More Than I Could (34)

“You two seem close,” I say, following him into the hallway and toward the foyer.

“Who? Me and Dad?”

“No, you and Kennedy.”

He stops by the steps leading upstairs. “We are close. I think. I hope.” He looks up, giving me a front-row seat to his long eyelashes. “She wants to hang out and watch movies one day, and the next, she hates me for no apparent reason. She’s emotionally erratic, and it’s borderline abusive.”

I giggle.

“It’s not funny,” he says, shaking his head and switching his gaze to mine. “I know I’m a grown man who shouldn’t be scared of a little girl, but I’m terrified of her most days. I find myself approaching her door with a brownie as tribute.”

My giggles turn into outright laughter. “Stop it.”

“This is the living room.”

He motions toward the left before dragging his eyes away from mine like he isn’t done with that part of our conversation.

I peer into the cozy area in the front of the house. There’s a mantel over the fireplace that I overlooked yesterday. It’s dark lumber, resembling a railroad tie, and hosts a variety of picture frames in various colors.

“We live in there,” he says.

“Fitting.”

“And the dining room we never use is over there.” He tilts his head toward the other side of the foyer. “I keep thinking I ought to do something different in there. But, hell, I’m not home long enough to get involved in a huge project, though Mom keeps insisting that a day will come when I’ll need it.”

I lean against the wall, absorbing the sun's warmth from where it filters through the transom window above the door. The house is quiet, perfectly still, but I can imagine it filled with fun and laughter—the sound of big family dinners.

I only realize I’m smiling when Chase catches my attention. He watches me curiously.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

I push away from the wall and sigh. “That I agree with your mom. It needs to be a dining room.”

“Even if we never use it?”

“You will someday.”

He rolls his eyes and heads upstairs. “I’m sorry for Kennedy’s cool reception today, by the way.”

“No, she was great. I imagine it was hard for her to have another woman in her house.”

His lips twitch.

“She is the woman of the house, you know,” I say. “You might see her as a kid, and she is a child by all definitions. But in her mind, she’s a woman, and this is her house.”

“Are you telling me I’m worrying too much?”

I think about it. “No, I think you’re right to worry. I think it’s great that you worry, actually.”

He scoffs like he’s embarrassed at being caught for being nice. It makes me laugh.

“I’m just saying maybe you don’t totally understand her,” I say. “So some of what she does looks like it’s coming out of left field when maybe it’s not.”

“Yeah, well, left field would be better than outer space.”

My smile grows.

I’m sure I was a handful for my mom when she was a single mother. Although we could get on the same page, she was still my mother, and I was still a bratty teenager. We butted heads. Even so, she could come at our issues from a place of understanding.

We get to the top of the stairs and stop. There is a door to the left, one in front of us, and a hallway to the right. Pictures adorn the walls—most of Kennedy at various stages of her life. A little table sits next to the hallway with an oddly shaped vase on it.

“Were you this way with your dad?” he asks. “Did you fight him all the time? Make everything hard?”

My smile slips. “No.”

“Then what did he do differently because I’d like that kind of relationship with my hell-raiser.”

“Well,” I say, my thoughts going to a man I’ve not thought about in a while. “I guess the biggest reason we didn’t fight was that he wasn’t there.”

Chase furrows a brow.

“It’s hard to fight with someone who doesn’t know you exist,” I say.

He regrips the handles of my bags, studying me with a quiet intensity. I’m unsure if he wants me to elaborate—if he wants the messy details, or if he’s trying to determine how to get out of this conversation.

Probably the latter.

“Think of it that way,” I say, giving him an exit. “You might fight with her right now. But she’ll grow up and appreciate that she had a dad who cared enough about her to stick around.”

His lips twist into a semblance of a smile. “Right.” He tips his head toward the lone door on the left. “That’s my room. The one in front of you is a closet. Extra blankets, board games, candles because I swear every time Kennedy has an extra dollar to her name, she buys another damn candle.”

“Yeah, well, I relate.”

“Of course you do,” he mumbles, heading down the hallway. “The door on the right is Ken’s. The one at the end is the bathroom. You can get situated there. And this is your room.”

He pauses by the door on the left and flicks the handle.

We step inside the small but gracious bedroom. It smells faintly of cinnamon and has a window that overlooks the driveway. A small bed is covered with a blue-and-white quilt that looks like it was plucked out of an Amish store.