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Instead, I held my head high and gave her a big smile. “Making up for missed Christmases and birthdays.”
“Sophie bought me a computer!” Molly practically shouted in her excitement. She pushed her hair back, exposing her half of the necklace set we’d bought. “And look! So, we can remember each other when we’re far away.”
I pointed to the pendant at my throat. “It was Molly’s idea. She is very thoughtful.”
“She’s sentimental,” Sasha corrected me, and pointed to the trolley of shopping bags. “This is thoughtful. But it’s too much. I can’t let you—”
I held up my hand. “Please. I had a great time today. And for once, I got to go shopping and not hear Neil complain about where we’ll put everything.”
Sasha laughed, a little uncomfortably. “I don’t know where we’ll put it all. We might be sitting on some of this on the ride home.”
“We can ship some,” I volunteered. I did not want them to return a single thing Molly had wanted. “And I swear, I won’t make a regular thing out of this.”
Sasha’s kind expression flickered, reminding me of Susan and the way she’d looked when she’d told me she wouldn’t have looked me up if not for Molly needing the kidney. So, Sasha hadn’t considered me to be a permanent part of Molly’s life, either?
I wanted to shout that Molly was my sister, and I had every right to be in her life, but I couldn’t. Sasha hadn’t said anything to contrary. I’d projected that onto her out of my own doubts and Susan’s words. Instead, I said, “Listen, can we meet up later tonight? Just the two of us? I have some things I want to talk to you about.”
She nodded with a resigned, closed-mouth smile. She knew exactly what I wanted to talk to her about. “Absolutely. Let me get Molly squared away with all of this, and we can meet down in the bar.”
“Aw, why can’t I come?” Molly demanded in the most petulant teen voice I’d ever heard. Well, since I’d been a teenager.
“Because you need to get off your feet,” Sasha told her sternly. “Besides, you’ve had Sophie all to yourself today. Let me have a chance to visit with her.”
“Fine.” Molly started to leave, her arms crossed over her chest. Then, she stopped and turned back to hug me. “Promise you won’t go back to New York without saying goodbye?”
“I promise. I’ll see you tomorrow after I go to the doctor, okay?” I squeezed her tight. What if I could just scoop her up and run away with her, abduct her back to New York and—
Yikes. Was I seriously considering kidnapping? I needed to get a grip.
I watched her head off, directing the bellman where to go. Sasha stayed with me. “All right. I’ll meet you down here in a half hour,” she said grimly. “And we can talk about your father.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sasha was already waiting in the lounge when I arrived. She’d taken a small side table with two plush chairs on the balcony overlooking the pool.
“Our room is right over there,” she told me in lieu of a hello, and pointed across the pool to one of the other balconies. “It’s really a nice room. Do you have a suite, too?”
“Yeah, but ours is just one bedroom. We don’t need a lot of space.” Why had I said that? We owned houses bigger than this hotel. I cleared my throat. “So, Molly is basically amazing.”
“She is,” Sasha agreed. “Drives me a little crazy, at times, but that’s what daughters do. Maybe sons do, too. I have no idea.”
“Well, it must be worth it. She’s a great girl. And a hell of a shopper. It must be genetic,” I added.
Sasha laughed a little then took a sip from the fishbowl margarita she’d armed herself with. “So. You probably have some questions for me.”
“Yeah.” I looked up as the server approached. “Just a Diet Coke, please.” Then, even though I didn’t owe Sasha an insight into our personal lives, I said, “I don’t usually drink. Because of Neil.”
“Susan said he had some issues with drinking and drugs,” Sasha said, keeping her voice low. “I didn’t read your book, but she said you really handled it all well, judging from it.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t really have a choice. It was either handle it well or fall all to pieces.”
“Your father—” She stopped herself. “I’m sorry. Does it bother you if I call him that?”
To my surprise, it did. “You can just call him Joey.”
Her smile was small and sad. “Joey stopped drinking when I was pregnant with Susan. He wasn’t an alcoholic, but he might become one, with the things he went through.”
“Because of his father?” I blurted. Then, I explained, “Molly said something about him not having a great father.”
“No, it wasn’t because of that. His father was a piece of work, but Joey was a firefighter. First responders… They see terrible things, and it’s too much for some of them. He would say, ‘Better safe than sorry.’ And you can’t do that job drunk. He was on-call almost twenty-four-seven.” Susan paused. “Did you and Molly talk about Joey a lot?”
