Chapter 3 - The Deal
Dinner went better than I'd let myself hope.
Nolan asked about Dean — real questions, not polite ones. He listened while I talked about the years when it had just been Delaney and me, a folding table, and a lot of grilled cheese. He knew, without asking, that Delaney picked the mushrooms out of everything, and he slid them onto his own plate without a word. He topped off her water glass in the middle of her own sentence and never once interrupted it.
Partway through, she started telling me about a weekend the two of them had spent at a rented cabin up near Loon Creek — a trip that had apparently gone wrong in about six different directions.
Nolan reached for his phone.
"Don't," she warned.
"Oh, absolutely."
He turned the screen toward me. Delaney was standing next to a dead, smoking campfire, her hair whipped sideways across her face, eyes almost shut because she was laughing so hard.
Her birthmark was right there. Full light. No angle. Nothing turned away from the camera, nothing hidden.
I looked at my daughter.
A few years ago she would have lunged across the table. Let me see it. Delete that. Is it as bad as I think?
That night she just kept eating.
"That photo is evidence," she said. "That's a crime scene."
"You murdered that fire," Nolan said.
"It was raining."
"You poured half a can of lighter fluid onto soaking wet logs."
"Because you told me it needed help, Nol."
"I said it needed air."
I laughed. But I kept thinking about the picture. About how she hadn't reached for the phone.
After we'd cleared the plates, Delaney stood up.
"I forgot the cheesecake."
"You made a cheesecake too?"
"It's upstairs in the mini fridge in my old room."
Nolan stared at her. "You hid a cheesecake from me. In this house. For hours."
"I know how you are." She kissed the top of his head on her way past. "Give me two minutes."
Her feet went up the stairs. We heard her bedroom door open.
That's when Nolan set down his fork.
Everything friendly just drained out of his face. He leaned across the corner of the table toward me and dropped his voice.
"I did my part of the deal, now it's your turn."
I went still.
"What deal?"
He let out a short breath that was almost a laugh. "Colleen. Come on. Don't tell me Dean never walked you through any of this."
My hands went cold flat against the tablecloth.
"Walked me through what?"
"You seriously don't know."
"Know what, Nolan?"
He just looked at me. And one horrible idea arrived fully formed.
Dean.
Had he done something? Had he paid this man? Set up some kind of arrangement to put a handsome face across the table from my daughter?
My chair legs scraped the floor as I pushed back from the table.
"If somebody handed you money to date my daughter, you're going to tell me right now."
The last bit of humor dropped off his face. "What?"
"If Dean promised you something —"
"Colleen. No. God, no."
I was on my feet now. "Then what deal are you talking about? Because you don't get to say a sentence like that in my house and then just sit there."
"I'm not talking about me and Laney." He glanced toward the hallway. "Not here."
"You don't get to pick 'not here.'"
"If I explain it standing in your dining room, you're going to think I've lost my mind."
"You passed that a minute ago."
He stood up and pointed toward the kitchen, toward the back door. "Please. Just come outside."
May you like
"Why outside?"
"Because it's out there."
