I shrugged and took a careful bite of my cone. I hadn’t wanted to do it while he was talking, like I would somehow have been interrupting. “I didn’t think there was anything you could do.”
“I could have yelled at him for a few hours, though,” my dad pointed out, and I smiled for what felt like the first time in a long time. “It might have made both of us feel better.” He pulled his ice cream cup closer to him but didn’t take another spoonful, just looked at me. “But I still wish you would have told me.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice quiet. I wished I could have told him too—wished he was someone that I could tell things to. But I had no idea how to say this out loud to him.
“So,” my dad said, pulling a pen from his shirt pocket and drawing one of the rainbow napkins toward him. “I thought we should devise a strategy.”
“A strategy,” I repeated.
“You were right,” he said, clearing his throat as he drew a series of diagonal lines on the border of the napkin—his version of doodling. “I haven’t been around as much as I should have. I’ve missed out on so much. And of course you’re upset about it. As you should be. . . .” He stopped and tapped the pen twice on the napkin, then looked up at me again. “So we have a problem.” He set down his pen and picked up his spoon again. “And I thought we could devise a plan for how to correct it.”
I felt my fingers twitching for the pen that was just out of reach, wishing I had a napkin of my own to figure this out on, or at least get my thoughts more in order. This was actually feeling familiar—it was how my dad had dealt with every problem he’d had to face in his career. He and Peter sat down and devised a strategy for whatever the problem was, whether it was to get a bill passed or push an agenda through, or to win his reelection. And if something wasn’t working, they came up with a new plan. It was like they didn’t allow for failure, only course correction. I just hadn’t known that it could be applied to things like this. “What were you thinking?”
“The way I see it,” my dad said, and it was like I could practically hear the relief in his voice as he started to write, like he was able to grab on to some hard-and-fast facts, “we’re dealing with a lack of quality time spent, right? So we’ll spend some more time together.”
“How?” I was noticing, to my surprise, how comfortable it felt to be able to discuss something like this, to break it down into manageable pieces.
“Well,” my dad said, writing on the napkin, “maybe we have dinner together every night.”
I drew back in my chair. “Every night?” I echoed, the words coming out strangled. Most of my friends had dinner with their families during the school year—and I was usually at Palmer’s house, having dinner with her family, at least once a week—but this was the summer. How was I supposed to go from hanging out at the beach to a party at the Orchard to pool-hopping if I had to be home in the middle of it to have dinner with my father? He looked up at me and I tried to hide what I was feeling, nodding quickly. “Well . . . um . . . sure. That sounds . . . fine.”
My dad shook his head. “Andie, we’re negotiating here,” he said with a half smile. “I know you don’t want to have dinner with me every night. I ask for more than I know I’ll get, you offer less than you know you’ll end up with. That’s how this works.”
I smiled as I flashed back to a memory of a rainy day years ago, on some senator’s campaign bus, my dad stumping for him, while he taught me (and three members of the press corps) how to play poker. “Okay,” I said, making my voice more serious, trying to take any tells out of it. “Dinner once a week.”
“Twice,” my dad countered, and I looked up at him and nodded. Twice a week sounded good. Twice a week sounded like something we could handle. “And we’ll talk,” he said, his gaze level with mine. “You can’t just sit there and be a moody teenager.”
“Ugh, when am I a moody teenager?” I asked with an exaggerated eye roll, and my dad smiled, like I’d been hoping he would.
“Seriously,” he said, tapping his pen twice on the table. “This won’t work unless you tell me things. Like that you’re going on dates with fantasy novelists.”
“Well, I didn’t know that either,” I pointed out, but my dad was still talking, overlapping with me.
“I need to make up for lost time. So you have to fill me in. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said, and my dad gave me a nod. Dinner twice a week. We could do that. “But you have to too,” I added, the words coming out fast. It was what I’d realized when I’d been lying upstairs in my room, going over all the things I’d shouted at my father—like how he didn’t know anything about me. But I had been retroactively embarrassed to realize I really didn’t know anything about him, either. Peter and the press corps and the random rotating interns knew much more than I did. “Tell me things about you. Okay?”
My dad nodded. “It’s a plan.”
We finished our ice cream after that and started to head to my dad’s car with every intention of going home. But Paradise Ice Cream was right next to Captain Pizza, and we both stopped in front of the door as the heavenly pizza smell drifted out. We looked at each other, and without discussing it, headed inside, where we ate slices of cheese (extra for me, regular for my dad) at the counter while the guy tossing the dough showed off for us, only occasionally losing control of the dough when a toss went wild.
When we were walking to his car in the fading daylight, I tried to pick the right moment, when he was distracted by pulling out the keys, to ask about the consequences for the thing that had started all of this—my staying out all night. “So we’re good with everything now, right?” I asked, adjusting my purse on my shoulder, attempting just the right amount of casual in my voice. “Like, with the whole thing from last night. We’re okay?”
“Oh, no,” my dad said, looking across the hood of the car at me. “You are so totally grounded. I thought you understood that. A month, at least.”
