False Impressions by Laura Caldwell

Author:Laura Caldwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Suspense
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-09-18T05:00:00+00:00

34

“So, how’s the dating going?” I asked my dad.

We were sitting at breakfast place called Toast in Lincoln Park. Across the table, my father wrapped his hands around a white coffee cup and blinked under his copper glasses. I had never seen him do that before, the quick blinking.

I was about to retract my question when he broke into a smile. Then he quickly dropped it, as if the expression had embarrassed him.

“What?” I said.

He seemed to not be able to help it—he laughed, then dropped the laugh just as quickly. But he answered. “It’s just so remarkable.”

“You met someone?” I hoped he didn’t hear the surprise in my voice.

“No, I mean, I’ve been out with a few people,” he said. “But they seem to expect me to…” He looked around as if searching for the word. “Well, they seem to want me to…emote.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, they want you to talk, to share yourself.” He said the word share as if it were something exotic.

“And you don’t like to share.” It was not a question.

He shrugged grandly, and I could see that he’d retained some of the gestures he’d acquired from his Italian mother and from living in Italy. Italians are masters of the grand shrug, one that can be used as a response to anything.

“Look, when your mom and I were young, nobody really shared—” he made air quotes “—as they call it. And then I was out of the country.”

“Yeah, you were out of this life,” I said. Sometimes when I was talking to my dad, I snapped at him out of the blue, as if some comment had formed at the outer reaches of my memory and came out of my mouth before the rest of my brain could process it.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No problem.” My father looked at his coffee cup, nonchalant, then continued, as if eager to talk. “The thing is, when I left the country, when I was…as you said, out of this life, I kept a low profile. I never ‘shared’ with anyone. I never talked to anyone.”

“Except for Elena,” I said, referring to my dad’s sister.

He gave a single nod. “Yes, with the exception of Elena. But I never did know everything about her, did I? She never fully shared with me.”

Our waitress put our meals in front of us—oatmeal for me. I looked at my father’s plate, which held something called a pesto scramble. “So, you know,” he continued, “I have an entire protocol in my head for determining whether or not something is classified. On a number of different levels.” He shook his head now, as if not wanting to bore me with the details. Meanwhile, I stared at him, rapt. Every once in a while, he let me behind the curtain of Christopher McNeil, and as Madeline had once said about art, it dazzled me.

“The thing is…about the sharing…” His words died away and he stared at the ceiling as if searching for his words there.

“They want you to share, and when you don’t, they get annoyed at you?”

“No.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.