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“I’m not scared of my father; I’m just wondering why I’ve all of a sudden been summoned here.” I walk over to my grandfather and bend to hug him.
“I don’t get a hug?” my father questions, not moving, because he knows I’m not going to give him a hug now that he’s teased me.
I walk over to the desk next to the three of them and lean back on it, crossing my feet in front of me. “To what do I owe this honor?” I take off the cowboy hat and scratch my head. “Even though I think I might have an idea.”
“You think you have an idea.” Casey chuckles as he leans his forearms on the desk. “What the hell were you thinking?” I shake my head, knowing he needs to get it all out before I can even make my argument. “Of all people for you to get involved with. Do you know what it’s like to have to sit down with Matthew Grant and have him poke fun because he thinks I didn’t know?” Again he’s not asking me to answer him, so I just look at my father, who is trying to hide his grin by looking down at his hands in his lap. “I knew something was up with you two when you bought her that horse.”
“Are you done?” Jacob asks him, and Casey just glares at him. “What difference does it make who he’s with? What matters is what is he going to do about it.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, confused. I’m about to kick off from the desk, thinking he is saying one thing when he’s not.
“Hold your horses, son,” my father intervenes. “What he’s saying is, now that she’s pregnant, what’s going to happen?”
“What do you mean?” I look at all three of them, who shake their heads at the same time in the same way.
“Son.” My father usually starts with this when he thinks I just said something stupid. “She is carrying your child and lives in New York.” The minute he says the words, my stomach sinks because it’s been on my mind ever since she told me she was pregnant. “And you live here.”
“Yeah, I know”—I extend my arms to the sides and lean them on the desk—“that isn’t something I don’t know.”
“When is she moving here?” Casey asks me the loaded question I now know is why I was called here.
“She isn’t moving here.” I keep out the word yet because I’m not even sure.
“What do you mean she isn’t moving here?” My father sits up in his chair. “How the hell is that going to work?”
“We are trying to figure it out.”
“Did you ask her to move here?” my father asks me, and I shake my head. “Well, why the hell not?”
“It’s not that easy, Dad.”
My grandfather chuckles. “How isn’t it that easy?” he asks. “It seems simple to me.”
“I can’t just ask her to uproot her life.” The nerves start to fill my body.
“She’s having your child. Are you going to what… see the child every other week?” Casey asks, and I swallow down the bile that is starting to rise up my throat. “Or is it going to be once a month with a week during the holidays?”
“No, of course not,” I reply, but I don’t really fucking know, which gets me even more angry.
“Gabriel,” my father urges softly, “why don’t you just ask her to move here? Worst case, she says no; best case, she says yes.”
“It’s not the way it works,” I tell them.
“This is what is wrong with you young ones,” Casey states. “You make shit too complicated.” My father and grandfather agree with him. “And before you come at me with this whole it’s different now, I’m calling bullshit again. It’s not different. If you want her, why don’t you just get the balls and tell her”—he gets up, grabbing his cup of coffee—“instead of just hemming and hawing about shit?”
“I don’t say this often,” my grandfather adds, “but he’s right. You need to talk to her.”
“I am going to,” I tell them. “When the time is right.”
The three of them laugh at me, and I push off from the desk. “I have shit to do before I leave this afternoon, so if this meeting is adjourned?”
“Say hi to her for us,” my father interjects, “and bring her home, yeah?”
I roll my eyes at him, then turn to Casey. “You still giving me a lift?”
“Yeah, I have to meet with Matthew to discuss the hockey team.” I roll my lips, trying not to laugh at him.
“Something you never do, buy a fucking hockey team to get back at your granddaughter’s boyfriend,” my father goads, “especially when you know nothing about hockey.”