I started to protest, then bit my lip. This was really bad—that was most of the summer. But I also knew there was the chance he might increase it if I started complaining. “All right,” I said with a sigh. I looked over at my dad, who was shaking his head at me.
“Andie,” he said, sounding pained, “we just went over this. Am I supposed to negotiate with myself?”
“Right,” I said quickly, trying to regroup. “Um . . . two days.”
“Please,” my dad scoffed as he beeped open the car and got into the driver’s seat.
“Four days?” I tried, getting into the passenger seat and buckling my seat belt.
“A week,” my dad countered, and I nodded.
“But I get to go to work,” I said, “and the grounding doesn’t start at night until seven p.m.”
“Call it six and you’ve got a deal,” my dad said, starting the car. He glanced over at me. “I realize that things might have gotten a little lax with Joy,” he said, and I just nodded, deciding that he probably didn’t need to know I’d been without a curfew for years now. “But that’s going to have to change now.”
“There’s a new sheriff in town?” I asked. My dad smiled, and it hit me how rarely I’d seen it—not my dad’s candidate smile, but the one that was meant just for me.
“You got it,” he said. “And punctuality is going to be the coin of the realm.” My dad started to shift the car out of park, then put it back and looked over at me. “I don’t want you to think . . . ,” he started, talking mostly to the steering wheel. “I miss her so much, you know,” he said, his voice wobbling. “Every day. Even now I’m always thinking about things I want to tell her. Stuff she’d find funny. I didn’t even know what I was doing that first year. It was like someone had turned off the sun. The center of everything was suddenly gone.”
“Me too,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, but loud enough for just the two of us in the quiet of the car.
My dad looked over at me and gave me a small smile. I gave him one back, and we stayed that way for just a moment befor
e he looked ahead, shifted the car out of park, and drove us home.
PALMER
Andie is all okay? Why was your dad at the diner?
Tom hasn’t stopped talking about him,
which is really fun for me.
BRI
Your DAD showed up at the diner?! Wha?
PALMER
Is your car still there? WHAT’S GOING ON?!?
TOBY
ME
All okay! Long story. But will explain.
Oh, also, I’m grounded for a week.
PALMER
Wait, what?
BRI
What’d you do?
PALMER
But why is your car still at the diner?
BRI
Want me to hot-wire it?
ME
You know how to do that?
TOBY
BRI
I MIGHT be able to do it, Toby. You don’t know.
I just need a screwdriver, right?
I’ve seen enough movies that I’m pretty sure I could figure it out.
ME
Um, figure it out on McQueen first
BRI
Can you video chat later? We need explanations
PALMER
Seconded
TOBY
ME
Yes, DEFINITELY. I’ll text you guys soon.
I had just set my phone down on the kitchen counter when the doorbell rang. I smiled, wondering if it was Palmer. She’d sometimes drop by when she didn’t think I was texting back fast enough. I was headed toward the foyer when I heard the door open on its squeaky hinges and realized my dad must have beaten me there.
“Andie?” my dad called, and I increased my pace, suddenly hoping that Bri hadn’t gone ahead and tried to hot-wire my car.
“Is it Palmer?” I asked as I rounded the corner.
“Your—um—friend is here,” my dad called, and I stopped short. Clark was standing there, carrying a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of flowers and what looked like a CD.
“Hi,” I said, confused, trying to figure out what he was doing there, until it hit me all at once. We were supposed to have a date tonight. We were supposed to have a date now. With everything that had happened today, I had totally forgotten. “Oh,” I said, then stopped when I realized I had no idea what to say after that.
“It’s nice to see you again, sir,” Clark said, holding out his hand to my dad, sounding nervous, talking much faster than he usually did. “I was just reading up on the education initiative you spearheaded last year. It sounded fascinating.”
My dad’s eyebrows went up. “Were you really?”
“I surely was,” Clark said, and I could clearly tell how much preparation he’d done—which was making me feel even worse that I had forgotten our date.
“Well,” my dad said, raising an eyebrow at Clark. “That’s impressive. We’ll have to discuss it in depth sometime.”
Clark smiled, but I noticed he had turned a shade paler. I shot my dad a quick look, and he nodded. “I’ll give you guys a minute,” he said, heading back toward the kitchen—but not closing the door all the way, I noticed.
I looked at Clark, who was wearing another button-down shirt, green this time, and I could still see the comb tracks in his hair. I looked down at myself—I was wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt, nothing hugely offensive, but not what I would ever wear on a date. “So,” I said, taking a step nearer to him. As I did, I remembered this morning, the gentle way he’d brushed my hair back, how close together we’d been. I blinked and made myself focus on the present moment and how much I’d managed to mess it up. “Okay. Here’s the thing. Today’s been kind of crazy.”
Clark nodded, but his eyes traveled to my bare feet, and I saw his smile falter. He looked down at the flowers he was holding, and I saw some of the happiness in his expression fade, replaced by embarrassment. “Oh,” he said. “Did you not want to—”
“No,” I said immediately. “It’s just . . .” I tried, very quickly, to think of the best way to spin this, then gave up and realized I should probably go with the truth. “It turns out I sort of didn’t tell my dad I wasn’t coming home last night.”
