“Well, you’re just visiting, not staying.” Sophie tried to find her place in the conversation. “I’m Sophie.”
“I know,” the little girl said. “That’s why I came.”
“Okay, now you’re weirding me out,” Sophie said. “Who are you?”
“Dillie Tucker,” the girl said, and Sophie said, “Tucker? Are you related to Phin?”
“He’s my daddy,” Dillie said, and Sophie lost her breath.
“Your daddy.” Sophie regrouped and tried to keep her voice light. Well, Amy and Davy had warned her. Always listen to family. “And how’s your mommy?”
“She’s dead,” Dillie said, and Sophie tried hard to feel sympathetic about that instead of relieved. The poor kid was motherless, for heaven’s sake. “She died a long time, ago,” Dillie went on. “I was a baby. It was very sad.”
“Oh,” Sophie said. “Yes, I’m sure it was. So, uh, you live with your dad.” There’s something he might have mentioned.
“And my grandma Liz,” Dillie said. “But I would like to move.” She turned to look at the farmhouse, and Sophie had one strange moment when she thought Dillie might be house hunting. She seemed organized enough for it.
“How old are you?” Sophie said.
“Nine,” Dillie said. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-two,” Sophie said. “Explain to me again why you’re here.”
“Don’t you want me?” Dillie made her eyes huge and pitiful, and Sophie said, “That’s pretty good, kid, but you’re out of your league, I grew up with a pro. What are you up to?”
“What’s a pro?” Dillie said.
“Dillie,” Sophie said warningly.
“Jamie Barclay says her mother says that she heard that you’re my dad’s girlfriend,” Dillie said. “Are you?”
“No,” Sophie said. “Who’s Jamie Barclay?”
“Because it’s okay if you are,” Dillie said. “I can stand you.”
“That’s very generous,” Sophie said. “I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Why not?” Dillie said.
Sophie decided there was nowhere the conversation could go that wouldn’t be dicey. “How about some ice cream before I walk you back to your grandma’s?”
“Yes, thank you,” Dillie said, and then she grew very still as Sophie stood up, and Lassie got to his feet and yawned.
Sophie watched Dillie watch Lassie. “Are you afraid of dogs?” she asked gently.
“No.” Dillie stuck her chin out and just for a moment she looked so much like Phin that Sophie sucked in her breath. “I’m just not accustomed to them.”
“This is a very nice dog,” Sophie said. “His name is Lassie Dempsey. But if you’re unaccustomed, I can make him stay out here while we go inside.”
“No.” Dillie seemed uncertain. “What kind of dog is he?”
“A con dog,” Sophie said. “It’s all right, Dillie. I promise he won’t hurt you.”
“All right,” Dillie said, and then Sophie walked off the dock with Lassie close behind her as always and stopped next to the rigid little girl.
“Do you want to pet him?”
“Maybe.” Dillie swallowed and gave the dog a gingerly pat. Lassie looked up at her with his You’re new at this look. “His legs are short.”
“But his heart is large.” Sophie held out her hand. “Come on. We’ll get you a Dove Bar and walk you home to your grandmother.”
“What’s a Dove Bar?”
“An insanely good ice cream bar.”
Dillie looked at her for a long moment and then took her hand. “There’s no hurry,” she said, and they went up to the house.
An hour later, after extended conversation about school, Softball, Dillie’s driver’s license, dessert, Lassie, Jamie Barclay, Grandma Junie, Grandma Liz, Dillie’s dad, her hopes, her dreams, her past, her present, and her plans for the future, Sophie had a new respect for Phin. The kid never shut up; clearly nobody had ever turned on her and told her to put a sock in it. That took massively patient parenting skills. Phin really was good at everything.
Dillie also ate like a horse. When they’d gotten to the kitchen, Dillie had looked at the bag of potato chips on the table and said, “I missed lunch, you know.” Sophie made her a ham sandwich, followed by potato chips, followed by an apple and a banana, washed down with lemonade. “This is excellent,” Dillie said, reaching for another chip. “Is it time for dessert?”
They were finishing up their Dove Bars and singing along to the sixth replay of “I Only Want to Be with You” so Dillie could learn the words and Sophie wouldn’t have to hear any more about Jamie Barclay, when Amy came into the kitchen.
“It’s hot as hell out there,” she said, and Sophie said, “Meet Dillie Tucker and stop swearing.”
Amy blinked at Dillie. “Hello.”
“Dillie is Phin’s daughter,” Sophie said.
“Hello.” Amy sat down at the table. “I knew it. I told you so.”
“This is my sister Amy,” Sophie told Dillie. “Ignore her.”
“I don’t have any sisters,” Dillie said around the last of her Dove Bar. “Or a dog. It’s very sad.”
