Page 99 of Lies and Lullabies
Whoa. In the first place, I hadn’t heard my father mention my mother in more than a decade. And he’d said more about himself just now than he ever had before.
“I want to help, but the two of you never listened to your old dad.”
“You’ve been too hard on Adam,” I said immediately.And me.
My father flinched. “I know. I still love him, though. Even if I can’t protect him from the difficult life he’s chosen.”
“But he hasn’t! He’s just…Adam.” I wasn’t in any shape to make a cohesive argument about Adam’s sexuality. Then again, I wasn’t going to let my father off the hook. “That’s the way he was made. If you can’t accept that, you should stay in Maine. I’m not kidding.”
He was silent for a long moment. “If I went to the hospital right now, would they throw me out?”
I shook my head. “The night after surgery, one family member is allowed to sit beside him.”
“Do you think he’d mind if I was there?”
The question was a more humble one than I expected from him. “I don’t think he’d mind at all. All Adam has ever wanted from you was a little support. Sitting with him qualifies. Quietly, of course.”
“Okay, then.” He stood up. “How do I find his room?”
I hesitated. “The chair there is awful, Dad. You won’t be comfortable.”
He shrugged. “I’ll stay for a couple of hours. Then I’ll come back here. If you lend me your keys, I won’t wake you or Vivi up.”
“Oh. I… Jonas has them.”
“Has what?” he asked, coming around the corner with a plate in one hand and a glass in the other.
“My keys.” The sight of Jonas moving through my apartment so comfortably was startling. There were so many times when I’d pictured this. I’d craved one more easy night in his company. Just one simple moment, like we’d had all those summers ago.
He handed me the plate, then drew my keys from his pocket.
My father took them, heading for the door. “Leave a light on for me.”
“Will do,” I croaked.
Even after the door shut on my father, I stared at it, wondering what had just happened.
“Hey. Are you all right?” Jonas set the glass down on the coffee table.
“I guess so.” I gave my head a shake and tried to snap out of it.
“Sit down. Eat your dinner.” He laughed. “Holy crap, I just sounded like somebody’s dad.”
“It’s true. You did.” I sat on the sofa and took a bite of rice. I never allowed Vivi to eat anything on the sofa, so I was breaking my own rule right now. But that’s the kind of night that it was. “Thank you for this. And for taking Vivi earlier. Did you have any trouble?”
Jonas grinned. “The only hard part was getting her to stop talking long enough to eat. But once she started eating, a huge amount of food disappeared in a short amount of time.”
“That’s my girl.”
“I cleaned her up as best I could. But she wasn’t too interested in having her face wiped.”
“Sounds about right.”
“And anyway, that’s when your dad showed up.”
“So what wasthatlike?” I took another bite and watched Jonas sit back to talk to me. What a strange little intimate moment this was. Two parents, talking about putting their kid to bed. Just like anyone.
“He’s kind of hard to read,” Jonas admitted, putting his hands behind his head. I tried not to stare at the way his T-shirt stretched against his chest muscles. “He’s got that whole taciturn New Englander thing working. At first I thought he was just trying to place my face, you know? I could tell he was floored when Vivi called me Daddy. But he shook my hand and took it like a man.”
