Where the Stars Still Shine(41)

“You can play more after we eat,” Phoebe tells Tucker. “Breakfast is ready.”

Tucker scrambles to his feet and I slide Joe from my lap to stand. He raises his arms, his little fingers making grab hands at me. “Up.”

I deposit Joe in his high chair and sit beside him as Phoebe and Greg bring breakfast to the table. Breakfast is pleasant, but I’m on edge. The specter of last night hovers and my stomach twists itself into a knot that makes eating homemade scrambled eggs and bacon not nearly as satisfying as it should be, and I wonder if this isn’t punishment in itself.





After breakfast, Greg and I ride our bikes across Tarpon Bayou to a waterfront construction site on Chesapeake Drive. Sitting on the lot is a faded blue house on stilts with a set of wooden stairs leading up to the front porch. The windows and doors are missing and there is new plywood jutting out from open spaces in the roof where dormers used to be.

“What is this place?” I ask as I follow him up the stairs.

“This is one of my projects.” We walk through the space where the front door should be, into a scaffolding of studs and half-hung walls. “The outside has those great old Florida beach-house bones, but the inside was really cut up and impractical. It’s kind of hard to picture right now, but there will be two bedrooms right up here in front, and back there”—he points to a big space with huge window openings overlooking the bayou—“will be a combined living room, dining room, and kitchen. And beyond that, another porch.”

I don’t know anything about architecture, but the preexisting house is pretty big. Not mansion-size the way they are out at Pointe Alexis, but a lot bigger than Greg’s cramped cottage.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he says.

The stairs are built of plywood and there is no handrail yet. Our footsteps echo as we climb to the second floor.

“This is my favorite part because I love the original wood and the slanted ceiling,” Greg says. “We’re blowing out the front dormer window to create an office space, but this—” He leads me through the two-by-four framework of a new wall. “This will be your room.”

His words stop me in my tracks. “My room?”

He pulls a folded set of blueprints from his bag. “Phoebe and I bought this house two years ago, at the same time we bought the cottage, and I’ve spent the better part of last year altering the existing design to something a little more updated.”

I kneel down and unfold the drawing. Greg squats beside me.

“See this part here?” He touches some lines on the paper. “I added it last week—just for you.” He walks over to one of the walls and spreads his arms wide. “Right here I’ll be building a reading nook with bookcases all the way around it so you can sit in here and read. And out there, where the dormer window used to be, will be your own personal deck.”

Greg goes blurry as my eyes fill with tears, and I feel both happy and sad at the same time because I want to deserve this, but I don’t feel as if I do. Not after everything I’ve done. He comes over to me and takes me gently by the shoulders. “You have always been a part of my family, Callie. Always a part of my plans.”

“I didn’t mean what I said about the Airstream,” I say. “I like it a lot.”

He smiles. “I know.”

“But this is …” I close my eyes and imagine a wall filled with books.

“C’mon.” He walks between wall studs out onto the beginnings of the deck and sits, his legs dangling over the edge into the empty air below. I join him.

“Here’s the thing,” Greg says. “I am so completely out of my depth when it comes to you that I don’t know what to do about last night. Tucker and Joe are easy because they’re little. Whenever Tuck figures out a way around one of our parental roadblocks, Phoebe and I are still smart enough to think up a new one. But you—” He shrugs. “I remember being a teenager, so having to parent one scares the hell out of me. Especially one who has done a pretty good job of taking care of herself.”

I shade my eyes and look out at the bayou. It hardly seems possible that this view could be mine. That this room will be mine. “I didn’t mean to stay out that late.”

“It’s not only the staying out too late, Cal,” Greg says. “You left with Connor Madsen and came home hours later alone, without a single call to anyone to let us know where you were. How do you expect me to feel about that?”

“It’s just—this is new for me, too,” I say. “Mom always worked nights, so I’ve never had to answer to anyone. I wasn’t purposely ignoring your rules. I just lost track of time.”

“Where were you?”

“I, um—I was with someone.” The words surprise me. I wasn’t expecting to reveal anything this personal to him.

“Someone who is, apparently, not Connor.”

“Right.”

“Do you—are you—?” His face is pink and he pinches the bridge of his nose. “God, this is not a question I ever thought I’d have to ask, but if you’re, um—are you being careful?”

My own cheeks get warm. Mom and I had the sex talk years ago. It was after Frank, so she was kind of too late, even though he didn’t have actual sex with me. But it’s a never-in-my-wildest-dreams scenario to be discussing birth control with Greg. Despite the weirdness of the moment, it feels, maybe for the first time since I got here, as if he’s really my dad. “Yes.”