“Tragic,” Sophie held her stick down so Lassie could lick the last of the ice cream off.
Dillie turned huge gray eyes on Amy. “I don’t have a mommy, either.”
“That’s a relief,” Amy said, sitting back, and Dillie looked shocked.
“I told you,” Sophie said. “We’re pros. Don’t try it on us.”
“Well, it is sad,” Dillie said in her regular voice. “I love Grandma Liz, but I’ve had enough.”
“I sympathize,” Amy said.
“I’m not following here,” Sophie said. “What do you want?”
“I want to live with my dad by ourselves,” Dillie said. “But he says we have to live with Grandma Liz because somebody has to take care of me.”
“Couldn’t he get Nurse Ratched?” Amy said. “That’d be a step up in warmth.”
Dillie concentrated on Sophie. “So then Jamie Barclay said you were Daddy’s girlfriend.”
“I’m not,” Sophie said. “We’re leaving next Sunday.”
“You don’t have to,” Dillie said. “You could stay here. I like you. And I think I need a mom.” She surveyed Sophie, who was trying to think of something to say, and added, “Maybe you. I don’t know.”
“Don’t get confused because of the dog and the Dove Bar,” Sophie said. “I’m really not mom material.”
“I don’t know,” Amy said. “They might be pretty good indicators.”
“You’re not helping,” Sophie told her.
“She raised me, you know,” Amy told Dillie. “She was great.”
Dillie frowned. “I thought you were her sister.”
“My mother died when I was little,” Amy said. “It was very sad.”
“Don’t try that on me,” Dillie said. “I’m a pro, too.”
“I like you, kid,” Amy said. “Was your mom a Dempsey?”
“No, a Miller,” Dillie said. “Her name was Diane. She was very pretty. Grandma Junie has pictures. She looked like Sophie.”
“Time to go home,” Sophie said, suddenly feeling depressed.
On their way out, they ran into Davy. “This is my brother, Davy,” Sophie said.
“I don’t have any brothers,” Dillie said, looking up at him. “It’s very sad.”
“Not necessarily,” Sophie said. “This is Dillie. Phin’s daughter.”
“Is it?” Davy smiled down at Dillie. “Very nice to meet you, Dillie. And how’s your mama?”
“She’s dead,” Dillie said. “It’s very—”
“The mayor gets to live another day,” Davy told Sophie. He smiled down again at Dillie. “I was just going to teach this dumb dog how to play Frisbee. Want to help?”
“Yes,” Dillie said, and then looked at Sophie.
“Ten minutes,” Sophie said. “Lassie’s legs are so short, that’s all she’s going to last anyway.”
“That’s about my attention span, so it should work out nicely,” Davy said. “Come on, kid. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Davy?” Sophie said, and watched her brother take her lover’s daughter out to play.
She had the sinking feeling Davy would be critiquing Phin’s parenting technique all through dinner.
When Phin picked Dillie up from Junie’s, her T-shirt had a chocolate smear on it. “What happened?” he said, and chunky little Junie said, “She must have found some chocolate while I was napping. She won’t say.”
“She won’t, huh?” Phin looked at his daughter, who stuck her chin out.
“I’ll tell you about it when I get my driver’s license,” she said.
“Get in the car,” Phin said. “You’ll tell me about it now.”
But in the car, Dillie stonewalled him. “You have lots of stuff you won’t tell me about. So now I do, too.”
“Dill,” Phin began warningly, but Dillie began to hum to drown him out. She had no musical ability whatsoever, so he couldn’t tell what she was humming. “You know, you’re asking for it here,” he began, but then she threw back her head and belted out, “Now listen, honey,” to really drown him out, and he pulled off the road.
“Where,” he said, “did you learn ‘I Only Want to Be with You’?”
Chapter Nine
Sophie met Phin at the door that evening, still not sure how she felt about that afternoon. “Hello, Dad.”
“It never came up,” Phin said. “Or I’d have told you.”
“She’s a pretty big deal to never have come up,” Sophie said.
Phin looked past her into the living room. Amy and Davy were on the couch, listening with a great deal of interest.
“How you doin‘, Harvard?” Davy called. “Or is this a bad time to ask?”
“Can I talk to you alone?” Phin said to Sophie, and she said, “Anyplace but a bedroom,” so they went down to the dock.
“It’s all right,” Sophie said when they were sitting, watching the river muddy by. “It was just a shock. Especially when she said I looked like her mother. I mean, it explains a lot about why you—”
“You don’t look like her mother,” Phin said. “Diane had dark hair, but she was shorter than you are, and younger than you are, and her face was different. Most of the pictures Dillie has are from far away. She just sees a woman with dark hair.”
