RECLAIM MY HEART(55)

The screen in the door obscured the man who stood on the front step, but before she had a chance to voice a greeting, her brain kicked in.
“Daddy.”
Funny how a single word could make her feel twelve years old again.
“Tyne, honey. It’s so good to see you.”
Shock froze her muscles, solid as ice. His hair was still thick and wavy, but instead of the rich chestnut she remembered, it had gone granite gray. And his smile pressed deep grooves all over his fleshy face. He must have put on forty pounds or more since she’d last seen him.
“Earl called me last night, honey.” Her father lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. “He said he and Vera had run into you.”
So Vera had kept her word. Sort of. But she got her husband to rat her out. Damn it.
“Tyne?”
The timidity she heard in his voice sounded utterly foreign to her. Her father had always been assured to the point of being imposing. Frighteningly so.
“Honey?” He blinked, waited, and when she said nothing, he asked, “Will you invite me to come in for a minute?”
He looked so…?old. So…?unsure. All of a sudden, she felt the same.
The metal handle of the screen door was cool against her fingers when she pushed it open. Her dad stepped over the threshold, but didn’t move any further.
She feared he meant to wrap his arms around her, but she didn’t think she was ready for that. Physically, he was close, awkwardly close, as he gazed into her face, yet the accusations and blame and disappointment jarring her insides were as spiky and dividing as a barbed wire fence.
There was no graceful way to move away from the door, away from him, but that didn’t stop her from trundling backward a few feet. She couldn’t miss the flash of dejection that clouded his gaze.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” she asked. The question had enough sharp edges to cut the most calloused of skin. So she tried hard to soften her tone when she added, “Tea, fruit juice, ice water?”
“No. Thank you. I can’t stay long. Have to get back to my office.” He rubbed his hands together, then let them fall to his sides. “I have a meeting with Mike Masters, the town treasurer, in an hour.” There was more palm rubbing as he shuffled from one foot to the other. “I would have been here earlier, but I had a breakfast meeting I couldn’t get out of—” his chuckle was forced “—it seemed to go on forever.”
Lots of people shared a common misconception; they attempted to crowd out the uneasiness in a room by filling the air with words.
He tipped up his chin and inhaled. “Something smells awfully good.”
Ambivalent about responding, she waited a moment or two. She’d developed her cooking skills to thg shin and e point that she earned her living on them with little help and absolutely no encouragement from this man. But it seemed absolutely rude not to make some kind of reply to his comment. Finally, she told him, “I baked a cake.”
He nodded, and silence settled over them.
“You look good, honey,” he said. “You’re a beautiful woman.” Pride shined in his smile. “The image of your mother.”
His eyes went misty.
When Tyne had been exiled to Florida for the duration of her pregnancy, she’d considered hacking off her hair and dying it flaming red or sable brown just so she wouldn’t be reminded of her mother every time she looked into the bathroom mirror, but she feared the chemicals might harm the baby, and once Zach had been born and she’d decided to go it on her own, food and lodging took priority over those things that became trivial matters, like the vanity of her appearance.
It seemed that someone had flipped her politeness-auto-pilot switch because she heard herself asking, “How is Mom?”
“She’s well. Still busy with her groups; bridge, garden club, tennis. She’s always out and about.” He smiled. “She’s been busy in the backyard. Had a pool put in. A pool house built. You wouldn’t recognize the place. She coordinated the whole project herself. Oh, and she joined the Red Hat Society.”
Tyne found it difficult to imagine her mother sporting a floppy red hat.
“She’s healthy. Fit and trim as ever,” her father said. Rubbing his paunch, he added, “Unlike me.”
A frown bit into her brow. “You’ve got health problems?”
Her silence for the past sixteen years might have revoked her right to even ask such a question.
“Oh, nothing serious, honey. A touch of arthritis, achy joints. The normal problems of aging, I guess you could say.” His grin went lopsided. “All those extra desserts I sneak don’t help, I’m sure.”
Her dad always had a voracious sweet tooth.
“How have you been, Tyne?”
The concern tugging his brows closer together seemed utterly sincere, and that touched her heart.
“I’ve been okay…” Daddy, a little girl’s voice inside her head nearly succeeded in adding. “I’ve been fine,” she amended. “Great, actually.”
His wide shoulders dropped and the corners of his mouth pulled back. “I’m so glad to hear it.” He toyed with the button on his suit jacket. “Your mother really wanted to come with me. But I made her stay home. I didn’t know how things would go. Didn’t know how you’d feel. How you’d be. If you’d even talk to me. I didn’t want her feelings to be hurt.”
Those same fears had made her break out in a sweat whenever she imagined running into her parents.
“Now,” he murmured, “I wish I’d brought her. She’d love to see you, sweetheart.”