Okay. All right. This was ridiculous. She was just being her usual insecure self. Flynn hadn’t called because she was working; she’d told him she’d be working. So he’d call tonight. Crisis averted.
An hour later, when the phone rang, Rachel almost killed herself getting to it. “Hello?” she asked breathlessly, grimacing at how teenaged-anxious she sounded.
“Hey!” Dagne said.
“Hey, Dagne,” Rachel sighed, the teenager gone right out of her. “What’s up?”
“I have to come over,” Dagne said. “We’ve got to do another spell.”
“We do?”
“The mistake I made with Glenn is way out of control. He won’t leave me alone! I’ll be over later, okay?”
“Fine,” Rachel said, but Dagne had already hung up. Rachel went back to her dissertation work at the dining room table.
A couple of hours later, when her eyes were beginning to blur, she searched her pantry for something diety to eat, and finding nothing, gave in and made herself some pancakes. But with each flip of the cake, she glanced at the clock, noted he still hadn’t called. And then, to make herself as miserable as she possibly knew how, she made a game of trying to remember every single word he’d said last night.
This was stupid.
Pancakes and schoolwork were not working, so Rachel stacked the dirty dishes in the sink and went upstairs to take a hot bath.
As usual, she placed candles around her old clawfoot tub, found her current romance novel, and placed it next to the tub. Just as she was dipping her toe in the steaming water, the phone rang.
“Dammit!” she shouted, and fumbled with a bathsheet that she managed to get partially around her as she dashed into the bedroom to pick up the phone on the fourth ring. “Yes, hello?” she said breathlessly.
“Rachel, it’s your father.”
Oh. God. She closed her eyes, drew a long, fortifying breath. “Hi, Dad.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, instantly suspicious. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? I’m your father and I am calling to see how my baby girl is doing.”
Since when? “I’m doing fine,” she said, tightening her towel around her. “How are you?”
“Good.”
“Feeling better?”
“I don’t know if you can feel better with chemo, to tell you the truth. So listen, kiddo,” he said, before she could comment on the chemo, “your mom and I were talking, and I’ve been thinking . . . I don’t like the way we ended things when you left New York.”
Jesus, this was about her leaving in a huff. Why now? Why why why why now? “I shouldn’t have left like that,” she said, knowing it was better to give in than to argue.
“Well . . . I guess I had it coming,” he admitted, surprising the holy hell out of her. “But I’ve been thinking I’d really like to come to Providence and see you.”
Her blood stopped pumping there for a minute. “W-what?” she stammered, but her mind was screaming No! NO, NO! “Dad!” she said, laughing nervously. “You don’t need to do that! I mean, you’ve got chemo, right?”
“Not for much longer. I could come in a couple of weeks or so.”
That launched Rachel right off the bed and into a full pace around her room. “But . . . but you said you were going back to the ranch to recuperate after it was over. You don’t want to come to Providence. It’s cold and wet—”
“But I do want to come to Providence, baby girl. We need to talk about what you are going to do. I want to help you plan it out. I’m starting to realize that your reluctance to enter the real world has a lot to do with your insecurities and perhaps your inexperience, and I think if we plan this together—”
“I am not reluctant,” she said, feeling desperate now, as she had never heard her dad talk so . . . so therapeutically. “I just need to finish my dissertation.”
“I need to see that bungalow anyway,” he said, talking over her, “because when you do move on, which you’ll have to do if you want a real job, then I’ll need to sell that house.”
“Sell my house?” she repeated weakly.
“Well, sure,” he said. “You’re not going to stay at Brown forever. In fact, you’re going to get your butt out of Brown and get on with your life,” he said, his voice taking on a familiar and overbearing tone.
“I know, but—”
“Speaking of jobs, what have you done?”
“Actually Dad,” she said, feeling her heart start to pump again, “I got a job. Not a big one, but enough to pay the bills.”
“Really?” he asked, sounding extremely skeptical.
“Really!” she lied. “You don’t have to worry about me, Dad. I understood what you said and I took it to heart.”
“That’s great, Rachel. That’s really great. And what about your degree? Did you land on a dissertation topic?”
“I’m working on it,” she said, trying to sound upbeat and optimistic.
Dad didn’t say anything for a moment. “Why didn’t you call to tell me about the job? What sort of job did you get?” he asked, his voice full of suspicion now.