Page 81 of Protecting You
“After they left, I decided to prove Mom wrong—and Dad right. I thought I’d make him proud.”
By her smirk, things hadn’t gone according to plan.
“That evening, while the babysitter played with my little sisters upstairs, I decided to cook dinner. Mom had gotten some take-and-bake pizzas. I preheated the oven, then slid the pizzas in and set the timer. Once they were cooking, I joined the game my sisters and the babysitter were playing, thinking about how surprised they’d be when the timer went off.”
“What happened?”
“Before, when my mother had gotten take-home pizzas, they’d come on their own baking trays. But these didn’t.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah. I put them in the oven on the cardboard, and the cardboard caught fire. It wouldn’t have been a huge deal if I’d been watching them. I would have noticed and gotten the fire put out. But we were upstairs. I was just picking up the scent of smoke when the alarm went off.
“I thought the oven contained most of the damage, but the babysitter insisted we call the fire department anyway. Which…it’s stupid in retrospect because obviously, I wasn’t going to be able to hide the damage, but I didn’t want my father to find out what I’d done. That was my biggest fear. Not the fact that I could’ve killed us all, but that I might get in trouble. That I might disappoint him.”
Callan wasn’t sure what to say, so he just nodded for her to continue.
“The fire department came. If I’d been in charge, the whole house would’ve burned down. Somehow, the fire had spread into the walls. We lost most of the kitchen, but it could’ve been so much worse.”
“Aw, I’m sorry.” He reached for her, but if she saw his hand outstretched, she pretended not to.
“I’ll never forget the disappointment on my father’s face that night. He could barely look at me.”
“I’m sure it just scared him.”
Alyssa met his eyes. “He called me a stupid, foolish little girl.”
Anger sent Callan’s heart pounding. “He said that? To your face?”
“He said it to my mother. I’m sure he didn’t mean for me to hear.”
“Your father sounds like a world-class jerk.”
“He’s not.” Alyssa’s lips slid into an almost-smile. “He was just angry and disappointed.”
“You were a kid.”
“I know that. He shouldn’t have said those things, even if he believed them. Dad was never great at the whole fatherhood thing.” Now that her story was over, she seemed to relax a little. “I think being a parent takes practice. It takes time, but Dad was always too busy, off on assignments or at work. I mean, we lived in Maine, but he worked in DC. He usually came home on weekends, but there were times when we’d go weeks without seeing him. Even after he retired from the Agency and went into the private sector, he was away as much as he was home. I don’t think he ever really learned how to be a father.”
Alyssa couldn’t know how her words wounded Callan.
Here he was, judging Gavin Wright for being a lousy parent while he himself had hardly spent any time with his own child.
Gavin had probably felt capable at work. He’d probably felt incompetent at home.
He’d probably told himself that his daughters didn’t need him. They had their mother, after all. But Alyssa had needed her father’s love and approval.
The difference was that, no matter what Peri did, Callan adored her. But if his little girl didn’t know that, what good would his love prove to be?
That was a question that required contemplation.
The answers would require him to change his life and dedicate himself to his daughter.
Alyssa was watching him as though trying to read his thoughts.
“I’m sorry about what I said last night during our fake argument.” He couldn’t remember his exact words. Something about how she was working for Charles to prove to her father she wasn’t a failure.
Maybe that wasn’t really what drove her, but he guessed she had to fight that motivation a lot.
