy in the junk if he got too fresh had never looked so determined. He meant it. He was going to marry Sheri Armstrong, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
“I . . . I.” My words stalled out. I wanted to say that it was okay, that he deserved to be happy, and that I’d be there in any capacity he wanted, but I choked. I sat there with my mouth opening and closing like a fish on dry land, trying to figure out how to mouth breathe.
My father turned up his collar, bracing for the cold March air. He looked equal parts disappointed and frustrated. “Don’t strain yourself.”
He turned away as I sat frozen. I hated this. I didn’t want us to part company like this, but I was so shocked by this sudden turn of events, I was practically catatonic. I waited, feeling miserable, for him to walk away, but instead he turned back toward me. Rather than being furious with me, which might have caused me to dig in my heels and push back, he looked sad.
“What happened to you, peanut?” he asked. “You used to be the girl with the big heart who was going to save the world.”
I didn’t say anything. His disappointment and confusion washed over me like a bath of sour milk.
“I grew up,” I said. But even to my own ears I sounded defensive.
He shook his head. “No, you didn’t. Quite the opposite. You stopped growing at all.”
“Are you kidding me? In the past seven years, I’ve raised millions to help the fight against cancer. How can you say I haven’t grown?” I asked. I was working up a nice froth of indignation. “I’m trying to make a difference in the world.”
“That’s your career,” he said. “Being great at your profession doesn’t mean you’ve grown personally. Chels, look at your life. You work seven days a week. You never take time off. You don’t date. You have no friends. Heck, if we didn’t have a standing brunch date, I doubt I’d ever see you except on holidays. Since your mother passed, you’ve barricaded yourself emotionally from all of us. What kind of life is that?”
I turned my head to stare out the window at Boylston Street. I couldn’t believe my father was dismissing how hard I worked for the American Cancer Coalition. I had busted my butt to become the top corporate fundraiser in the organization, and with the exception of one annoying coworker, my status was unquestioned.
He sighed. I couldn’t look at him. “Chels, I’m not saying what you’ve accomplished isn’t important. It’s just that you’ve changed over the past few years. I can’t remember the last time you brought someone special home for me to meet. It’s as if you’ve sealed yourself off since your mother—”
I whipped my head in his direction, daring him to talk about my mother in the same conversation in which he’d announced he was remarrying.