“You know how they get if lunch hay is late.”
Mona throws Darby a conspiratorial smile before her attention returns to me. “We’ll be fine. Don’t you fret.”
I pull into the parking lot of my father’s station house a little before noon. Black and whites are parked side by side, next to unmarked sedans. A man, tall and lanky, with the same shoulders I see every time I look in the mirror, exits the glass double doors. His silverish blond head tipped down. His hands stuffed into the front pockets of his dark navy suit pants. His full mouth set in a grim, straight line.
It’s an expression I know all too well, the same one I would see across the small round kitchen table on the rare occasion we had dinner together when I was growing up. He’s in deep thought over a case, unavailable to anything or anyone else.
I don’t speak to my father often. If you have a parent obsessed with their career, you understand why. Because even when we speak, he’s not really present. His mind is held hostage by whatever case he’s working on. It gets tiresome having to keep repeating the last sentence because he isn’t really paying attention.
Then again, do I have a right to complain? Not really. He was warm and affectionate when he was around and always gave me anything in his power to give.
He gave me my first car, a used Jetta I drove until the wheels fell off. He paid for my education so I could become a paramedic. We didn’t have a house; we lived in a two bedroom apartment. But I didn’t have any financial debt coming out of school. That’s a lot more than most people have.
“Dad,” I say before he runs me over.
I used to joke that he’d walk into oncoming traffic one day. I never realized how much truth to it there was.
His head snaps up, and when his warm green eyes meet mine, he smiles.
“You’re here already?” he says clearly surprised to find me standing before him.
“We said noon.”
Expression confused, he takes his phone out of the inside pocket of his jacket and checks the time. Five to twelve. “Wow. Where does the time go?”
My back stiffens. It’s the same uncomfortable feeling I always get when he acts forgetful. Like I’m imposing. Taking up too much of his time. “Can you still do lunch or––”
“Of course,” he says, jumping in before he sees the disappointed look on my face, the same one I used to wear on the regular when I was a kid. “C’mon. I haven’t seen you in weeks––”
“Months,” I’m quick to correct him.
“Months,” an embarrassed smile lifts his lips but not his eyes, “Give your old man a hug.” He opens his arms and I walk straight into them.
Standing on my toes, I wrap my arms around him and can’t help but notice that he’s thinner than last time I saw him. “You lost weight.”
“You know how it is––I forget to eat sometimes.”
We’re so much alike in so many ways. I inherited my mother’s beauty mark and her dark blue eyes. But my work ethic, my blonde hair, and the strong vein of responsibility coursing through me comes from Alan Baldwin.
We walk to our usual hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant around the corner from where he works. The food is top notch and we spend less time traveling and more time talking. Inside, he waves at a table full of cops he knows.
“Hey, Cap, who’s your lovely lunch companion?” a young attractive guy at a table of four asks, all of them uniformed LAPD.
“My daughter, you filthy animals. Behave yourselves,” he jokes back.
The guys laugh.
“Blue, meet Hernandez and the guys,” Dad says.
“Hi.” I wave.
“Hi, Blue,” says Hernandez, the first to speak.
“Nice to meet ya,” the rest answer as well.
“Are you single?” one shouts and they all laugh again.
Dad greets the owner of the restaurant before we order our food and then grab a table in the back.
“How’s the rescue business going?”
He jests, but he’s been supportive of it. Not once has he asked or pushed me to go back to working as a paramedic.
Dad was a rock after the attack. Always by my side when I needed him. Always a steady calm presence. The opposite of Jaime who was constantly wearing an expression of dread and concern and even had trouble making eye contact at times. Not exactly reassuring when you’re laid up in bed and everyone refuses to give you a mirror.
“Good… good.”
“And the movie star? He giving you any trouble?”
I called my father before I agreed to Aidan’s terms. I needed someone to give me sound advice regarding a “repeat offender.” Little did I know what I was dealing with. Frankly, it turned out better than I could’ve anticipated. Even with our bumpy start.
I think of all the ups and downs, all the drama since the Hughes brothers came to live with us, and I smile. It hasn’t been boring, that’s for sure.
A wave of sadness comes over me when I think of them leaving. It’s still not for a while, but I’m going to miss them all the same.
“Nothing serious… I kind of like him actually. He’s a good guy who lost his way.”
My dad nods. Then I recall why I needed to see him.
“Mom’s in L.A.”
He surprises me by nodding again. “I know.”
“You do?”
“I saw her.”
“You did?” I repeat, flat-out shocked at this point. He nods. “She didn’t tell me… that she was going to see you.”
He takes a bite of his steak taco. “She said she tried to call you about ten times but her calls kept getting pushed to voicemail.”
“Okay, yes, true. But––”
“We’re getting a divorce,” he continues nonchalantly. Like he hasn’t just dropped a stink bomb on me.
Something inside me comes loose. I don’t know why. They haven’t been living as a married couple for over two decades. I can barely remember seeing them together. And yet I’m almost on the verge of tears.
“Daddy…” I haven’t called him that in a decade.
She couldn’t bother to mention to me that this was the reason for her visit? Athena has done it again, pulled the rug out from under me. And I’m not handling it any better than I did when I was six, twelve, or twenty. I’m back to square one.
“Yes, Bluebell?”
“Why’d you marry her? You two couldn’t be more opposite if you tried. What made you think you could make it work?”
I have to know. Something dark is lurking inside of me—the fear that maybe I’m more like her than I want to accept. That my judgement is shaky at best. That I pick the wrong men.
I’ve never asked my father a personal question before. We just don’t have that kind of relationship. There was a period when I was a teenager that I got a little bold and pushed, but he always shut me down. “Loose lips sink ships,” was the answer he always gave me.
“When you know you know,” he says dismissively.
“That’s not an explanation.”
He takes a deep breath and looks off for a moment, his suntanned brow bunching together making him look older than his age. “Your mother is the most exciting woman I’ve ever met. Nobody else has ever come close.”