Manning carefully took the Tupperware from me, then found spots for it on the crowded countertops. The tension in his fingers and jawline mirrored the stiffness of my shoulders. This was as important to him as it was terrifying to me, which was the catalyst behind why I’d come.
But in the end, it wasn’t the reason. This was: my mom rubbing my back as I fought the urge to cry, comforting me the way she had so many times growing up.
“Lake, honey. There, there,” Mom said. She’d always seemed to know when I was upset, even when I’d hidden it. “You’re so grown up. Such a beautiful young woman.”
With her soft words and tightening embrace, what became clear was the years I’d taken away from her by feuding with my dad and Tiffany. I’d known that already, and had harbored some guilt over it, but for the first time, I saw everything as Manning always had. My parents and I had missed out on valuable time together over issues that were heavy because I’d given them more weight than they deserved. Unsure of how else to convey a sudden and overwhelming regret, I hugged her back and just said, “Mom.”
She pulled back to take my face in her hands. Despite a sheen of tears, she smiled, the corners of her eyes creasing with new wrinkles. “You’re my baby, you know that?”
I nodded, my chin wobbling. “Yes.”
“Thank you for coming home.”
“Thank Manning,” I said, already missing his presence. Where had he gone? With a slight turn of my head, all I could manage with my mom’s hands holding my cheeks, I saw he hadn’t gone anywhere but to a corner where the counters met. The same corner he’d stood the night he’d gotten out of jail, the one spot from where he could see everything in the kitchen, including the doorway to the foyer and to the backyard. He did the same at home, keeping his back to the wall. In public, too. He always walked closest to the curb, insisted on driving any time we were together, and sat at dining tables where he could see the entrance to the restaurant. I hadn’t really noticed the habit back then, but it’d become obvious over years of living with him.
Mom kept an arm around me, following my gaze to Manning. “Oh my,” she said on a sigh. “I suspected over the years, and even hoped, but I didn’t really consider the . . . logistics.”
“You hoped?” I asked quietly.
She turned back to me. “That you and Manning had found your way to each other? Yes. After his divorce, of course.”
“But why?” I asked.
She shook her head, as if she wasn’t quite sure herself. “I guess it was the only comfort I had. Manning is such a strong, capable man. And loving, too. It gave me peace thinking he was with you.”
It was a nice sentiment, but also a reminder of the fact that my connection with Manning had always been impossible to ignore—and yet they had. Ignored it. All of them. I pulled back, wary of forgetting the past, even though I didn’t necessarily want to put more distance between us. “Is it a problem that I’m here?”
“Of course not. I’ve got plenty of food—”
“I mean for Dad.”
Manning rounded the island, taking a beer from the fridge on his way.
“He’ll have to accept it or stay in his study all night,” she said.
The fear that Tiffany or my dad would walk in stopped me from reaching for Manning’s hand. He winked at me, acknowledging that the same was true for him. “What do you want?” he asked. “Wine? Beer? Water?”
“Water’s good,” I said.
“You should go to the study to say hello,” Mom added. “Might be easier for him to swallow this on his territory.”
It all had to be on his terms. It wasn’t surprising but that didn’t mean it wasn’t also frustrating. “On second thought,” I said to Manning, swallowing as my nerves kicked in, “I’ll take some wine.”
Manning nodded and left the room, presumably to raid my dad’s bar.
Mom picked up an oven mitt. “Almost forgot about the candied yams,” she said, opening the oven and waving heat away. “I recreated Christmas dinner in case Manning hadn’t gotten one.” She looked over her shoulder at me and hesitated. “Has it always been him?”
“Always.”
“And is it . . .” She straightened up, moving the baking dish to a trivet. “Is it good?”
I crossed my arms in front of me as the contents of my stomach tumbled. “If he weren’t the best thing that ever happened to me,” I said, “do you think I’d put all of us through this?”
“Surely not,” she agreed, smiling again with tear-glossed eyes, despite my defensive tone.
I inhaled deeply. “About Tiffany—”
Mom waved a mitt at me. “Don’t worry about her.”
“But—”
“Pinot Noir and a peace offering,” Manning said, returning with wine and a tumbler of amber liquid. “He’ll be in the mood for this midday.”
I took both drinks. “Thanks.”
“Want me to come with you?”
“It’s okay.” Walking into my dad’s study after all this time with my sister’s ex-husband—a man my dad had tried to keep me from—didn’t seem like the right way to approach this.
“I said I’d be by your side the whole time,” Manning reminded me.
“Knowing you’re here is enough. I should do this alone so he doesn’t feel ambushed.”
“When you get to the part about you and me, I’d like to be there.”
A conversation with my dad wouldn’t last long. On his best days, he wasn’t one for idle chitchat. The thought of being alone with him beyond formalities was enough to make me shudder. “Give us a few minutes,” I said to Manning, “but no longer.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll be right outside the door.”
If my mom had an opinion on how I should do this, she didn’t volunteer it. She just watched as Manning walked me out of the kitchen. Once in the foyer, there was nothing left to do but knock. Since my hands were full, Manning tapped on the door.
