I stopped making one of my own and propped myself against the breakfast bar, then waited for him to begin.
Predictably it started with an ocean of rage and pacing and why the fuck, fucking why?
My answers were as calm and honest as I could make them. About how I loved his daughter and always had. About how I was truly not wanting to develop feelings for her and would have preferred to have maintained my relationship with her as a little girl.
But how she wasn’t a little girl. Not anymore.
How she was a smart and skilled woman. Sharp and funny and passionate. Lively and talented and everything that made my heart sing.
About how I was dedicated to her and always would be, and I was sorry, but I couldn’t lie to him anymore, and definitely couldn’t lie to either myself or her enough to walk away.
“If you truly love my daughter, you’ll be letting her go to fucking university,” he said and jabbed a finger in my direction.
I smiled. I smiled and told him it was already well and truly on my agenda to let her go to university. To let her follow her decisions and help her follow her education in exactly the way she chose.
I told him how I’d been investigating her options for quite some time, to help her step up onto the ladder she truly wanted to climb and not one she had no interest in, and he swallowed down a lump in his throat, shaking his head in a way that made my gut lurch with another bout of guilt.
“You really did that for her?” he asked. “You set up a whole fucking life of learning for my girl in Warwick?”
So I told him. I told him about all of it. About the testimonials I’d sent off to the university, about the options and the sponsorship I’d discussed with them and the experience I’d set up for her with some of my auctioneering associates. Auctioneering associates he knew and respected as well as I did.
“I had to, Colin,” I said. “Her vocation is in antiques and collectibles, I couldn’t bear to see her losing her passion to chase down numbers she had no interest in.”
“But it’s sensible –” he began, and I cut him off with a shake of my head.
“I know it’s sensible,” I said. “But this is her life and her passion and her choices.”
“So I keep fucking hearing,” he said, and put his hands up to his face. “I don’t know what to fucking make of it,” he barked. “I don’t know what to make of it, and I don’t know what the hell I should be fucking thinking of it.”
“Once again, I’m sorry,” I said. “I really hope I’ve answered your questions enough to give you an understanding.”
He let out a sigh and set off for the hallway.
I followed him to the front door, smiling with one final apology as he gestured back behind me at the living room door.
“Miss Tiddles is a little pain in the ass,” he told me. “You want to watch her with your curtains, she scratches the shit out of them.”
And with that he was gone.It was mid-afternoon by the time Faith made it home, and although her eyes were pink and puffy from a blatant bout of tears, she had quite a calm smile on her face. I was scanning through the most recent Country Antiques edition on the sofa with Miss Tiddles padding my legs with an evil stare, and she laughed on over at the sight of her.
“Did it go alright?” I asked and she nodded, just a little.
“I hope so. Maybe. Might take some time. At least they don’t seem to hate me now.”
I tipped my head. “They don’t hate you, Faith, you’re their little girl. You’ll always be their little girl, no matter how much of a woman you grow up into. They might well hate me, but they certainly don’t hate you.”
She came and dropped herself beside me, pressing into my side and reaching over to tickle Miss Tiddles behind the ears.
“I guess we just have to give it some time,” she said.
“Time is a great healer,” I replied, and leaned in for a kiss, and she held me tight. Tight enough as I held her back that we were only interrupted by a mewling Miss Tiddles attacking the drapes at the side of the window.
“She does that,” Faith laughed and I laughed along with her.
“So your dad told me.”
“Dad must have told you a lot of things.”
I shrugged. “Not nearly as many as I told him. I just hope they made some difference.”
“They seemed to have,” she said. “He wasn’t quite so raging when he came back to theirs.”
To theirs.
Already I loved the way it was to theirs.
“One week until university,” she said. “We go through all of this, just in time for one week at yours before I’m off to university. Can you believe it?”