Waiting On You (Blue Heron #3)(50)

Maybe...and this was the thought that caused a cold tremor of fear to shake her heart...maybe he was relieved. She was, after all, his high school sweetheart. He’d said he wasn’t ready for marriage. Maybe...maybe like so many other men, her stupid father most certainly included, he wanted to see if there was someone else out there.

Because he sure didn’t try very hard to win her back. She hadn’t seen that coming.

Dad had moved in with Gail the Tail. He hired a divorce attorney and started proceedings, and Mom sobbed for twelve hours straight, and Colleen cried with her as the movers took her father’s things away, taking with them the memories of her happy childhood.

Connor hadn’t been as close with their dad as she had, but this had shaken him, too. Not just Mom’s distress, but Dad being so...pathetic. A hot young second wife. Another family. And in case that wasn’t enough, a convertible.

But despite that, she couldn’t stop loving her father. She was mad, embarrassed, furious...but when she heard his voice on the phone, or even when she saw him, sometimes, just for a second, she’d forget that he was the man who cheated on Mom, and she’d just remember Daddy. The man who taught her to ride a bike and sail a boat, who used to brush her hair when she was little, who read her stories, who let her stay up late and watch scary movies, then sat on her bed when she was afraid to go to sleep.

The Tail got a cushion-set diamond as big as a human eyeball, despite the fact that Mom and Dad weren’t even divorced. Dad had shown her the ring, for the love of God.

Oh, and they were having a girl.

Dad invited her over to the new place for dinner to meet his lover/fiancée. “I know you’re upset,” he said on the phone, and the thinly veiled impatience in his voice chilled her. “But, Colleen, enough. If you’re going to come over, and I hope you will, I’d appreciate some civility. Your mother is hysterical crying half the time and screaming the other half, Connor won’t speak to me, and I won’t put up with a guilt trip in my own home.”

It was almost a threat. Another wife; another home; another chance at fatherhood. Another daughter.

In other words, accept or be discarded.

She went to dinner.

The Tail herself answered the door wearing a cropped T-shirt and micro-shorts. Fantastic body, completely athletic and lean and perfectly muscled. Poor Mom. Gail’s red hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she looked dewy and innocent. And most horribly of all...young.

“Colleen, at last!” she cried, throwing her arms around her. “I’ve been dying to meet you!”

Colleen extricated herself. “How old are you?” she asked.

“I’m twenty-six.”

“Holy shit.”

“I know. We could be sisters.” Gail smiled, but her eyes remained cool. Her huge engagement ring flashed.

Dinner was excruciating. Dad was helpful in a way he never was with Mom. Gail waffled between Adorable Ingenue and Experienced Prostitute, biting her lower lip and shooting Dad come-f*ck-me looks. Whenever she stood, she arched her back, shoved her nonexistent belly outward and made doe eyes, smitten with the Miracle of Life.

When Colleen got home, she was exhausted. Mom was waiting by the door. “Well? It’s just temporary, isn’t it? This can’t last. He’ll come to his senses. This is just a lapse in judgment.”

And that was maybe the worst part. Far worse than Mom’s occasional and very righteous anger was her hope.

“Mom, why would you even want him back?” Colleen said.

“Why? Because I love him. Because he’s the father of my two beautiful children.”

“And soon he’ll be the father of another beautiful child.” She sat down on the tired couch. “Gail has an engagement ring.”

Her mother’s face went white. “He won’t go through with it. He’s just having a midlife crisis, that’s all. Who even knows if Gail’s really pregnant? Or if she is, if it’s even Pete’s baby?”

The next day, Mom went to House of Hair a brunette with a few streaks of gray...and came back a redhead. Not only that, but her perfectly lovely blue eyes were looking awfully green lately, courtesy of her tinted contacts.

In other words, she looked like a wannabe Gail.

It made Colleen want to cry.

Mom called Dad six or seven times a day on flimsy excuses...“Pete, honey, I’m looking for the screwdriver. Can you come by when you get a second? Pete, do you remember where you put the car insurance papers? Pete, we should talk about the kids. Want to go to Hugo’s and see Connor?”

Colleen could only watch in sorrow and anger and misery.

She missed Lucas. God, she missed him.

But he’d lied to her. Lucas, who was so scrupulously honest and decent beneath his scruffy, South-Side tough-guy persona, had covered for her father. If only he’d told her about it, maybe she could’ve talked some sense into her father, because she and Dad, they were too smart for this.

And then Gail wouldn’t be pregnant right now. Mom wouldn’t be in schizophrenic divorce hell. Connor’s mouth wouldn’t be so tight, and half the town wouldn’t be clucking and gossiping over the O’Rourkes.

And maybe her father would still love her as much as he used to, if he didn’t have a replacement daughter on the way.

Maybe her family would still be intact.

It felt as if Lucas had taken that chance away.