“Grab a bottle of bourbon and come on in,” came my dad’s voice.
“He must’ve heard me earlier. He thinks you’re me.” Manning jutted his chin at me, urging me in as he turned the knob. “You’ve already got the Maker’s Mark. Go on.”
With a steeling breath, I entered the lion’s den armed only with liquid courage and the comforting knowledge that when it came to my relationship with my father, things couldn’t get much worse.
5
The door to my dad’s study closed behind me, sealing me into a room I knew about as well as the man himself. Quiet, tidy, and eerily still, the room only held things my dad loved. Expensive liquor bottles and crystal glasses. Business textbooks that dated back to his time in school. Guns. File cabinets I’d never seen the contents of—important items that kept our household running but that had been sealed away from the women in his life. It occurred to me that Manning probably knew this office better than I did and had maybe even been privy to its secrets and mysteries.
It took Dad a moment to look up from his computer. With his double take, the beginnings of his smile faded. “What’s this?”
Taking him by surprise had been a risk; he didn’t like to be caught off guard, but this way, he wouldn’t have time to work himself into a fury, either. At least not right away. “I . . . I came for dinner.”
He sat back in his seat, looking me over. “I thought you were Manning.”
I walked farther into the room and set his bourbon on the desk. Although there were more gadgets, it mostly looked the same. “This is—”
“I know what it is.” He picked up the tumbler but didn’t drink from it. He had a USC paperweight that had once been on my dresser.
He noticed me looking at it. “What are you doing here?”
“I came for dinner,” I repeated. With the way he glowered at the door behind me, I felt the need to add, “Mom didn’t know.”
“You could’ve given her some warning. Seeing you must’ve upset her.”
There might not’ve been a quicker path to m
aking me feel like a child than standing in front of his desk. Here, I’d received summer reading lists, been scolded or praised over grades, and been assigned chores. It wasn’t a bad feeling so much as a familiar one. Though my dad’s study had been intimidating, it’d made me more nervous than afraid—the way he’d click about on his computer, doing what looked like important things as he’d ask about my day at school.
I was a mixture of all those things now—intimidated, nervous, afraid—but the difference was I’d grown up and, for the most part, had learned how to harness those emotions.
And that I was old enough to drink.
I took a long sip of wine and sat across from him. “I didn’t come in here to talk about Mom. I came to warn you that I’ll be at the dinner table whether you want me there or not.”
“My dinner table,” he said.
“Not just yours. All of ours.” He stared at me as if I’d wandered in off the street. Maybe I’d stunned him—my unflinching father. His silence only spurred me on. “Who makes the dinner you eat off the table every night?” I asked. “Which little girl has stitches on her chin from when she tripped and hit the edge? Who—”
“All right, all right. I get the gist.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, leaning back in his seat with a heavy sigh. “Give me a minute.”
Only when he shut his eyes could I really allow myself to look at him. He, too, was older. Graying at his temples, lines on his face and hands, he wore his age more obviously but more gracefully than my mother, who’d seemed tired.
Didn’t he have anything to say? Didn’t I look different to him, too?
“Of course you do,” he said.
I hadn’t realized I’d said it aloud, but if we had any hope at a relationship, it was probably best I started speaking up. There was no reason he should intimidate me anymore. Where he was concerned, I had nothing left to lose. He’d given up hope on me long ago. Not for the first time, I understood my sister’s apathy over anything that mattered to my father. If even her best efforts were met with disappointment, why try?
Finally, he opened one eye and then another. “Why now?”
“Why now what?”
“You left with no notice. We haven’t seen you in years. Of course I’m going to ask what brings you back.”
“I do,” Manning said from behind me.
I turned in my seat to look at the man I loved, the one who’d not only brought me back, but had my back. I hadn’t heard him come in, and maybe I was supposed to do this kind of thing on my own, but I was glad for his reinforcement.
Manning entered, closing the study door behind him. He created his own presence in the room instead of shrinking for my dad the way my sister, mom and I did. His eyes stayed forward as he approached my chair. “Mr. Kaplan.”
I sat back, unsurprised to find Dad watching me, even as he said, “Manning . . .”
“He’s the reason I’m here,” I said.
My dad folded his hands on his desk like he was the president about to address the nation. “I suspect he’s to blame for many of the choices you’ve made.”
“He is,” I said. “And I’m not ashamed of that.”
Dad ignored me, turning his attention to Manning. “What do you expect me to say to this?” he asked him. “I’ve treated you like a son for a long time now.”
“And you have no idea what that’s meant to me,” Manning said, gesturing to the bar cart. “We’ve consumed some pretty great fucking liquor in here. Had meaningful discussions. Made plans for the future. I’m man enough to admit having you in my life is important.” I glanced up when he paused to find Manning looking down at me. “I’ve missed that the past few years, but it’s the result of the distance you’ve put between you and your daughter.”
“Me?” he asked, calling our attention back. “Lake is the one who left, who never looked back, and who removed this family from her life as if we were some kind of tumor.”
Although there was some truth to his words, he had to know, on some level, everything I’d done had come from a place of hurt. No little girl wants to be estranged from her dad, but sometimes, it’s best.
