As the night progressed and they drank more wine, Rachel told her father about her financial situation, how she had loaned money to her friends, then waived fees and class costs for people who really wanted to learn weaving, and how Mr. Valicielo wanted to sue her, how she hadn’t been able to find a teaching job like she wanted, so she had to take a job with a temp agency that was sending her on some really bizarre assignments.
Dad took it all in stride, she had to admit. There had been an initial burst of fatherly outrage about her finances, but then he’d laughed at some of her jobs, nodded his agreement that she was doing the right thing.
“I don’t mind the struggle,” she said, voicing aloud a feeling she’d had for a while. “All my life I’ve had whatever I wanted and I never had to really think about it. But most people I know go through life like I am right now, working to make ends meet. I’m really learning a lot,” she said, realizing just how much for the first time.
“Yeah,” Dad responded with a world-weary sigh. “It’s a different world than you girls were raised in. There was a time your mother was pregnant and I worried about putting food on the table. Jesus, it’s been so long I hardly remember what it’s like anymore.” He paused, looked into space, seeing something in the distant past, she thought. “So, good for you, Rachel,” he at last said with a smile. “Good for you for willing to learn that important lesson. Most kids who come from your kind of money couldn’t be bothered.”
She hadn’t set out to learn a lesson. But she’d set out to crawl out from beneath her father’s long shadow, she realized.
Dad asked about the phone call and she told him about Mike, how they’d met, about their date tomorrow. “Good, good. But he’s not the one on your mind.”
His rare perception on that front completely unnerved her. “There’s no one on my mind,” she started, but Dad’s chuckling silenced her.
“So all those trips to the window and staring off into space and not hearing people talk to you was just . . . what?”
Rachel tried to think of a good excuse. Flynn seemed too huge, too important to share just yet. But Dad was smiling kindly, and she couldn’t help herself. She started with a bit of a stammering, “Well . . . now that you mention it,” she said, and proceeded to tell him, in spite of an inner voice screaming at her to stop, about Flynn. How they’d first met, how she kept running into him, how he had enrolled in her class, and how she hadn’t believed a guy like him would be interested in a woman like her (that made Dad mad, and she had to endure his lecture on how she was really too good for any guy). She even told him, in a moment of sheer madness, how she’d said some things to Flynn she shouldn’t have and sent him running.
“What things?” Dad asked.
“Things,” she said, staring into her wineglass.
“Well, if they are the things I think they are, then maybe this is the point you should take the bull by the horns.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, call him up and tell him to get over it.”
She laughed. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. He needs to know you haven’t already built the house with the picket fence and picked out the names of your children, but that you are a mature woman who wants to explore what’s between the two of you. And if that’s too uncomfortable for him, then better to know it now, right?”
Wow. A mature woman.
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Rachel—the business with the witchcraft notwithstanding, of course. If this guy has half a brain, he’ll understand. And he’ll know what a gem he has in you.”
A gem? What a funky dream this was turning out to be.
They talked until it was obvious Dad was tiring. Before he said good night, Dad grabbed her in a big bear hug, embraced her with a strength he did not look to have, and kissed her on top of her head. “I love you, baby girl. More than you’ll probably ever know,” he said.
Her vision was misty, but Rachel smiled. “I love you, too, Dad. I always have.” She waved her fingers at him as he started upstairs and wished he’d hurry before she started bawling. When he’d made it upstairs, she decided maybe he was right. Maybe she should grab the bull by the horns.
She hesitantly picked up the phone. Then instantly put it down. And picked it up again and dialed his number as quickly as she could so that she wouldn’t chicken out. And then she stood there, listening to each ring, her heart pounding harder and harder and harder until at last his answering machine picked up.