Sophie turned away. “I didn’t even know you had a wife. I know you Tuckers are detached, I know you’re going to forget my name before I’m back on the highway—”
“I married Diane because she was pregnant,” Phin said, his voice flat. “She got pregnant because she thought I had money.”
Sophie drew back a little. “Women don’t get pregnant all by themselves. Men help. And of all the men I’ve slept with, you are the most Johnny-on-the-spot with a condom—”
“She told me she was on the pill and I believed her.” Phin drew back, too, until they were sitting apart like strangers. “I don’t make the same mistake twice.”
Sophie’s temper flared. “You think I’m trying—”
“Of course not.” Phin bit off the words. “Christ, Sophie.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t think about her much. We were only together a couple of months, and she died in an accident three months after Dillie was born.”
“An accident,” Sophie said. “The Old Bridge?”
“No.” Phin stared out across the river. “She died over there. She came home in the middle of the night and fell down the porch steps and hit her head and bled out before her mother woke up and found her.”
“It must have been awful for Dillie.”
“Dillie never knew her,” Phin said. “Diane had complications after Dillie was born, so I took the baby home to my mother. Diane never came after her when she got out of the hospital.”
“You weren’t living with her?”
Phin closed his eyes. “My marriage lasted about two months, and they were the worst two months of my life. When my dad died, I moved back to the Hill to stay with my mother because she collapsed. I thought I was going to lose them both.”
Sophie thought of Liz’s frozen face. “That could explain a few things.”
“And I never went back. Mom was rocky, and Diane was happier without me as long as she could keep the river house.” He shook his head. “She’d moved up with the in people. She didn’t want me, she just wanted my name and my house.”
Sophie said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Phin said. “I didn’t want her, either. I was stupid, and I paid. But I got Dillie, so I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Dillie’s worth everything.”
Sophie nodded. “I can’t believe Diane didn’t want her baby.”
“She wasn’t the maternal type,” Phin said. “And I think there was another man by then. She was spending a lot of money and she wasn’t getting that kind of cash from me.”
Sophie felt awful. Some guy that soon, right after... She straightened. That couldn’t be right. No woman wanted to date right after she’d given birth. “Right after the hospital? And you never heard who the guy was?”
“No. I didn’t care. I don’t care now.”
Sophie looked at him in exasperation. “Phin, this is Temptation. Everybody in town would have lined up to tell you who the guy was.”
“Sophie, I didn’t care. I had a mother who was half crazy with grief and a baby I didn’t know how to take care of and a brand-new job as mayor to fill out my dad’s term. Diane was the least of my problems.”
“She was the least of your problems once she moved back to the river house and let you alone.”
He frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”
Your mother bought off your wife. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter what you did nine years ago.” Sophie stared at the river. “So Dillie told you she came to visit. Are you upset?”
He nodded, and she felt like hell. “It makes things more complicated. She’s decided she needs a mother, and I don’t want her getting attached and thinking you’re it.”
“I think I want to go in now,” Sophie said. “This conversation is depressing the hell out of me.”
“I know,” Phin said. “It’s not doing a damn thing for me, either.”
Neither of them moved.
“So other than that, how was your day?” Sophie said.
“Stephen got the porn permit pushed through,” Phin said. “It’s the first time I ever opposed something that the council still voted for. He’s also managed to convince damn near everybody that I’m involved in this movie, so if anything goes wrong out here, you’re taking me down with you.”
“Good to know,” Sophie said.
“And my mother thinks you’re the new Diane. She warned me Dillie would find out. That’s the thing about my mother. She’s always right.”
He made it sound as if he’d been doing something vile, and Sophie flinched. “You know, nobody’s forcing you to come out here and play with the unclean. Nobody’s making you cross the tracks.”
“I think I’ll go home now,” Phin said and stood up. “I’ll call you.”
Sophie nodded and didn’t turn to watch him walk away, trying hard not to cry. She didn’t turn at all until Lassie poked her cold nose at her. “Hey,” she said, blinking tears back fast, and turned to find Davy standing there with the dog and two unwrapped Dove Bars.
“Want me to beat him up?” he said, handing her one of the ice cream bars.
“No.” Sophie sniffed once and took the bar, patting the dock with her free hand. “Sit down and stop talking big.”
Davy sat beside her, and the dog took her other side and looked longingly at the Dove Bar.
“He was mad because you met his kid, right? You’re good enough to screw but not to bring home to the family.” Davy bit into his Dove Bar as Sophie winced. “Okay, that hurts,” he said around his ice cream. “But cop to it now while there’s still time. He’s not right for you
.”
“Nobody’s right for me,” Sophie bit into the sweet chocolate and let it melt in her mouth. It was a great comfort, but it wasn’t enough. She thought of Frank saying, “It wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t thought, for just that one night, that there was more.” Right there with you, Frank.