Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(44)

“No, it wasn’t,” I confirmed.

Dad shot me a look I also remembered very well.

I was annoying him.

He buried that and declared, “It means a lot you agreed to tonight. I’ve missed you. Your grandmother really misses you. Your grandfather is in a bad place, and we all want to mend the rift in this family.”

I took a sip of my wine, put the glass back to the table, began twisting it back and forth again, then asked, “What did you miss about us, Dad?”

His lips thinned before he pointed out, “Being like that won’t help, Hellen.”

“I’m sorry, but I feel the question is valid.”

“You’re my daughters,” he returned. “I haven’t seen you in years. I wasn’t invited to your graduations—”

“Because you told me, and I quote, ‘A woman of your intellect should be an attorney, you need to study pre-law. I’m not going to throw money away on you studying something nebulous, like business.’ And then you threw not one cent away on me studying business.”

So, maybe that wasn’t a direct quote. But it was the gist.

His gaze moved over me, and he forced out, “I see I was wrong about that. You look like you’re doing well. I hope you are. Though your mother says you’re seeing a lawyer?”

Not, I’ve missed out, tell me, what do you do for a living?

Not, Do you enjoy what you do? And by the way, what is it that you do?

But, You’re seeing a lawyer?

“He didn’t pay for my blouse, or my earrings, or my haircut, or my Tom Ford foundation. I did. And we broke up.”

The busboy came with the bread right before the server showed with Dad’s drink.

They left and Dad looked at me. “Your attitude is not enhancing our dinner.”

Liane squeezed my thigh under the table.

I shut up.

“Tell us about Granddad,” Liane urged.

Dad was returning his glass to the table after drinking from it.

“He’s not in good shape.”

“Is he ill?” I asked.

“He’s old. He didn’t take care of himself. He’s reaping those rewards.”

Well then.

That was the very definition of encapsulation.

“Uh, Mom said that things were pretty bad,” Li noted.

“He’s got diabetes. He didn’t manage that, so his feet are messed up. He has to go for dialysis. He’s got arthritis, so he’s constantly in pain. He’s recently stopped eating most everything, so he’s very thin. I think he’s just done. If I were him, I would be too.”

“Do you want us to go see him?” Li asked.

Dad leveled his gaze on her. “Since you’re his granddaughters, and you cut him out like you did me, before he dies, that would be nice.”

Even though that was a dickish response, I decided to make an effort.

I mean, he’d never showed he cared a lot for his father, but it was his father, and it sounded like Granddad wasn’t long for this world.

“Maybe we three should take this time to try to understand where we’ve been, and where we wish to be as a family,” I suggested.

“It would have been nice if you started with that,” Dad admonished.

Okay, I was done with my effort.

“It would have been nice if you started with telling us you missed us, we looked beautiful, healthy, and you were so glad to see that. Then you could have moved on to sharing you were delighted and so very relieved we agreed to sit down to break bread with you. After that, you could have asked us to catch you up with our lives. Who are we now? What do we do? Are we happy? Then you could have shared about your own. Instead, you asked if we knew what we were going to eat, made sure you’d ordered your drink and appetizer, informed our server she’d made the unforgiveable mistake of failing with the bread basket delivery, and made Li think she was something less because she didn’t put on mascara. In other words, par for the course of my twenty-three years with you.”

I’d hit a nerve with all of that, I was oh-so-unsurprised to see.

“You would think you’d sit across from me in a very nice restaurant, drinking a glass of wine I will eventually be paying for, eating an excellent meal I’ll also be paying for, and showing your father some goddamned respect for once,” he retorted.

But it felt like a dozen arrows shot through me.

Because…because…

Because I’d just realized he was the reason I was like I was with money.

The part about wanting a lot of it, but also the part about being mildly obsessed with it.

Dad was a workaholic.

And so was I (maybe?).

“It isn’t about who’s buying the meal, Dad,” Li said tersely. “Not everything comes down to money.”

“It’s always about that. How many times did your mother threaten not to let you come for visitations because she wanted money?” he demanded.

Not this again.

And yes, it was again. He always brought this up.

“Because you were making a hundred and sixty thousand a year, and she was making thirty-five, and you didn’t pay child support,” I returned. “She didn’t want money. She was demanding you pay what the court ordered. Oh, and then there were all of our games and concerts you didn’t show up for, she would get ticked about that. Oh, and of course all the visitations you couldn’t make because you were away on business. And I remember a lot of those, Dad. You were gone more often than you were home, we never saw you. Before the divorce and after. But oh boy, when you were ready to spend time with us, the world needed to stop spinning until you got what you wanted.”