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Colm winced. “Sacrilege.”
“Right?”
There were tense lines around her eyes and mouth that only appeared after a day spent with her mother. Colm didn’t like seeing them there.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in for a hug, and he was thrilled when Kelli sank into it, her cheek pressed tightly to his chest, her arms adding their own strength to the embrace.
“I don’t understand how someone can be that genuinely unhappy for sixty years,” she murmured.
Colm had to agree. When he looked back over the years, he couldn’t think of a single time he’d ever seen Barb with a smile that didn’t look forced or faked, and he was fairly certain he’d never heard her laugh. Which made it even more incredible to him that Kelli had made it out with such an amazing sense of humor. She was quick to laugh and rarely without a smile. “Me either.”
“Apparently, she was asked not to chair the fire station potluck this year. I know it’s because she drove the rest of the committee nuts the last two years.”
He chuckled. “Jeez, Kell. Only your mom could get fired from a volunteer position.”
“I know. She was super pissed off and said the whole thing was going to go straight to hell without her running the show. Then she spent forty-five minutes bitching about something she’d heard through the grapevine about my dad. Apparently, a friend of a friend of a friend ran into him here in the city a few months ago.”
“You didn’t know he was in Baltimore?” Colm asked.
Kelli shook her head but didn’t separate from the hug, still clinging. “Nope.” There was precious little emotion behind that response, which simply reinforced the fact that Kelli had stopped expecting anything from the man a long time ago.
Kelli’s parents had divorced when she was thirteen. Not that it came as a surprise to anyone—Kelli included—except Barb.
Kelli had actually confessed once she was shocked her dad had managed to stick around that long.
Barb, however, was blindsided by her husband’s departure, and her general unpleasantness before that had turned to hardcore bitterness after. She criticized her ex to anyone who would listen and had for the past twenty-plus years. Time had not healed her wounds. Not even a little bit.
Mr. Peterson had tried to remain a part of Kelli’s life the first few months after he’d left. Until his ex-wife made it too impossible. Then he moved across the country to Denver, met a woman with two sons, and remarried. As far as Colm knew, Kelli and her dad exchanged birthday cards and spoke on the phone a couple times a year. If she’d ever wanted more than that from her dad, she’d never expressed it.
Actually, after her dad split, Kelli had begun to turn to his father whenever she needed help with something she probably would have gone to Mr. Peterson for. It was Colm’s dad, Tris, who taught her how to drive, throwing her in the car with him and Padraig, claiming it was just as easy to teach three teens as it was two. Dad had taught her how to change a tire, how to check the engine oil, how to fish. It was his dad whom Kelli had asked to go with her when she’d saved up enough money for her first piece-of-shit car.
Colm placed a soft kiss to the top of her head. “I’m sorry it was such a rough day, but hey, at least it’s over.”
“That would comfort me more if Christmas wasn’t a month away. I’m considering running away with the gypsies.”
“What if…” Colm took a deep breath, shocked by what he was about to offer, but he did it anyway. “What if you invite Barb to join all of us here for Christmas dinner? There are enough of us that if we all take a turn, no one should have to spend more than ten minutes with her.”
Kelli lifted her head, her expression one of longing and horror.
Jesus. Only Kelli could pull off a look like that.
Then she leaned closer and sniffed his breath. “Have you been drinking?”
Colm narrowed his eyes. “No, Kell.”
“Why would you subject your family to that?”
He chuckled. “They all know your mom. And just like you, they’re fine with her. In small doses. We’ll divide and conquer. What do you say?”
Kelli quietly studied his face for a full minute, obviously giving him time to come to his senses. He stared her down.
“I think that might be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
He laughed loudly. “Shit. Talk about a low bar.”
Kelli tilted her head. “Seriously?”
He revised his statement. “Okay, yeah. You’re right. It’s a damn high bar.”
