by Fiona Grace
“Okay, okay,” Lacey said, relenting. “I’ll look at the shortlist as soon as I get the chance.”
“When will that be?” Shirley demanded.
“I don’t know,” Lacey said tensely, gazing at the shut laundry room door. “I have a lot going on at the moment.”
“Let me guess,” Shirley said, sounding displeased. “You’re too busy with work. Well, Lacey, let me give you a little life lesson.”
But as Shirley launched into her lecture, the sudden sound of blaring music from inside the cottage made Lacey startle.
Asked a girl what she wanted to be, crooned the voice of Paul McCartney through the laundry room door. She said, “Baby, can’t you see?”
Lacey cracked the door and peered her head out. Her father was no longer at the kitchen table. The music was coming from down the hallway. He must’ve turned on the record player and cranked it all the way to full blast.
“Is that the Beatles?” Shirley asked in her ear. “Your father always used to play that damn song.”
No sooner had she said it than Frank began to sing along.
“Baby you can drive my car!” he bellowed.
Lacey felt a sudden spike of anxiety. Her hand tightened around the phone’s mouthpiece as she quickly pulled the door shut in an attempt to suffocate out the noise. She held her breath, praying her mother had not heard her father’s voice.
“Lacey…” Shirley said, slowly, leadingly. “Is that your FATHER?”
“What? No?” Lacey scoffed, “Don’t be crazy!”
But it was too late. Shirley knew what she’d heard. “I was married to the man for a decade, Lacey, I know his voice when I hear it!”
Lacey floundered. She didn’t know what to say, or where to even begin explaining what was going on.
“Mom, look, I wanted him to walk me down the aisle, okay?” she said, hurriedly, trying to get the full explanation out as fast as possible. “So I tracked him down and—”
“Put him on the phone,” Shirley demanded.
“No way!” Lacey cried.
Just then, the laundry room door was pulled open from the outside and Frank poked his head inside. He must’ve heard the shouting.
“Everything okay, love?” he asked, as Paul McCartney incongruously sang a merry Beep beep, beep beep, yeah! in the background.
Lacey stared at him, wide-eyed, feeling trapped, caught in the middle of her parents just like when she was a little girl.
Her dad suddenly pressed a finger to his lips and mouthed, “Is that… Shirley?”
Lacey shook her head.
But Frank was no fool. He took a long, deep breath. “Put her on speakerphone.”
“What?” Lacey mouthed back. “NO!”
“Put her on,” he said, insistently. “It’s okay. I can handle it.”
“Is that him?” came Shirley’s shrill, demanding voice in her ear. “Is he there? What’s he saying? Put me on speakerphone this minute!”
With a huff, Lacey caved in. Fine. If they really felt like a speakerphone conference in her laundry room was the best way to break several decades of silence, then she wasn’t going to be the one to stop them. It wasn’t like either of them ever saw reason!
So she removed the phone from her ear, hit the speaker button, and flung her phone down on top of the washing machine. Then she paced away, hands on hips, breath ragged, bracing for the monumental fallout that was sure to follow.
“Shirley?” Frank said. “Is that you?”
“Frank,” Shirley replied, drily. “You’re alive.”
“Alive and kicking, my dear,” Frank said with a chuckle. “How are you?”
“I just finished paying off the debts you left me,” came her sharp-tongued reply.
“How wonderful,” he replied, in an equally caustic tone.
“I’m patching in Naomi,” Shirley barked.
“No, Mom, please don’t!” Lacey begged.
She knew why her mom wanted to patch her sister into this awkward family reunion—for moral support. Naomi liked to claim she didn’t remember Frank and didn’t care to, but she’d still named her son after him. She was fragile when it came to their father, and this was far from the ideal circumstance to drop the bombshell news on her.
But Lacey’s plea fell on deaf ears. A series of bleeps sounded through the speaker, before Naomi’s voice filled up the small, dark laundry room.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, merrily. “What’s up?”
