Page 23 of Level With Me
“Then you’ll let me know.”
He wouldn’t budge.
Concern had tugged at me as I’d set up the video call, though the moment Dad picked up, it slipped several notches. Dad was at some kind of beach bar. There were palm trees swaying behind him, and though he was muted and hadn’t told us what the emergency was, he appeared to be alive and well. And sipping a drink with an umbrella in it.
I leaned back on the couch next to Chelsea now, annoyed that Griff had been right.
“Dad, this better be good,” I said. I knew he could hear us even if we couldn’t hear him.
Dad picked up his phone, skewing the view behind him so for a moment all we saw was bright blue sky, then he angled it so his camera gave a vertical upshot of his face; specifically, straight up his nostrils and the forest of his nose hairs.
“Oh my God,” Chelsea said, laughing.
I laughed too, despite my quickly growing irritation.
“Dad, gross,” Jude said.
The only good thing about Dad texting like this and freaking me out was it was a distraction from the anxiousness I’d been feeling all day about dinner tonight. But now that the worry about Dad had abated, nerves skittered through my stomach.
Finally, Dad’s voice came through. “Hello?”
“Yes!” I said. “It’s working.”
“Where are your brothers?” he asked.
“Eli’s supposed to be coming,” I said. “Griff… I’m not sure.” I couldn’t exactly tell him his son blew him off.
“Hey, I’m here!” Jude said.
“Where’s my grandson?” Dad asked Jude.
“He’s at the babysitter’s,” Jude said. Jude, arguably the least responsible of all of us, had a three-year-old son, Jack. Granted, it was because of his irresponsibility that he had a son in the first place, though he was now the apple of his—and all of our—eyes.
“Dad, what’s the emergency?” I asked.
“I need all of you there first.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
Now the annoyance scrunched up in my stomach. I hit the mute button. “You know,” I said to Chelsea, “if we had pulled this kind of thing on Dad when we were in college, he’d have lost it.”
“He’s different now,” she said.
“You’re being charitable.” Really, it was deeply painful for me to see Dad like this. He’d always been the one I came to when I needed a sensible take on things as a kid. Mom was good for that too, but she’d always been so busy running the hotel. As a stay-at-home dad, it had been Dad who put the bandages on our knees and gave us the pep talks we needed. Dad had been the one to talk Mom down when Eli and I told her despite both of us going to business school, neither of us wanted to take over the hotel.
Still, I turned back to Dad, who was just giving the waiter another drink order, and unmuted us.
“How’s Majorca?” I asked when he was done.
“I’m in the Canary Islands.” The tone of Dad’s voice was so casual I had to fight to keep the anger out of my voice.
“You said you were going to tell us when you were going someplace new! We have to know where you are.”
Dad waved his hand like he wasn’t a seventy-year-old backpacking around the world. “You act like I’m some frail old man.”
I bit my cheek to keep from snapping at him. He wasn’t frail, but Mom hadn’t been either.
