next few months so that she could feel more confident about signing a lease. She spent the morning rehearsing her speech. She’d never had to borrow money from her parents before, and she was not asking for a small sum. But she intended to pay every cent back, with interest.
Her father’s car was parked in the drive. His yard, unlike her mother’s, was neatly manicured. His house was neat, too, and he’d boasted recently that he’d painted the window trim himself.
Carly and Baxter walked up to his door. She tried to open it, but it was locked. That was weird—he always left the door open. She rang the bell.
It seemed to take a little bit of time before her father opened the door. He stood in the doorway, one hand on the door. “Hello, Peach!”
He was a trim man, a little on the small side. His salt-and-pepper hair was mussed, and his shirt, usually ironed within an inch of its life, was buttoned crooked. “Did you fall asleep in your chair again?” she asked with a laugh, and moved forward, intending to step inside.
But her father didn’t move. “Peach? Now is not a good time.”
Carly laughed a little. “A good time for what?”
His smile was a funny, almost guilty smile.
“Why is this not a good time? Are you sick?”
“No, no, I’m fine. But I’m kind of busy with something.” His smile got weirder. The sort of smile a person wears when they think they know you but can’t place you.
“Another project, or . . . ?”
“Kind of.”
Baxter tried to enter, too, his tail wagging, his attention clearly on something in the house.
“Is it my Christmas present?” she asked, only half joking.
He laughed, too, but really loud and long. “Maybe you could come back later?”
“Come on, Dad, what’s going on? I won’t stay long, but I need to talk to you.”
He glanced over his shoulder.
“Is there someone else here?” Carly asked, trying to see past him.
“No.”
She didn’t believe him. “If there is no one here, then there must be a ham on the floor, because Baxter is dying to get to something in there.”
Her father sighed and he sounded very guilty. “I was going to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” Carly stepped up then, pushed the door out of her dad’s hand, and walked inside. She immediately saw the woman sitting at the kitchen table in her dad’s shirt, her legs long and sleek and very youthful and stretched out to the chair beside her. She looked as surprised as Carly.
Carly had inadvertently dropped the leash, because Baxter was hustling forward, his tail wagging furiously. The woman—or girl?—said, “Puppy!” and bent over to scratch his ears and the scruff of his neck. “Who’s a good boy. Who’s a good boy,” she said, petting Baxter. Then she looked up and smiled. “You must be Carla! Because of the black hair. Mia is blond, right?”
“It’s . . . it’s Carly, baby,” her father said.
Baby? Everything around Carly began to swim. She put her hand out, expecting to find the wall, but finding nothing but air. She left her hand in midair and watched, dumbfounded, as the girl stood up and walked to the door in a shirt that hardly covered a thing. She extended her hand. “I’m Hannah.”
What was she, sixteen, seventeen? Carly looked at her dad.
“Hannah is my dental hygienist.”
“Was,” Hannah corrected him, and slid her arm around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder.
Carly could not absorb this development. It was like a gong clanging in her head that she couldn’t make stop.
“I was going to tell you,” her father said weakly.
That was exactly what her mother had said. Everyone was going to tell her something and no one ever did. “That would have been nice,” Carly managed to choke out. “Okay. Well!” She looked around her, trying to grasp a way out of this. “I guess I’ll talk to you later? So nice to meet you . . .”
“Hannah!” she chirped.
“Hannah,” Carly said. She looked around for Baxter, but he was right there, at her feet, staring up at her and clearly wanting to know what was next. At least Baxter wasn’t going to do anything to upset her applecart. She bent down and grabbed his leash.
“Don’t run off, Peach,” her father said.
“I really can’t stay. Places to go and all that.”
“But . . . you came by for something.”
“Did I?” She laughed, and it sounded a little hysterical, and she kept looking at Hannah from the corner of