“Come hither?” I fill in for her. Fire engines are less red.
“Yes, that,” Mom says.
Danica waggles her eyebrows. “Getting him to come hither is the point.”
“Ha!” says Mom. She checks herself in the mirror again, trying out different smiles. I’m happy she’s excited and stressed that she’s excited.
The doorbell rings.
“Is that him?” I ask, getting up from the couch. “Shouldn’t you meet him at the restaurant so he doesn’t know where we live in case he turns out to be a serial killer cancer doctor?”
“I am meeting him at the restaurant,” Mom says, frowning at the door.
Danica looks through the peephole. “Oh, it’s Dad,” she says, voice bright and happy. She throws the door open.
From the look on Mom’s face, I can tell she’s just as surprised as I am.
Mom walks to the door. “I didn’t know you were coming over this evening.” Her voice is hard, harder than I expect, like she’s scolding him.
Dad hears it too and wipes his palm across his mouth. “Grace,” he says. “You look nice.”
At the compliment, Mom takes a step back. She folds her arms across her chest and waits. “What’s this about?”
“Sorry about this,” he says. “I was trying to surprise Evie.”
“Safe to say you’ve surprised us all,” says Mom. Her Jamaican accent is slight, but it’s there. She steps aside and lets him in.
I haven’t seen him in six months, not since the night he took Danica out to dinner to meet Shirley and I refused to go.
He looks the same, and he looks not the same. Like, I’ve never seen him in that green shirt before. And his Afro has some gray in it. Even his mustache has some gray in it. And is he thinner? I don’t know. It might be one of those things where you only notice the changes in someone after you’ve been away from them for a while. Probably he was gray before he left us. But the green shirt is new. New to me, at least.
“Evie,” he says. “It’s Taco Night.” He says it like it’s sacred. Like we’re in church and a corn tortilla taco is the sacrament. Which, okay, yes. Taco Night is a religious experience and missing it is definitely a sacrilege. But it’s his fault we’re missing it.
He reaches into the pocket of his blazer （new） and takes out his glasses （also new）。
“Look,” he says. “I got us Front of the Line tickets for Mariscos Chente.”
I stand there, mute. All six of their eyeballs eyeball me. Dad’s are hopeful. Danica’s are watchful. And Mom’s are…hard to read. No one has a better poker face than her. It’s part of being a nurse, I think.
Mom takes my hand. “Let’s go upstairs and talk.”
She closes the door once we’re in her bedroom. “I want you to go with your father.”
A thing I never noticed before: she only refers to him as “your father” these days instead of “your dad.”
“Mom, I don’t want to—” I start to protest.
She talks over me. “You’re already not going to his wedding.”
“You know why I’m not going,” I say.
“We’re not talking about that.” Her voice is firm. She meets my eyes and holds them steady. “You know what one of the hardest parts of being a mom is?”
“What?”
“Watching your child do something you know they’ll regret.”
And that does it. I agree to go. I don’t want anything to be harder for her, especially when it comes to Dad.
I get back downstairs in time to hear Danica telling Dad about her new boyfriend. “His name is Archer,” she says.
“Archer is a profession, not a name,” he says, in typical Dad fashion.
Before I can stop myself, I’m playing along. “It’s more of an Olympic sport than a profession, really.”
“Summer or winter?” Dad asks.
“Summer, for sure.”
Dad and I smile at each other until I remember I’m not supposed to smile at him anymore. It would be so easy to slip back into this rhythm with him.
Danica rolls her eyes in our general direction. “Anyway, Archer is his name, and he’s great.”
I walk to the door, ready to leave. Danica and Dad hug and say goodbye. Mom and Dad just nod at each other. And we’re off.
* * *
——
It’s only a fifteen-minute walk from our apartment complex to where we’re going. Here’s how we spend the first five minutes: