Page 97 of Romance Is Dead

A branch that had been planted in a tiny pot, that my hulking father was now lovingly hunched over as he trimmed it with a pair of nail trimmers.

“Um, whatcha doing?”

He turned, looking shocked, as though he hadn’t heard anyone pull up. “Squish!” He dropped the clippers at the base of the pot and hurried over to wrap me in a hug. “I’m happy to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too.” I disentangled myself from the hug. “What’s with the twig?”

“It’s my new thing.” He beamed. “It’s a bonsai tree.”

I studied it with skepticism. Any bonsai tree I’d ever seen had looked like the miniature of a grown-up tree, complete with twisting limbs and gnarled roots peeking out from the soil. The tree in the pot looked like something yanked off a bush.

“Hmm,” was all I could muster.

“You gotta start somewhere.” My dad plucked the nail trimmers from the dirt. “Let’s go inside. I was just about to start dinner.”

Happy to drown my sorrows in whatever he had planned, I followed, immediately hit by the smell of freshly baked bread and the now-familiar scuffle of claws on carpet.

“Really, Daffy?”

The skunk refused to be deterred. She stomped at me again, scraping herself backward as she dared me to take her on.

“Peppers in the fridge?”

“Melon today.”

We filed into the kitchen, where I fished out the container of melon and gave a cube to Daffy as an offer of peace. She immediately grabbed it, her teeth chomping noisily.

“What do you have going?” I gave Daffy another piece of melon. “It smells amazing.”

“Focaccia.” He pulled open the oven a crack and peeked inside. “For sandwiches. And I’m going to try fresh-cut French fries in my new air fryer.” He gestured proudly to a boxy appliance on the counter.

I shook my head. “I can’t keep track of all your new hobbies.”

“Retirement is treating me kindly.” He eyed me carefully. “I’m sorry to hear about the movie, by the way. How are you holding up?”

“Not great.”

“Hmm.” My dad fished around in the drawer for a potato peeler as he waited for me to elaborate. When I didn’t, to his credit, he proceeded with caution. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I sighed, giving Daffy the rest of the melon as I considered it. I didn’t even know where to start. With the half-assed, failed murder investigation I’d convinced myself I could do? The mounting feeling that by quitting horror movies I was fucking up my life more instead of improving it? The fact that my best friend wasn’t speaking to me? Or the sex scandal with a man I was no longer speaking to that was now sweeping the media?

Out of all of them, the scandal somehow seemed safest.

“I’m sure you saw the article.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes trained on the russet potato he’d started peeling. “The photos were pretty innocent, though. You looked happy. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that he leaked them to the press!”

My dad frowned, the peeler sending potato scraps flying into a waiting bowl. “That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not.”

“What’d he have to say for himself?”

“He said he didn’t do it.”

My dad’s hand paused mid-peel. “Then, forgive me, Squish, but how do you know he did?”

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