The Bad Daughter(36)

Robin shook off the unpleasant sensation, ignoring her instincts and telling herself that her sudden anxiety was the result of Melanie’s attempts to belittle her. A classic case of transference, as one of her professors at Berkeley would no doubt explain.

“So, how are things going with you and Tara?” she’d asked Alec several days later. She was heading back to Berkeley, and Alec had volunteered to drive her to the bus station. “Everything good? You two getting along okay?” She threw the questions casually over her shoulder, like a lightweight sweater, as Alec was dropping her overnight bag into the trunk of his car. He’d bought the immaculately maintained red Chevy with the money he’d saved from working summers for their father, and it was his pride and joy.

“?’Course we’re getting along. Why do you ask?”

“Just checking.”

She had checked again at Christmas, when she and Tara were leaving the hospital after a brief visit with Robin’s dying mother.

“I feel so helpless,” Robin confided. “I just wish there was something I could do.”

“You’re doing everything you can.”

“Not according to my sister.”

“Your sister’s a cunt.”

“Tara!” Robin looked around to make sure no one had overheard. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

“The truth won’t protect you from Melanie.”

“Yeah? Well, let her do her worst. I’m not afraid of her.”

“Maybe you should be.” Robin squeezed her friend’s arm. She felt so lucky to have a friend like Tara, so grateful that the two would soon be family. She was sure that the unease she’d been experiencing was all in her head, a by-product of the guilt she was feeling about leaving her mother. “So what’s happening with you and Alec? Any closer to setting a date for the wedding?” She felt an almost imperceptible stiffening of Tara’s arm beneath her fingers.

“How can we?” Tara asked. “I mean, with things the way they are…”

The sentence trailed off into silence.

“But everything’s good between the two of you?” Robin persisted. “You’re still madly in love and everything?”

“Everything’s good,” Tara said, turning away.

Four months later, Sarah Davis was dead, and two months after that Tara ended her engagement to Robin’s brother.

“She said she can’t marry me,” Alec had confided over the phone, sounding as numb as he undoubtedly felt.

“Did she say why?”

“Just that her feelings had changed and she couldn’t go through with it.”

“Does Dad know?”

“I told him this morning on the way to work.” Alec had been working for their father full-time since graduating from high school, and they usually drove to the office together. According to Alec, Greg generally used that time to berate him for what Alec jokingly referred to as his “shortcoming of the day.”

That arrangement came to an abrupt halt three months later when their father returned from a supposed business trip to Las Vegas with his new and astonishingly familiar bride in tow. Alec immediately quit work and left Red Bluff. He spent the next year driving his prized red Chevy from one end of the country to the other and then back, eventually settling in San Francisco and working a succession of minimum-wage jobs.

Robin had returned to Red Bluff only to pack up what few possessions of hers remained in the house, vowing never to speak to her father or Tara again.

“If you’d just let me explain,” Tara had pleaded.

“Seems pretty self-explanatory to me.”

“I never expected this to happen. It wasn’t something we planned.”

“And yet, here we are,” Robin countered. “I just don’t understand how you’re able to stomach sleeping with a man old enough to be our father. Oh, wait—he is my father. You can’t seriously be trying to tell me that you’re in love with him.”

“He’s been so good to me. And to Cassidy. She adores him.”

“She’s a child. You’re a grown-up. And you haven’t answered my question.”

“You didn’t ask one.”

“Do you love him?”

“He’ll take good care of us.”

“Not an answer.”

“I respect him. I admire him.”

“How can you respect and admire him when you know what a bastard he is?”

“He’s changed.”

“He hasn’t.”

“He’s not the same man he was when you were growing up.”

“Really? I remind you that he just eloped with his son’s fiancée!” Robin shook her head at Tara’s willful na?veté.

“It would never have worked with Alec. He’s sweet and everything, but he’s never going to amount to much. He’s a boy, Robin. Cassidy and I…we need a man.”

“Amazing,” Robin said. “How’d you do that?”

“How’d I do what?”

“I just saw your lips moving, but I heard my father’s voice.”

Tara blushed bright crimson.

“Do you honestly believe that marrying my father isn’t going to end in absolute disaster?” Robin asked.