Beside her, Lacey saw Frank take a sharp intake of breath. It was the first time he’d heard his younger daughter’s voice since she was five years old.
“I’m here with your sister,” Shirley crackled through the speaker.
“Oh! Hey, Lacey!” Naomi said, sounding brighter still. “Is this a wedding call?”
“No,” Shirley said abruptly. “Lacey has something to tell you.”
“…Okay?” Naomi said, sounding suddenly reticent. “That sounds ominous.”
Her happy tone had completely disappeared, and Lacey’s stomach roiled knowing just how much lower it was about to go. She opened her mouth, but closed it again. She just didn’t know how to break the news, and folded her arms tightly as her stress made itself known in her churning stomach. This was the worst family reunion ever.
“Come on,” Shirley demanded. “If you don’t tell her who you’re with, I will.”
Apparently noticing Lacey clam up, Frank stepped forward and leaned closer to the phone. “It’s Dad,” he announced.
“Surprise,” Lacey added, in a small, apologetic voice.
Silence fell. Lacey shifted awkwardly from one foot to the next. It wasn’t often Naomi was lost for words. When it came to her sister, silence usually meant one thing: that she was furious.
“Neigh?” Frank said, using the nickname she’d been using during the My Little Pony obsession which coincided with the time he walked out. “Are you there?”
Again, silence.
Lacey’s stomach churned and turned and tumbled. She felt like the awkwardness was about to swallow her whole.
Finally, Naomi’s voice sounded out through the speaker. “You’re not dead, then,” she said, bluntly. “I guess that clears up that little mystery.”
Frank balked, literally recoiling from the telephone like Naomi’s words had stung him. And while they had been particularly venomous, they surely couldn’t have been all that unexpected. Surely Frank knew they’d come to that conclusion? That in the absence of birthday cards and telephone calls they’d assume he had perished? If it came as a surprise to him now, Lacey wondered what lies he must have told himself over the years to minimize the impact his abandonment had had on his children. Or had he simply failed to comprehend that his leaving had been a sudden, traumatic loss, like a rug being pulled from beneath their feet, causing the whole world to come crumbling down?
“Lacey’s asked your father to walk her down the aisle,” Shirley interjected. “As if the fact I had to stand in and do the father role all these years on my own counts for nothing.”
“I really don’t think this is the best time to be talking about this,” Frank said. “Let’s try to keep it civil, shall we, Shirley, my dear? At least until after the wedding!”
“Yes, maybe it would be better to let another thirty years lapse before we attempt to have a conversation?” Shirley replied drily.
Lacey slapped a hand to her forehead. This was simply unbearable.
“I’m going,” Naomi said, abruptly.
There was a beep, indicating she’d hung up.
Lacey winced. Naomi hadn’t even said hello. All she’d done was spit out some bitter words, and left it at that.
She glanced furtively at her father. But he seemed to have already gotten over Naomi’s reaction. In fact, he actually looked like he might be, dare she say, enjoying this somewhat.
“Ha!” Shirley said, triumphantly. “At least one of my children is loyal.”
And with that, the call cut out entirely.
&nbs
p; Lacey leaned back against the wall, eyebrows raised, and exhaled slowly.
Frank started to chuckle. “Ah, she hasn’t changed a bit! Always a firecracker, your mother. The bickering we used to have.”
Lacey frowned. She couldn’t make sense of it at all. She’d always hoped at the back of her mind that it was Shirley’s disapproving nitpicking that had driven her father off in the first place—indeed, her mom’s attitude toward her often drove a wedge between them—but during the call, Frank had actually seemed to enjoy the back and forth. So then why had he left? Because he was bored? Because he wanted to take solo cliff walks and eat bangers and mash in Wilfordshire?
Lacey didn’t know what to think anymore. There was obviously so much more to the story than the one-sided account her mother had given her over the years. She wanted to ask a million questions, but the call had utterly exhausted her. When it came to unraveling the mystery of her father’s abandonment, she was going to have to take it slowly and with a pinch of salt.
