Page 37 of This Time Around
Her dad nodded, and gave a soft little laugh. “That’ll change a man. Having a daughter.”
She smiled back, relieved to see him looking happy again. “Yes. I imagine it would.”
“Always felt sorry for the guy, truth be told,” her father said. “That’ll do a number on a kid, having his dad walk out like that. What was he, six, seven?”
“Six,” Allie said, surprised her father remembered, since she and Jack hadn’t known each other then. But she’d told her dad the stories, wanting her father to care about Jack the way she did. Wanting her parents to love and accept him.
“It definitely shaped his personality,” Allie said. “Always expecting people to walk out or disappoint him.”
Her dad squeezed her hands. “You can’t blame yourself for any of that, sweetie. You were right to break things off when you did. The two of you were just kids.”
“I know,” Allie murmured, but her voice sounded small. She wanted to change the subject, and felt a wave of relief when her dad did it for her.
“Listen, sweetie—maybe you should stay out of the attic for now. Are those rickety old boards still up there?”
“Yes, but I’ve been trying not to step on them. I’m being careful.”
“Still.” His forehead furrowed. “I’m not sure it’s safe. I’d hate to have you go crashing through the ceiling or something.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised. “Besides, I’m not sure I have much of a reason to go up there again anyway.”
“Good.” He squeezed her hands. “Always such a good girl, Allie.”
She smiled and tried to ignore the knot in her gut.
Of the items on Jack’s list of quintessential Portland experiences to have now that he was back in Oregon, getting a straight-razor shave from a heavily tattooed guy wearing lumberjack plaid and sporting a Fu Manchu mustache ranked right up there.
“Dad! Hold still. I want to take a picture for Instagram.”
Okay, having his ten-year-old photographing the experience added an extra element of weirdness. Maybe that made it more Portlandesque.
“Make sure you get a good shot of all my gray hair,” he said as Paige angled up on her knees in the adjacent barber chair. “Since you’re responsible for most of it.”
She giggled. “You mean there’s a color besides gray in there?” Plunking back down in the seat, she began to scroll through the images.
The guy with the mustache—whose name, according to both the sign above his workstation and his knuckle tattoos, was Bam—paused with his narrow scissors poised over Jack’s overgrown sideburn.
“You can tag Union Barber if you want,” Bam told Paige.
“Okay, if my dad lets me. He’s super strict about that stuff.”
“Poor abused child,” Jack said. “One accidental tagging of a strip club instead of a playground, and suddenly your evil father monitors your every online move.”
Paige grinned as she typed with impressive speed. “The struggle is real.”
Man, when did his kid get to be so witty? She’d always been clever, a born comedienne, just like her mother. But lately there was a sophisticated quality to her humor that left him floored.
In the waiting area behind her, a man and a woman—or was it two women?—were having a boisterous conversation about a date one of them had the night before. The taller one sported fuchsia hair and more piercings than Jack could count. The other had a buzz cut in mottled hues of blue and green. They chattered loudly over the blare of an Avett Brothers song on the overhead speakers, and Jack inhaled the familiar scent of pot and patchouli wafting from their direction.
He’d almost forgotten marijuana was legal in Oregon. Not that he smoked it these days, but he’d blazed his share of joints in college. If it had been legal back then, would he and Allie have spent less time bickering about his recreational use?
Probably. They’d certainly never had a shortage of things to squabble over.
He glanced back at Paige, who was still engrossed in her phone. As an app developer, he couldn’t be too annoyed by her reliance on the gadget. As a dad, he could be as annoyed as he wanted to be.
“Paige,” he warned as Bam combed down his right sideburn. “Remember this counts toward your thirty minutes of screen time.”
“Even if I’m doing this for Grandma?”
