“This is wrong,” I said as Robyn and I got out of our SUVs. We’d parked them on the main square outside the Gloaming after the driving lesson. “I’m supposed to be working.”
“And you will work,” Robyn promised. “But first, you’re having coffee and breakfast with your sister.” Suddenly, she frowned as we walked down Castle Street. “Is that … how can—Dad?” she called out.
Following her gaze, I saw Mac walking down the street toward us. “I thought he was on a trip.”
“I thought so too.” She picked up the pace and I hurried alongside her.
A woman ahead of us passed Mac with her stroller and glanced over her shoulder at him, obviously checking him out.
I chuckled, and Robyn groaned. “Seriously. It’s everywhere we go. Women fall all over him.”
“You have a hot dad.”
“Don’t say that.” She shoved me playfully. “He’s like a stepfather to you. That’s like me saying Seth is hot.”
“My father is very handsome,” I replied defensively.
“Yeah, he is. But there’s a difference between noting a father or father figure’s handsomeness versus his hotness.”
I nodded in agreement. “I won’t say Mac is hot again.”
“Please don’t.” Mac drew to a halt before us, having overheard that last sentence. He gave me a teasing look. “It’s weird for me.”
Face burning with embarrassment, I shrugged it off. “Hey, it’s weird for me too.”
“Speaking of weird”—Robyn rescued me by changing the subject—“aren’t you supposed to be in California?”
“I got to the airport, and they told me my flight out of London was canceled. Hurricane over the Atlantic. Had to reschedule the meeting for next week.”
“Oh. Well, what are you up to right now?”
“I was going to grab coffee and a pastry from the bakery. You ladies?”
“It’s Regan’s first day as Thane’s nanny.”
Mac raised an eyebrow as he looked at me with those penetrating hazel eyes. Robyn’s eye color was an exact match to her father’s, and today the sunlight made his (and Robyn’s) a forest green. “You’re looking after Eils and Lew?”
“Yeah.” I heard the slight note of concern in his voice and assured him, “I’m a good nanny.”
“So I’ve heard,” he finally said after a long moment studying me. “Congratulations on the new job.”
“Dad, why don’t you have breakfast with us?” Robyn asked.
“I really should get back,” I argued, guilty about slacking on my first day on the job.
“The housework will still be there when you get back.”
“Robbie—”
“Robbie’s right.” Mac stepped toward us and then gestured across the street to a café. “No harm in having some breakfast first. And you and I haven’t had a chance to really talk.”
I wasn’t sure that was a bad thing. I still didn’t know how I felt about Mac, even if he and Robyn were on great terms.
Still, for my sister’s sake, I followed them into the café. And Robyn was right. The owner, Flora, an attractive woman around Mac’s age, flirted ferociously with him while we ordered. As soon as she left the table, Robyn shook her head at her dad.
He shrugged as if to say “what?”
“She is a married woman,” Robyn teased.
Mac grinned a wicked smile I’m sure devastated women of all ages. “There’s nothing wrong with a little harmless flirting.”
“Just not in front of me again.”
Eyes gleaming with amusement, Mac shook his head and turned to me. “So, how are you liking Ardnoch so far?”
We exchanged small talk while we waited for our breakfast to arrive. As soon as I’d put my fork into some scrambled egg, my straightforward sister said, “Let’s cut to the chase. Regan is out of the loop on a few things about you and me.” She gestured between her and Mac. “And I want it all cleared up.”
Mac swallowed a bite of his breakfast roll and nodded in agreement.
They both looked at me. I asked, “You mentioned something about Mom and Mac?”
Robyn exchanged another look with her dad and then exhaled slowly. “Mac wrote to me for years, tons of letters. He sent gifts—not just to me but to you too—and she sent them all back to him without telling me.”
I stared at her in disbelief. Since the age of fourteen, my sister believed Mac had completely abandoned her. While she hid her pain from the rest of the world, I was the one whose arms she cried in when his rejection cut her to the soul. And now she was telling me he’d kept in touch, and Mom had hidden it.
“No.” I shook my head, sitting back in my chair, the food in front of me at once unappealing.
“I have the letters. The gifts.” Robyn gave her father a melancholy smile. “Mac kept them.”
Seeing the pain flicker in Mac’s eyes, anguish he didn’t hide, my heart lurched. “Please tell me this isn’t true.”
Robyn grimaced. “Mom admitted to it. When I came back to Boston, we talked it all out, and she apologized.”
“And you forgave her?” I huffed.
“I’m trying to, yeah.” My sister reached for my hand. “I don’t want you to hold this against her. She … Mom is not a bad person. She’s just … she just thought she was protecting me.”
“No, she was protecting herself.”
“Ree—”
“I can’t believe this.” I shoved my plate away. “All that time that was lost between you and Mac because she lied.”
“You have to remember,” Mac spoke now, “I hurt Stacey deeply when we broke up. She didn’t want it to end. And when I left for California, she saw it as me abandoning Robyn too. Yes, she made it impossible for me to see my daughter. Yes, she lied and hid my correspondence. But she genuinely believed she was protecting Robyn.”
“That’s the thing about Mom,” I seethed. “She doesn’t see the world and the people in it as they really are. She sees them as how she’s made up in her mind she wants them to be.”
“Don’t we all?” Robyn asked softly.
“No. The rest of us judge people based on their actions, not on how we perceive those actions based on our own fucked-up insecurities. Pardon my French.”
“This is about more than just Stacey keeping letters,” Mac deduced, watching me carefully.
“It is,” I agreed. “It’s about her projecting this idea of who I am onto me since before I was even allowed to develop into the person I wanted to be. Robyn was the capable, responsible one. I was the silly, frivolous, wild child. And that’s not me. And it wasn’t Robyn’s place to parent me, but Mom put that on her too. It’s like she turned me into a problem that didn’t even exist but then made sure she had someone else to blame when I messed up. That’s wrong.”
“You need to talk to your mother,” Mac advised sternly. “You can’t go around with this resentment hanging over you, Regan.”