Clark’s eyebrows flew up. “Uh-oh.”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing back toward the kitchen. “So I’m kind of grounded.” I was embarrassed even to say it. Even though he was only two years older than me, Clark was basically an adult—living on his own, with the freedom to do whatever he wanted. Nobody was grounding him or telling him what to do. This must have seemed beyond juvenile to him. “I’m really sorry about this.”
Clark shrugged. “It’s fine,” he said, giving me a smile. “I mean, I’m disappointed, but I understand. We’ll do it another time. When you’re not grounded. When will that be?”
I felt relief spread through me—until he’d said it, I hadn’t realized how much I’d been preparing myself to hear him say something polite but vague, which I would have known meant we wouldn’t be having another date. “A week,” I said with a shrug, like this was nothing. “Not so long.”
Clark glanced down at the flowers in his hand, then held them out to me. “These are for you. Sorry if it’s totally cliché to bring them.”
I looked down into the bouquet, and it was a moment before I could answer him. “No,” I said. A guy had never brought me flowers before—unless it was my prom corsage, which I didn’t think counted, since I’d had to order it myself and give explicit instructions for where and when to pick it up. These were beautiful—all purples and pinks and the occasional daisy. “I mean, it’s . . . really nice.” I looked down into the flowers for one moment more, not wanting him to see just how touched I was by them.
“And,” Clark said, presenting the CD to me with a flourish. “This is more of a joke than anything else. You don’t have to listen to it.”
“What is it?” I asked, taking it from him, then recognizing the familiar font on the cover. This one showed a crow and a flaming sword. A Murder of Crows, the title read. By C. B. McCallister.
“I know you don’t read,” Clark said, and I raised an eyebrow at him. “But I thought maybe you wouldn’t have anything against listening. It’s the audiobook, so it’s like someone telling you a story.”
“Ha ha,” I said, turning it over and reading the back. I felt my eyes widen. “This takes nineteen hours?”
“Yeah,” Clark said, not seeming fazed by this. “And those are just the first two discs. There’s like twelve, but I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Andie,” my dad called. I looked up from the CD to see him hovering in the doorway, clearly not sure what he should do—or what I wanted him to do.
“Clark came by to pick me up for a date,” I said, trying to get this over with quickly. “Because I didn’t know I’d be grounded.”
“Ah,” my dad said, his eyes traveling down to the flowers in my hand.
“Sir, I just want you to know Andie was amazing last night,” Clark said, giving me a smile, as I felt myself freeze.
“Last night?” my dad asked. His voice was still totally calm, but this was the way he sounded in debates when he realized his opponent had just made a mistake.
“Right,” I said quickly, trying to jump in before this got any worse. “So here’s the thing—”
“When Andie helped out with my dog who was sick,” Clark went on. It took all my willpower not to bury my head in my hands. “She was great.” He looked from me to my dad, finally seeming to get that something was going on. “Was that a secret?” he whispered to me.
“I didn’t know you stayed the night at Clark’s,” my dad said.
“I told you it was for work,” I said, realizing as I did that I should have probably just told him the truth right from the beginning, as opposed to hoping he would never find out.
“It was totally professional,” Clark said, jumping in. “Nothing else . . . I mean that wasn’t at all what . . .”
“Nothing happened.” I looked down at my feet, n
ot quite able to believe that I was having to say this, to my dad, in front of Clark. “I just went over there to take care of the dog, and then we took shifts staying up to make sure he was okay.”
My dad looked at me evenly, his eyes narrowed slightly, like he was trying to see if I was telling the truth. After a moment he must have decided I was, because he nodded slightly. “Okay,” he said.
“Okay?” I’d expected a lot worse. I’d expected him to grill Clark and me for details, trying to find discrepancies in our stories, the way he had when he was a lawyer. And the truth was, something had happened last night—nothing that I was even sure I’d be able to articulate to him, but something nonetheless.
“I believe you.” I’d just started to relax when he went on. “But your grounding just got extended. It’s ten days now.”
Remembering our earlier conversation and hoping I’d get points for trying, I ventured, “Eight?”
“Know when to fold ’em, kid.” My dad shook his head and started to head back to the kitchen. “You can walk him to his car.”
“Uh,” Clark said. “That’s great, except my car is outside that gate thing.”
“Why?” my dad asked, sounding baffled.
“Well, there was nobody inside the gatehouse,” Clark explained. “There was a note saying they’d be back in five. So I just parked outside and walked. I didn’t want to be late.” He gave me a tiny smile, and I felt the forgetting-our-date guilt hit me once again.
My dad shook his head. “Andie, remind me to have a conversation with the Neighborhood Council about what passes for security around here.”
I nodded quickly. “Totally. So . . . can I still walk Clark to his car?”
My dad looked between me and Clark for what felt like an eternity before he finally nodded. “Fine,” he said. He raised his eyebrows at me. “No driving anywhere. And be back before seven a.m. this time.”