I loved my daughter and my sister, and it wasn’t as if there wasn’t room for everyone here in Manhattan. But it did mean I didn’t have any mental space—a beat after my working day. The edges of my separated worlds were softening, growing fuzzy.
Everything was changing.
“I’ll speak to your mother,” I said, grabbing the oregano from the counter.
“We’re not having pasta, are we?” Scarlett asked.
“You just watched me make the sauce.”
“I wasn’t watching. I was talking. You know I’m not eating wheat at the moment.”
I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, then looked at Scarlett. “Why would I know that you’re not eating wheat?”
“Because I’ve been whining about it non-stop for the last month.”
“Come on, Dad. You know she’s not eating wheat,” Amanda said.
Why did the women in my life have the ability to make me feel so hopeless? In my day job I was respected, some would even say admired. With my family, I was just some guy who forgot that my sister wasn’t eating wheat.
Jesus.
“So don’t eat it,” I snapped. “I have some popsicles in the freezer.”
Scarlett rolled her eyes in the exact same way Amanda always did. “I’m not five. I can’t have popsicles for dinner.”
“Good. So you’ll eat spaghetti,” I replied.
Scarlett hopped off her stool. “We’ll go out,” she announced.
“You’ve just watched me make spaghetti sauce.”
She shrugged. “It’ll freeze. Come on, Amanda. Get your shoes on. We can go to that place on the corner. I like the sea bass there.”
Unbelievable.
In the office if I shouted “jump,” a cacophony of voices would ask how high. At home I got an eye roll and a shrug, if anyone heard me at all.
But, as was becoming my mantra, some battles weren’t worth fighting. I turned off the stove and grabbed my wallet and my keys and followed them out to the elevators.
Amanda linked her arm into mine and instantly I felt better. She was fourteen going on twenty-seven most of the time, but every now and then she was happy just to be my daughter.
We stepped into the elevator. “Tomorrow, can we go back to the store we tried last time?” Amanda asked.
“The one where I hated everything you tried on?” I wasn’t going to change my mind. Surely we weren’t going to have the exact same fight in front of Scarlett this time?
“I met a lady in the laundry room the other day. She gave me an idea about a dress I think you’d like, and I think I saw some that might be similar at that store,” Amanda said.
“The laundry room?” I asked. Why had Amanda been in the laundry room? I had a housekeeper to do the laundry.
“Yeah. The other day.”
“Why were you doing laundry?” I asked, glancing at Scarlett, who was staring at herself in the mirrored wall of the elevator and applying lip gloss.
“Sometimes girls just need to do laundry,” Amanda answered as if it were obvious.
I glanced at Scarlett, then back at Amanda, expecting one of them to provide a more detailed explanation.
The elevator stopped prematurely. The doors opened and Harper appeared. I watched in slow motion as she began to grin at my daughter. Her mouth froze when her eyes lifted to mine and then behind me to Scarlett.
I should have seen this coming.
In the same way there was a time lag between the impact of a bullet and the pain being recognized by the brain, I savored the few tenths of a second before I knew things would get messy. Harper looked beautiful. Her shiny chestnut hair was swept up into a ponytail that highlighted her long neck. Seeing her dressed in her workout clothes, I found it difficult to avoid touching her.
“Harper!” Amanda said.
I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. How did Amanda know—
“Dad, this is who I was telling you about.” She stared up at me, then clearly registering utter confusion on my face, she said, “In the laundry room.” She waved at Harper.
I glanced at Harper, who had yet to step inside the car. “There’s plenty of room,” Scarlett said as she pulled Amanda back, leaving more space next to me. “Hey, we met the other day,” Scarlett said.
What the fuck was going on? My separated worlds were literally and figuratively crashing into each other.
“Harper, this is my dad,” Amanda said. “Dad, this is Harper.”
I cleared my throat, hoping it would help my words come out in a normal pitch when I replied. “Yes, I know Harper. She works for me.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “She does? Well that makes sense. She’s smart. I told you she had some good ideas about dresses.”
The doors shut.
“You’re right. She is smart,” I replied, glancing at Harper, trying to catch her reaction. It wasn’t as if we had a personal relationship, but given what had happened between us, the fact I’d not told her about Amanda seemed wrong all of a sudden. Harper wore the same expression she had in the war room when I’d given people tasks for the JD Stanley research—blank and cold.
“This is perfect,” Amanda said. “Like Scarlett says, it’s fate.”
“You shouldn’t listen to everything your aunt says. Use the eighty-twenty rule. I’ve told you about this before.”
Scarlett punched me in the arm and I caught a reaction in Harper’s face that I couldn’t quite place. “Harper, this is my sister, Scarlett.”
Harper’s beautiful brown eyes softened slightly as she smiled. “Nice to see you,” she said.
“You poor thing, having to work with my brother. I expect he’s a total tyrant, isn’t he?”
Harper shrugged and Scarlett said, “She’s got you pegged, brother.”
“He’s not a tyrant. He lets me have anything I want,” Amanda said.
“I may not be a tyrant, Amanda, but neither am I an idiot who can be easily manipulated by flattery. I do not, and will not, let you go to your eighth grade dance dressed like a twenty-five-year-old.”
Amanda ignored me. “That’s why this is perfect.” She smiled and turned to Harper. “Are you busy tomorrow?”
Harper squinted, trying as hard as I was to keep up with my daughter’s train of thought.
“You don’t make her work on a Saturday, right, Dad?” She didn’t wait for my response before releasing my elbow and putting her hands together in a prayer position. “Pretty please, will you come shopping with us tomorrow? We can find one of those dresses we saw online. And I haven’t even begun to find shoes. Please? If I’m on my own with dad, he’ll have me go in sneakers—”
What was she asking? I needed to spend less time with Harper, keep my worlds more separate.
“Amanda, you can’t just impose on people like that,” I interrupted. “Harper doesn’t want to spend her free time schlepping around New York trying to find you a dress. And Scarlett’s coming with us.” Spending the day trying not to touch Harper was the last thing I had on my agenda for the weekend.
“I told you I can’t come tomorrow, didn’t I?” Scarlett asked. “I have to get the first train back because I’m taking Pablo to the vet.”