Janice Kay - The Daughter Merger

Thank heavens, she didn’t seem to notice his momentary reverie…oh, hell, call a spade a spade—what he’d felt was yet another spark of sexual awareness that was, to put it mildly, highly inconvenient. For crying out loud, this situation was complicated enough without her becoming self-conscious around him, or him having to stonewall yet another emotion. As it was, he couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t developed an ulcer.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Grace suggested, smiling at him. “Pick any place.”

The talking-to he’d just given himself didn’t keep him from noticing how pretty that smile made a face he’d labeled plain.

His daughter’s timing was, as always, impeccable. She chose that moment to slouch into the dining room, Linnet at her heels. She had a gift for killing any good mood of his.

“Oh, girls.” Grace bustled from the kitchen. “I hope you’re hungry. I made tons. Sit, sit!”

“Hello, Claire,” David said quietly.

She rolled her eyes and dropped into a chair.

Grace cleared her throat meaningfully.

Claire stirred, shot him a resentful look and mumbled reluctantly, “Hi.” And I wish it was goodbye, her tone seemed to say.

He was too surprised by getting a semi-civil response to take offense.

“Well…” Grace smiled at them all from her place at one end of the table. “Linnet, why don’t you start the pasta? Claire, would you like garlic bread?”

David’s sense of unreality grew as the meal progressed. An outsider would guess this to be a family—Mom, Pop and kids. Grace, with help from her daughter, maintained a cheerful stream of chatter that disguised Claire’s sullenness and David’s monosyllabic responses to his hostess’s occasional questions. He had the queasy feeling that he was delicately balanced over a deadly precipice.

Claire had come to the table. She was keeping her head bent, but she was eating. She even laughed once at something her friend said. She wasn’t refusing to break bread with her father. She wasn’t shooting him dagger looks. She was following Grace Blanchet’s first rule of basic civility.

It stung, of course, to know that she was trying this hard only because she was so desperate to stay here, to not have to go home with him.

But she was trying.

And David knew damn well it would take only the smallest misstep on his part to fuel one of her explosions. So he couldn’t make that misstep. Unfortunately, his care made him a lousy guest. Not by glance or tone did Grace acknowledge that this meal was anything but a pleasure.

The girls were done and looking restless when she said, as casually as when she asked him to summon their daughters to dinner, “David, Linnet’s thinking about trying out for the middle school play on Wednesday. Claire is considering the idea, too. At the very least, she wants to stay and watch the audition. Unfortunately, I have a meeting that might run until almost six. PTA board. We’re planning the autumn dance and carnival. I hate to have the girls hanging around waiting too long. Any chance you could pick them up?”

“A play?” He couldn’t help sounding startled. Claire? On stage? And taking direction from someone in a position of authority?

“I told you he’d be busy,” Claire said, not looking at him.

“No. Of course I can pick them up.” He ventured a toe in the waters, speaking directly to his daughter. “I just didn’t realize you were interested in theater, Claire.”

She slouched lower in the chair and twirled her hair on her finger. “I don’t know if I am.”

Grace was looking at him with obvious appeal. Persuade her, those extraordinary eyes begged. Be a father.

What a joke. If he said a single damned word in favor of the idea, Claire would…

Whoa.

He gave his idea a lightning assessment and deemed it sound.

“It would mean a lot of reading and memorization.” He sipped his wine, shrugged. “And it’s no fun to try out and not get a part.”

Claire’s eyes flashed at him. “That figures! You’re so sure I wouldn’t!”

“I didn’t say that,” he argued mildly. “What’s the play?”

“Much Ado About Nothing,” Linnet contributed, her anxiety about the new-sprung tension evident in the way she hastened to fill the silence. “You know. Shakespeare.”

Grace made a sound that might have been a suppressed laugh, buried in her napkin.

“I know that one,” David said, straight-faced. “Beatrice and Benedick. The wimpy Hero and the jerk…what’s his name?”

“Claudio,” Linnet supplied. She frowned. “You think Hero is a wimp?”

He saw the error of his ways. Hero was undoubtedly her dream part, and with reason: she was no Beatrice. “Actually,” he said hastily, “she is probably a realistic product of her time and class. She didn’t have much choice but to marry the man her father chose.” Not an idea Claire would embrace, he realized belatedly, and not a good idea as a topic at this dinner table. Turning to her, he asked, “Which part were you thinking about?”

Her chin shot up. “Beatrice.”

She had the fire, in a preteen sort of way. He found that he badly wanted her to go out on a limb and try for this.

He nodded, managing to make his expression subtly doubtful.

Fury on her face, Claire said to Grace, “I am going to try out.”

“Oh, good.” She smiled warmly. “Darn. I wish I could see the audition. Except Linnet would be embarrassed if her mom was there. For which I don’t blame her. Listen, do you want me to be an audience tonight when you practice?”

“Yeah, cool,” they said almost in tandem.

“Then I’ll clean the kitchen if you two want to go take your showers and get ready for school.”

Silverware clattered and chairs scraped on the wood floor as they raced for the door. David watched them go, then braced himself yet again. He hated this feeling, as though he was a high school kid in trouble waiting outside the principal’s office. He resented the fact that this woman, a stranger, was able to sit in judgment of him.

Grace said not a word until the thunder on the stairs was followed by a slammed door upstairs. Then she grinned. “Well done.”

Some of the tension in his neck eased. “I expected you to chew me out.”

“It’s hardly my place.” She laughed. “Well, maybe I would, in my bossy way. But I could tell what you were doing. You won’t get away with it very many times. She’ll start to catch on.”

David grimaced. “I just hope she actually gets a part. If not Beatrice, at least the maid who plays foot-sie with the scumbag. What’s his name. Don John.” He got back to the point. “Her ego is delicate right now, to put it mildly.”

“Mmm,” she agreed. “I hope they both get parts. They’re getting along great right now, and we don’t need any jealousy to interfere.”

Another horrifying possibility.

Slowly he said, “Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“Heavens, no!” Grace stood. “Would you like a cup of coffee? I’ll just clear the table and—”

“I’ll help.”

Against her protests, he gathered dishes and even insisted on rinsing them and loading the dishwasher while she put leftovers in the refrigerator and got out cream and sugar for the coffee.

There seemed to be no polite way to excuse himself although he guessed she was no more excited about a further tête-à-tête than he was.

He felt raw in her presence. She knew more about him than anyone but his closest friend. Not many people knew even the basic facts: that his ex-wife was an alcoholic, that he’d sloughed off responsibility for his daughter, that she’d come to live with him because she was in trouble at school. Never mind that she had run away three times.