Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(56)

I told him about moving to the trailer in Welcome, and Mama's boyfriend named Flip who had shot the emu. I couldn't seem to talk fast enough, so many details tumbled out. Churchill caught every word, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and when I finally reached the part about giving the dead emu to the Cateses, he was chuckling.

Although I hadn't been aware of ordering wine, the waiter brought a bottle of pinot noir. The liquid glittered richly in tall-stemmed crystal glasses. "I shouldn't." I said. "I'm going back to work after lunch."

"You're not going back to work."

"Of course I am. My afternoon is booked." But I felt weary at the thought of it, not just the work, but summoning the appropriate charm and cheerfulness my clients expected.

Churchill reached inside his jacket, extracted a cell phone no larger than a domino, and dialed Salon One. As I watched, openmouthed, he asked for Zenko, informed him that I would be taking the afternoon off, and asked if that would be all right. According to Churchill, Zenko said of course it would be all right and he would rearrange the schedule. No problem.

As Churchill closed the cell phone with a self-satisfied click, I said darkly, "I'm going to catch hell for this later. And if anyone else but you had made that call, Zenko would have asked if you have your head up your culo."

Churchill grinned. One of his flaws was that he enjoyed people's inability to tell him off.

I talked through the entire lunch, prodded by Churchill's questions, his warm interest, the wineglass that somehow never emptied no matter how much I drank. The freedom of saying anything to him, telling all, relieved a burden I hadn't even realized I'd been carrying. In my relentless push to keep moving forward, there had been so many emotions I hadn't let myself inhabit fully, so many things I hadn't talked about. Now I couldn't quite catch up to myself. I fumbled in my purse for my wallet and got out Carrington's school picture. She had a gap-toothed smile, and one of her ponytails was a little higher than the other.

Churchill looked at the photo for a long time, even reached in his pocket for a pair of reading glasses so he could see every detail. He drank some wine before commenting. "Happy child, looks like."

"Yes, she is." I tucked the photo back into my wallet with care.

"You've done well, Liberty," he said. "It was the right thing to keep her."

"I had to. She's all I've got. And I knew no one would take care of her like I would." I was surprised by the words that slipped out so easily, the need to confess everything.

This was what it would have been like, I thought with a small, painful thrill. This was a glimpse of what I might have had with Daddy. A man so much older and wiser, who seemed to understand everything, even the things I hadn't said. It had bothered me for years that Carrington didn't have a father. What I hadn't realized was how much I still needed one for myself.

Still buzzed from the wine. I told Churchill about Carrington's upcoming Thanksgiving pageant at school. Her class, which would perform two songs, was divided into Pilgrims and Native Americans, and Carrington had balked at being part of either group. She wanted to be a cowgirl. She'd been so stubborn about it that her teacher, Miss Hansen, had called me at home. I'd explained to Carrington that there had been no cowgirls in 1621. There hadn't even been a Texas then, I told her. It turned out my sister didn't care about historical accuracy.

The argument had finally been resolved by Miss Hansen's suggestion that Carrington be allowed to wear the cowgirl costume and walk out on stage at the very beginning of the pageant. She would carry a cardboard sign shaped like our state, printed with the words A TEXAS THANKSGIVING.

Churchill roared with laughter at the story, seeming to think my sister's muleheadedness was a virtue.

"You're missing the point." I told him. "If this is a sign of things to come, I'm going to have a terrible time when she hits adolescence."

"Ava had two rules about dealing with adolescents," Churchill said. "First, the more you try to control them, the more they rebel. And second, you can always reach a compromise as long as they need you to drive them to the mall."

I smiled. "I'll have to remember those rules. Ava must have been a good mother."

"In every way," he said emphatically. "Never complained when she got the short end of the stick. Unlike most people, she knew how to be happy."

I was tempted to point out that most people would be happy if they had a nice family and a big mansion and all the money they needed. I kept my mouth closed, however.

Even so, Churchill seemed to read my mind. "With all you hear at work," he said, "you should have figured out by now rich folks are just as miserable as poor ones. More, in fact."

"I'm trying to work up some sympathy," I said dryly. "But I think there's a difference between real problems and invented problems."

"That's where you're like Ava," he said. "She could tell the difference too."

CHAPTER 15

After four years, I had finally become a full-fledged stylist at Salon One. Most of my work was as a colorist—I had a talent for highlights and corrections. I loved mixing liquids and pastes in a multitude of small bowls like a mad scientist. I enjoyed the myriad small but critical calculations of heat, timing, and application, and the satisfaction of getting everything just right.