Carolyne Aarsen - Unexpected Father

Again Evangeline could only stare at Mr. Norquest, trying to follow where he led.

He stared back as he worked his cowboy hat around in his hands.

“He said something about an apartment in the back of the store I could stay in until then,” Denny continued.

“The...the apartment here?” She poked her thumb over her shoulder, indicating the living quarters across the hall attached to the back of the store.

The living quarters where her father always stayed when he was between jobs and between schemes. Trouble was, there was always another job. Always another scheme, so he never stayed long.

“Yeah. Your dad said I could stay here until I can move onto the ranch.”

“Move...move onto the ranch?”

Her mind whirled as she fought to put his words into a place that made sense, trying to catch up to what he was saying. Now she knew what Alice felt like tumbling down the rabbit hole. “I thought after the renters moved out of the ranch house my dad would be—” She stopped herself from finishing that sentence.

Moving back onto the ranch. Just as he had said he would in the text he had sent her.

Evangeline pressed her hands on the sales counter, as if anchoring herself while she stumbled through this confusing conversation.

“He didn’t say anything about moving onto the ranch. He’s leasing it to me. For a five-year term.” Denny’s deep voice held an edge of impatience. “He said that the other renter’s lease on the pasture was up and he wasn’t renewing it.”

The previous lessee wasn’t renewing the lease because Evangeline’s father had promised when he was finished his current job he would come back to Hartley Creek, sign the store over to her and settle on the ranch.

Make a home here. Be the father he hadn’t been since her mother had died when Evangeline was eight.

The close call he’d had with his truck a couple of months ago was a wake-up for him to change his life. To find a meaning and purpose.

When he’d told Evangeline this, she had allowed a faint hope to bloom. The hope that he would finally be the father he hadn’t been for most of her life. And that he would complete the unfinished deal on the bookstore she’d been managing for him for the past nine years. The bookstore he kept promising he would sign over to her.

“Did he say when he was coming back?”

Denny shrugged, slapping his hat against his thigh as if impatient to be done with her and her questions about her father.

“Andy said he would call and that in the meantime you have power of attorney over the ranch and that you would take care of things for me.”

Evangeline felt the last faint hope die with Denny’s decisive words. Her father probably wasn’t coming at all. She might never own this bookstore or have a father who wanted to be with her.

“Every time,” Evangeline muttered, her hands curling into fists. “He gets me every time.”

Then, to her dismay, her voice broke and she felt her eyes prickle. She turned aside, grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes, hoping, praying, she didn’t smear her mascara, to boot.

She stared at the door at the back of the store leading to her father’s apartment, swallowing a stew of anger and grief at the timing of her father’s news. It didn’t help that this came on the heels of yet another disappointment.

Two months ago her boyfriend of two years, Tyler, had said he needed a break, promising Evangeline they would get back together again. A few days later Evangeline had seen him driving his bright red sports car with a young blonde cozied up at his side, her arms wrapped around him.

Some break.

And now it looked as though her father was backing out on his promise, too.

Then, thankfully, the door bells rang, announcing the presence of a customer as Larissa Beck entered the store. Finally an excuse to get away from this situation for a few minutes. Catch her breath. Center herself.

As Evangeline excused herself, she stifled her disappointment to the blow her father had dealt her yet one more time.

When would she learn?

Evangeline had grown up on the ranch Denny was talking about. The best time of her life, spent with her mother and her father and wide-open spaces. Then, when she’d turned eight, her mother had died and her world shifted and changed. She and her father had stayed at the ranch for a month and then he got a job driving a truck. He’d made arrangements to lease out the ranch and taken Evangeline to the bookstore where her mother’s sister lived. Auntie Josie had agreed to take care of her for a while, and he had promised to be back once the job was done.

And this became his constant refrain each time he blew back into town with the spring thaw and his pockets full of cash. Each time he came back he made Evangeline think he was staying put. But he’d grow restless and his eyes would glaze over whenever she’d made plans for the store. Two or three or sometimes four months later he’d head out again, looking for another adventure, another challenge. Another business to invest in.

Now this...truck driver slash cowboy, a man she didn’t even know, had delivered another blow to her future plans with no more emotion than an announcer delivering the weather forecast.

And her father hadn’t even had the decency to give her the news face-to-face.

“So who’s the rough, tough character by the till?” Larissa asked when Evangeline joined her.

“Friend of my father’s. No one important.”

When Larissa lifted one eyebrow at her dismissive tone, Evangeline felt a nudge of regret. It wasn’t Denny’s fault he had come as her absent father’s mouthpiece.

Didn’t mean she had to like it, though.

* * *

No one important.

Well, that was probably true, Denny thought, dropping his hat onto his head, watching Evangeline as she walked—no, swayed—toward the customer. Though Andy had showed him a picture of his daughter, Denny hadn’t been prepared for her effect in real life.

Tall, willowy, her long dark hair spilling in curly waves over her shoulders. Her tilted smile and the way her green eyes curved up at the corners combined to make her look as if she held some curious secret that would make you laugh if she told you.

“Cute as a button,” her father had described her. His own beautiful little princess tucked away in her own little tower. Andy had told Denny that she lived above the bookstore.

Denny glanced around the building with its old-fashioned high ceilings and heavy-beamed wood trim. The large front windows flanking the door spilled light into a store chock-full of bookshelves weighted with paperbacks, hardcovers, picture books, kids’ books....

He was never much of a reader and it made him nervous to see so many books packed into one place. But he could picture Evangeline here. She looked exactly like the princess Andy always talked about with such fondness.

Evangeline laughed at something her customer said as they walked to the cash register, the customer’s arms full of books.

“You’ll like this book, Larissa,” Evangeline said as she rang up her customer’s purchases. “I’m thinking of suggesting it for book club. You coming?”

“I heard Captain Jeff Deptuck is coming now,” the woman named Larissa said with a teasing tone. “Anything happening there? He is a fireman, after all. Perfect hero material.”

“Oh, please. I’m still getting over Tyler.”

The woman waved that off. “Tyler is an idiot. You and he were a waste of time.”

“Besides, Jeff has his eye on Angie, another new member of the book club,” Evangeline returned.

Denny smiled at the interaction. Though he didn’t have a clue who they were talking about, the tone and subject of the conversation was familiar. How often had he heard his three younger sisters teasing each other about boys they liked or didn’t like? For a moment he missed the three of them, wished they could be back on the home place again. Him, his three goofy sisters, his foster brother and his uncle.