away for a while.”
“For how long?” Cora asked.
“At least eighteen months, more like two years.” He’d been so excited about the prospect of it. Until now. “It’s been planned for a while. Long before I knew that Georgie’s mother was moving back to the Midwest. And Georgie…she didn’t like spending time with me before.”
Only he knew that wasn’t exactly true. It was more that they’d never spent time together before, not like this, day after day, doing things that brought her joy.
“I find that hard to believe,” Cora said.
He swallowed hard. “I wish it was. But she doesn’t like my apartment. She’s bored on her visits.” And he was entirely to blame for that, wasn’t he?
“But that’s all changed now,” Cora pointed out. “It’s her Christmas wish to spend more time with you.”
Phil sucked in a breath. That was certainly one scenario he hadn’t seen coming.
He glanced at Cora. And this was another.
One step at a time, he told himself. One problem at a time. That’s how he approached everything in life. Or at least, in his career.
His career that had been all-consuming. Everything to him. Just like his father’s was to him.
His father had lost his own parents to that mentality. And he’d never really gained a son, had he?
No matter how hard Phil had tried to win him over.
“I’ve committed to this. I have people counting on me.”
Cora nodded as if she understood, but her eyes said otherwise. He knew what his ex would have said. That his family were people too. That they counted on him, too.
It was the same dilemma, now, then. Always.
He’d assumed that he was doing enough by her, providing for her, leading by example, the way his father had done for him. But it wasn’t enough.
“Georgie doesn’t know yet,” he told Cora now. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell her.”
He looked at her, seeing the disappointment in her eyes, and hating it. Hating that he knew the disappointment would be so much worse if he told her everything.
“Well, now you know what she wants more than anything else,” Cora said. She avoided looking at him, her expression tight, and Phil didn’t know what else to offer her in that moment, or what else to even say, other than the cold hard truth.
“Now I know.”
And he knew that despite everything he’d set out to do, things were getting more complicated by the day.
They walked through the festival, stopping to look at various kiosks, saying little until Cora suddenly stopped in her tracks.
“Not to overstep, but is there any chance you might change your mind about going away? For Georgie, of course,” Cora added quickly. “You have the house here. Your grandparents loved Blue Harbor. And Georgie does too. And it’s not too far from Chicago. A lot of people come up here on weekends, summers…”
They locked eyes for a beat, and Phil didn’t quite know what to say, even though she was asking him the very same question that he’d been asking himself since that first full day here in Blue Harbor, when what was supposed to be a weekend trip to tie up his connection to this town turned into something more.
“If only life were that simple,” Phil said, hearing the longing in his own voice.
“Can’t it be?” Cora shrugged. “My life is pretty simple. I grew up in this small town. I know pretty much everyone, and my days are fairly routine.” Her cheeks turned pink for a second and she looked down, her lashes fluttering as she covered her smile with an embarrassed laugh. “My life must sound pretty boring when I describe it that way.”
“Not at all,” Phil replied honestly. “I was thinking that it actually sounded…nice.”
Cora met his eye. He could feel their connection, and wondered if she sensed it too. Wondered what she would say if she knew why he’d really come to town in the first place, and why he had been so eager to leave. Why Christmas was nothing but another day on the calendar. Why he’d been willing to leave the country for an extended period of time, with even more limited contact with his only child.
“My life has been pretty complicated,” he explained. “Work consumed a lot of my time while I was married.” He laughed. “It consumes even more time now that I’m not.”
“You have an important job,” Cora pointed out.
Phil nodded. “I do. And I take it seriously. But it’s like you said, Georgie is counting on me too.