The Education of Hailey Kendrick - Eileen Cook [9]
I didn’t point out that he wasn’t on his own. We were together. “Is it the yard work? We could get a gardener.” We already had a housekeeper who came every other day and did all the cleaning and grocery shopping. I didn’t like the idea of my dad doing all the mowing anyway, especially since I was coming to realize how many mower accidents occurred in a year.
“It’s not the yard, Hailey. It’s . . .” His voice trailed off, and I knew he was thinking about my mom. My throat pulled tight, making it hard to swallow. “I’m going to put the house on the market and find something in the city closer to work.”
“I wouldn’t mind living in the city,” I said quickly. “It would be really cool. We could get a place in one of those high-rise buildings that have a view of Lake Michigan. One with giant floor-to-ceiling windows.”
“The schools in the city aren’t good, and you wouldn’t want to be cooped up in an apartment all the time while I’m at work. Evesham has a great reputation. This way, there will be tons of people your own age, lots of fresh air. They have all kinds of stuff to do, like archery and horseback riding.”
Archery? Did he think I wanted to be Robin Hood? Sharp pointy sticks hurled at a high rate of speed, and no full body armor? I didn’t think so. I opened my mouth to tell him no way, I wasn’t going to go and he couldn’t make me. I looked into his eyes. My dad was staring at me, and I could see the tension in his jaw despite his plastered-on smile. He kept swallowing. He looked like he was one step away from putting his head down on the table and crying. The kind of crying where you can’t stop once you start.
“The school sounds great, Dad,” I managed to choke out. I told myself maybe it would be just a year. Time for him to feel better. Then I would move home and we could go back to the way things were.
His face relaxed slightly, and I could see him take a deep breath. “Wait until you see the pictures of the place. It looks like a mini-Harvard, all those great stone buildings with lots of ivy. Some of the dorms even have fireplaces.”
“Neat.” I pushed my rice around on the plate. I wasn’t remotely hungry anymore.
“And I checked out the science program in particular. State-of-the-art labs, and the teachers can help you organize an independent study on pretty much anything. They’ve also got some arrangement with the local college to use their materials if needed.”
“Wow.” My voice sounded flat to me, but my dad didn’t seem to notice. He’d gone back to eating his dinner with gusto. “I’d come home in the summer, though, right?” I asked. “We’ll spend our summers and vacations together?”
My dad smiled. “Of course we will.” He took another big bite of the curry. “Wherever you ordered this from is amazing. Best curry I’ve had in years. Be sure to stick their menu on the fridge.”
I started to tell him I’d made the curry myself, but then it didn’t seem to matter. It didn’t matter any more than his promise that we’d spend holidays together.
4
Despite what my dad had promised about spending summers together, there was always a reason it made more sense for me to go to my grandparents’ house—some project he had to work on, or construction in his new condo building.
This year was going to be different. When he asked me what I wanted as a graduation gift, I told him I wanted to have the whole summer together before I went to college. He seemed surprised, but he agreed. He even arranged the job for me with his company so I’d have something on my résumé besides working at the Gap. It was also his idea to throw the end-of-summer party. It was going to be the perfect summer. We’d have lots of stuff to talk about from working together, and after a few weeks it would start to seem easier. When I was a kid, I never ran out of things to say to him, and I was sure if we could just spend more than a day or two together, it would go back to that easy comfort. I could picture us sitting on the balcony of the resort, our feet up on the railing, talking about college and what I might end up