Or a gallon.
CHAPTER SIX
As soon as Lacey awoke the next morning, she was struck by a feeling that something was wrong.
She sat straight up, taking in the silence, trying in her groggy state to recall the events of the day before—of her parents’ thirty-year overdue speakerphone argument in the laundry room—before remembering her father sleeping down the hall in the small guest bedroom.
Chester was lying asleep on the patchwork comforter at the foot of her bed, just like normal. Only it wasn’t normal, because Chester never let guests to Crag Cottage sleep in. It was one of his naughtiest habits, pawing at the guest room door at the crack of dawn, well before the alarm had rung, too eager for a novel person’s ear scratches to wait until after breakfast.
“Dad!” Lacey exclaimed suddenly.
She tore off her covers and shot out of bed. Her sudden movement woke Chester, and he flashed her a sleepy, confused look. Then, just as quickly as she herself had leapt up, he too scrambled from the bed to the floor and went bolting out of the room into the corridor, as if remembering there was a guest he was supposed to be bothering.
Lacey’s heart flew into her mouth. If Chester could sense something was wrong, then something was definitely wrong.
She hurried after him, her mind turning over a million panicked thoughts at a rate of knots.
The moment she stepped into the corridor, she discovered that the door to the guest room was standing wide open. She could see straight into the small room. The bed was empty.
“Dad?” Lacey cried, her voice a panicked wail as terror took hold of her.
Had he up and left? Had the call with his ex-wife and surly younger daughter been too much for him to handle? He’d seemed to take it all in his stride, but perhaps he’d just been putting on a front for Lacey’s benefit. It wasn’t like disappearing out of the blue wasn’t in his wheelhouse of moves…
“Dad?” Lacey tried again, hearing the fearful childlike quiver in her voice as it echoed through the silent, empty cottage.
She hurried back to her room and over to the window, pulling back the white lace curtain. She peered down to the gravel-covered driveway. Her champagne-colored car was parked alone. Her father’s cattle van was nowhere to be seen. The only sign it had ever been there were muddy tire tracks leading down the asphalt cliff road.
“Chester,” Lacey cried, her chest heaving with grief. “He’s gone!”
Chester let out a shrill bark in response, and Lacey thundered down the steps two at a time. When she reached the landing she halted abruptly, spotting a piece of paper pinned to the back of the front door. A note! Her dad had abandoned her again and left nothing more than a scribbled apology?
She ripped the note off the pin, her pulse pounding in her ears, and quickly scanned the words, anticipating some kind of explanation as to why he’d chosen to abandon her all over again.
Instead, the note simply read:
Gone to fix the security system,
Dad.
Lacey read it three times, before her brain finally accepted the words. Breathing raggedly, she rested forehead against the door, realizing she simply wouldn’t be able to fully relax again until she had actually laid eyes on him and confirmed his note was true.
“Come on, Chester, let’s get out of here.”
She fetched his leash from the back door, her body feeling as weary as if she’d not slept that night at all, and heaved on her warm parka. Then she and Chester took off down the cliff road—the shorter route to work—without even so much as a drop of coffee passing between her lips.
When she reached the high street and spotted the muddy cattle van parked haphazardly against the sidewalk outside her store, Lacey let out a breath of relief. Frank hadn’t been lying in his note. He really had woken up early and gone to the store.
She beelined for it, Chester trotting along with her.
At this early hour of the morning, Wilfordshire’s high street was only just coming to life, with vendors raising their shutters and putting out their sandwich boards. She’d lived in Wilfordshire for almost a full year now, and the high street was being prepared for its final seasonal display—winter. The orange and black autumn bunting was gone, replaced now by sparkly snowflakes. It was pretty, and the familiar sight reassured Lacey. Yet, with the huge cattle van parked in the middle of the street, it took on a new unfamiliarity.
Lacey reached the store to find the shutters were still down. She frowned. “How did he get in?” she mused aloud, rattling the store keys in her pocket. Without them, how had her father even gained access to the store?