I stood to be next to Manning. “He wants to be part of this family,” I said. “He’s helped me realize I want that, too. Again. I never stopped wanting it, but I let anger, and then pride, get in the way.”
Silence stretched between us as I waited for my dad to admit he’d done the same. He straightened some papers to the side of his desk, glancing at his computer screen as if he were reading from a script. “What are you going to say to your sister? How do you expect her to take this news?”
“Don’t change the subject,” Manning said. “It was easy for me to come here today, but it wasn’t for Lake. She’s gotten nothing but silence from you in years, yet she came anyway. She deserves your attention.”
I had to stop myself from turning to Manning with an open mouth. I’d never really heard anyone speak to my father that way. In fact, Manning was perhaps the only person I’d ever seen stand up to Dad—though, in the past, it’d usually been in defense of Tiffany, not me.
To my surprise, Dad leaned back in his chair and glided a hand in front of himself. “Then say what you have to say, Lake.”
What did I have to say? I had expected my dad to do most of the talking—or screaming, if I was honest. I was tempted to chug my Pinot, but instead, I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry it’s been so long,” I said, and it was true. To see how my parents’ appearances alone had changed was jarring. They were getting older, and so was I. That wasn’t time I could get back. He didn’t respond, and I wasn’t sure if that made continuing easier or harder. “I thought you knew how I felt about Manning back then,” I said. “I thought you wanted him to marry Tiffany simply because it would hurt me.”
“You thought correctly,” he said with a firm nod. “Not that I wanted to hurt you, of course. But as my daughter, I knew what was best for you, and I knew you better than you thought I did. I saw in your eyes what you were willing to give up for a man much older than you. One who could never, in my eyes, be worthy of you.”
Hearing the truth both saddened and angered me. He’d had no right to decide my future like that. To put Manning in that box, when there was no man worthier, more deserving, of my love. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but Manning took my free hand. He shook his head at me. “Let him speak.”
“I had a feeling,” my dad continued, his eyes conspicuously on our laced fingers, “if Manning left town, you would follow. If Manning waited until you’d turned eighteen, then he would’ve gone to school with you, and your studies would’ve suffered. The only thing that could keep you away from him was your sister.”
Since enough time had passed, I was able to see the logic of an overprotective father. I had no doubt Manning would do anything to keep his future children safe. And, it was true—I’d been a sixteen-year-old girl blinded by my adoration of a man. Even understanding all that, the truth of the matter still hurt. I glanced into my wineglass, shaking my head. “But Manning and I lost years together.”
Dad set his elbows on his desk and opened his hands. “I won’t apologize for my actions. I did what I thought needed to be done, and I would do it again.” Finally, he lifted his eyes to look at Manning. “You may not believe me, Lake, but Manning knows this is true—I only ever wanted the best for you.”
I’d had years to come to terms with those truths. I already knew them. I hadn’t quite made peace with them, but they didn’t shock me. It was a small vindication, having my suspicions confirmed, but not much more. “I believe you,” I said, “but I don’t know how to forgive you for that—or for casting me aside so easily.”
Dad turned his head, looking at his bar cart against one wall, but seemingly lost in a thought. “I understand.”
My heart squeezed in my chest. It wasn’t as if I’d expected him to beg for forgiveness or even apologize for his behavior. A small part of me had, however, hoped he’d want this reconciliation at least
a little bit. Without meaning to, I clutched Manning’s hand.
“I’m going to marry her,” Manning said.
That snapped both my and my dad’s attention back to Manning. “Excuse me?” Dad asked.
“I came to let you know, and to ask for your blessing,” Manning continued.
“My blessing?” Dad asked, sounding uncharacteristically surprised. “How come?”
“Because I respect you, and because your opinion means more to me than anyone’s outside of Lake’s and Henry’s. We’re going to marry with or without your approval, but it would mean a lot to me—and to Lake, I think—if you were there.”
Dad sniffed. “What makes you think I’d even consider that? That I would do that to Tiffany?”
“I might let you shame me into feeling bad if I thought your concern for Tiffany was genuine,” I said.
“It is,” Dad said to me. “Apparently you think I’m something of a monster, but I’m not. Your sister is my first born, my blood. Regardless of how you see things, I love her. She’s been through a lot. All of which you’ve missed.”
“But I have been there every step of the way,” Manning interjected. “I know you care about Tiffany. You know I care. You said I was a good husband to her. Am I wrong to say after all you and I have been through, that you trust my judgment?”
After a tense moment, my dad nodded for Manning to continue. “You’re not wrong.”
“Sir, I love Lake. I have for longer than I’d like to admit, but hiding it from her and you and even myself only did everyone in the family a disservice.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m trying to do the honorable thing by bringing this to light.”
My heart pounded. This was a moment sixteen years in the making—our ‘coming out’ in a sense. We’d been inseparable for years, but we might as well have been sixteen and twenty-three again, standing before my menacing father and asking his permission to love each other. I was thankful not to be that girl now, because she wouldn’t have walked out of this room with Manning—but I would, no matter my dad’s response. “I feel the same,” I said. “It has always been Manning for me.”
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 90