Summer Light: A Novel by Rice Luanne

Author:Rice, Luanne [Rice, Luanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Once Kylie began to call Martin “Daddy,” she didn’t stop. May had been unaware that so many sentences had the word “Daddy” in them. Such as, “Yesterday my teacher wore a blue dress to school, but Martha Cole spilled red paint on the floor and when Miss Gingras knelt down to clean it up, she got it on her dress and then she had two purple knee prints right in front—Daddy!” Or, “Charlotte sent me an early birthday card, Daddy, with a picture of a canoe on the front, and she said next summer she’ll take me on an overnight canoe camping trip, but I have to wear a life vest. Right, Daddy?”

Martin seemed to thrive on Kylie’s exuberant affection. His face lit up every time she said the name, and every night he was on the road and called home, he asked to speak to Kylie before hanging up the phone. The Bruins had made the play-offs again, and because of the schedule, Martin would probably be away the day of her party.

“Is she upset?” he asked.

“Disappointed,” May said.

“It’s weird,” Martin told her. “I want to win, you know I do, but I want to be there almost more. I don’t want to miss her party. Is she still nervous?”

“Well, she’s a little afraid of being embarrassed,” May said. “Some of these Boston kids have been taking figure skating for two years now. They’re so much better than she is.”

“Figure skating,” Martin said, snorting. “Ballet on ice—ridiculous.”

“They’re little girls.” May smiled.

“Girls can play hockey, too,” Martin said. “Kylie’s a natural—I can tell. Nat was, and so was Genny, as a matter of fact. I’ll work with her when the season’s over. We’ll do drills, I’ll teach her to shoot. Figure skating!” He laughed.

May, who had watched Kylie practicing pirouettes in front of the mirror, smiled. She had stood around the corner when Kylie didn’t know she was there, watching her pretend to glide across the ice as if she were dancing Swan Lake. Up on her toes, twirling around, skating across her bedroom. Knowing that hockey was not the stuff of Kylie’s dreams, May smiled as she asked, “Natalie liked to play hockey?”

“She was damn good at it,” Martin said.

“But she liked it?”

There was a long silence on the line. May waited for Martin to speak. She could almost see him sitting there, thinking about her, and she wished they were in the same room.

“Um,” Martin said, clearing his throat. “I guess her preference would have been figure skating. She never told me, though.”

“How did you find out?”

“Her mother let me know. She told me Natalie’s dream was to someday skate in the Ice Capades. Her idol was Michelle Kwan.”

“Trisha told you that?”

“Yes. We tried to get back together for a short while, but it would never work. She was always pointing out how far apart I was from Natalie. How I didn’t know her likes and dislikes, how I didn’t even know my own daughter. Merde!”

May was silent, taking in the information that Martin and Trisha had once tried to reconcile.

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