She operated the mechanism to raise the shutters and they rattled up into their open position. Then she unlocked the door and headed inside.
Immediately, she was confronted with a mess of wires like spaghetti covering the floor.
Lace halted. “Dad?” she called.
Frank popped his head out from the back room. He was holding a screwdriver in one hand. “Morning,” he said jovially.
He was clearly unaware his going AWOL that morning would have such a profound effect on her, and Lacey decided to keep it to herself. She didn’t want to rock the boat, especially after yesterday evening’s tense four-way conversation. Besides, there appeared to be more pressing issues to discuss… like the tangled mess of wires all over the floor.
“So, what’s going on here?” Lacey asked, pacing over to Frank. “It looks like you’ve dismantled the entire system.”
“I have,” Frank replied, simply.
Lacey’s eyes widened. “What? Why?”
“Well, I didn’t have much choice,” Frank replied. “Whoever installed the original system did such a terrible job, the whole thing needs replacing.”
Lacey didn’t actually know who that was. She’d inherited the clunky old system from whoever had rented the store before her, Chester’s previous owners, who’d left in such a hurry they’d not paid their final bills, or taken their antique light fittings with them.
“But I—I thought you were just going to fix it?” Lacey stammered. “Not throw the whole thing in the trash! How am I supposed to run my store like this?” She gazed helplessly at the wires covering the floor.
Frank reached for a mug of tea on the shelf beside him and sipped. He was seemingly oblivious to her concerns. “It’ll be worth the small, short-term disruption for the long-term security,” he said, with an air of wisdom.
Lacey folded her arms with frustration. Her dad was trying to parent her again. Well, he was thirty-three years too late!
“How did you even get in?” she demanded.
“Back door was unlocked,” Frank said, with that parental warning tone in his voice.
Gina! Lacey thought angrily. Her scatterbrained friend was always forgetting to lock the back door behind her after watering the plants. It annoyed Lacey every time, but this time her forgetfulness had not only proven her dad’s point that she was too lax on security, it had also given him the opportunity to
do all this damage unsupervised. If she’d been here to oversee him, there wouldn’t currently be a tangle of wires covering the entire floor!
“You couldn’t have known it was going to be unlocked when you left this morning,” Lacey said. “What were you going to do if you couldn’t get in?”
“Oh, I was going to get in,” her dad said confidently. “I’d already clocked three easy entrance points when I was here yesterday. The window in the restroom is loose in its frame, so anyone determined enough could pop the whole thing out with one of these.” He waved his screwdriver. “That style of French patio door you have in the auction room is notoriously easy to jimmy open. And finally… the unlocked cat flap. If you reach through up to the armpit, it’s possible to reach the lock. Total weak point, and you don’t even have a cat!”
Lacey’s eyebrows rose slowly up her forehead with astonishment. She’d had no idea her store was so vulnerable. But then again, she’d never looked at it through the eyes of a parent trying to protect his child.
Gina’s words from yesterday came back to her. Her dad was finding excuses to spend time with her. If this was a safe way for them to bond, perhaps she ought to just take it.
She whistled between her teeth. “Wow. It really sounds like a lot needs to be changed.”
“Oh yes, there’s a lot more you need to do here than fix up the security system,” Frank continued. “All these doors need new locks. Shutters at the back and the windows. An alarm linked to the police in case of a hold-up.” He shook his head. “It’s going to take a long time.”
“That sounds like a lot of work,” she continued, turning to face him. “Do you think you’d be able to do it all?”
“Me?” Frank said, looking surprised. “Well… if it’s not too much of an imposition on you having me here? I mean … I could obviously take a look at all these issues for you. And I wouldn’t charge you for the work, of course, since you’re saving me a small fortune by letting me stay at the cottage, and spending time with you is all the payment I need…”
Lacey patted his arm. “Thanks, Dad. I appreciate it. Take as long as you need. You’re not an imposition. Okay?”