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Ray could hear the pots banging in the kitchen and figured Lugnut was about to go on the rag again. He pulled out his notepad and wrote “tampons” on a new page, then went in to see if he could calm her down any — or at least keep her from taking apart the kitchen. Instead, he found Ben doing all the banging and muttering and — geez! Did Ben just say the eff-word? Ray pulled out his notepad again and wrote “Valium,” and then he circled it twice for good measure.
He cleared his throat. “Hi, Honey. I’m home.”
Ben stopped cold then turned around slowly. “She — I —”
Definitely not a good afternoon in the Fraser-Kowalski household. “What’d she do this time?”
“That — that person informed me that I wasn’t her real father, so I had no right — no right to tell her she couldn’t go to the community dance this Saturday.”
Ben was about two shades of red short of a stroke, and Ray didn’t blame him. His own blood pressure was starting to soar, because that was just cruel, and no fucking way were they going to put up with that crap from their daughter. Would have been nice if Ray could have been the one to vent, but Ben had already lost it, which was his right, all things considered.
Stuck with being the sane parent, Ray took one of them deep, cleansing breaths Ben was always on him about and asked, “Where is she?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
“Ben.”
It took him a few seconds, but he finally said, “The barn, most likely. Chicago whelped while Lisa was at school.”
“I’m on it.” Ray approached Ben cautiously and gave him as much of a hug as he could, which wasn’t a big one, considering how tense Ben was. “You stay here and, you know, try and relax. Think about something else, maybe.”
Ben pulled away. “The wood needs to be chopped.”
“Yeah, okay.” No way was Ray arguing with Ben. Not when he was like this. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go see if I can find out where the hell she left her brain today, okay?”
“Fine.” Ben brushed past Ray, pausing only to grab his work coat from the hook before going outside.
Ray waited until he was calm enough to talk to Lugnut without throttling her right off the bat, and then he went to the barn. She was there, right where Ben thought she would be, leaning over Chicago’s pen to watch the new puppies. She glanced back at him when he walked in, rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to Chicago’s litter.
Brat. If he didn’t love her so much, he’d seriously consider marrying her off to someone, just to get her away from Ben, but that wasn’t going to happen. Ray fell in love with his daughter the minute he laid eyes on her, even as ugly as she was at the time. All red and covered in gunk, Lugnut wasn’t born cute by any stretch of the imagination. It took twenty months and growing in some hair for her to reach the point where people could call her cute and mean it, and none of that ever mattered to him. Ray loved her unconditionally and without reservation. Even now, even when she’d turned into Darth Lisa, he still loved her. Ben did, too, which made her smartass crack hurt even worse.
Had he ever been that mean to his own parents? He didn’t think so, but the only one left to ask was his mother, and she’d reached a point where her memory told her Ray was perfect, so — Anyway. Time for the brat to face the music.
Ray stood next to her and asked quietly, “There some reason you decided to rip Pop’s heart out and grind it into the dirt?”
That got her back up in no time flat. “He said I can’t go to the dance Saturday!”
God save them all from teenage drama. And God save her from Ray if she ever pulled a stunt like that again, which she might, because it was clear she thought she hadn’t done anything wrong, that somehow, being told no for a dance equaled her telling her Pop he had no place in her life. Ray forced his anger down again.
“After what you said this afternoon, you ain’t goin’ to a dance till you hit eighteen, and even then, that’s only if you can pick the lock to get out of your room.”
“Dad!”
“You crossed a line, Lisa.”
At that, her breath hitched. He didn’t dare look at her, because he knew there would be tears. There always were when he called her by her name instead of Lugnut. Since he could never think all that straight when she cried, Ray kept his eyes on Chicago, and he wondered if dogs ever had to put up with this kind of crap. Probably, he thought, but then dogs had it easy. They could just grab a half-grown pup by the neck and shake it till it acted right.
“He was just —”
“You crossed a line, and you got ugly. You crossed a line I never thought you would get anywhere near, but you did.” He was proud of himself for keeping an even tone.
“Dad —”
“I ever tell you about the day you and me got here?”
“About a thousand times,” she mumbled, pouting, because tears weren’t doing her any good.
“How about that night?”
“You slept, Pop fed me. So what?” Ray could just see her out of the corner of his eye. She was hunched into her coat and looked like she was just figuring out that Ray maybe had a clue to sell her.
“There’s a little more to it than that.” A puppy wriggled away from its littermates, and Ray reached down to put it back where it belonged. “When you and me left Chicago, I didn’t stop all that often or for very long. Took a few catnaps on the way, but mostly, I drove. Had to get us away from those people.”
“Assholes.” Ray let it pass. After that stunt the Deavers pulled eight years earlier, Lisa had every reason to hate her mother’s cousins.
“When I got here, there was a pretty good storm going. Pop took one look at you and me, and the first thing he did after getting us inside was to take off my boots then put me to bed in the guest room. I went out like a light, so Pop had no idea what was going on.”
“Whatever.”
“Pop had no idea Mom died.” Another puppy found itself away from its siblings, and Ray put it back again. Chicago thanked him by licking his hand, and then she nuzzled the wayward puppy back to a teat.
“He didn’t?”
“Nope. Far as he knew, she was still alive and in Chicago. So there he is, a winter storm outside, me passed out in the guest room and you with a wet diaper and an empty stomach in the living room. He brought in the rest of our stuff, and while he got you changed and fed, he thought about why you and me might have showed up with no warning.”
Ray paused there, let it sink in a little. Lugnut had her Pop’s smarts, and after a few seconds she said, “He didn’t —”
“You know what Pop’s like. He can cite chapter and verse on Canadian law,” Ray said casually, not wanting her to get her feet under her. This was the kind of low blow that had to be delivered fast and hard. “But when he was sitting there, holding you and giving you your bottle, he was also thinking you and me were on the run because of a custody thing, and he was trying to figure out what to do about that.”
“The only reason he didn’t arrest you was probably because he couldn’t wake you up,” she said, quick and certain.
“That wouldn’t have stopped him.” She didn’t have anything to say about that, because truths were self-evident and all that. “But that night he wasn’t thinking about arresting me. Pop figured if I was on the run with you, I had a good reason, so he was thinking about places the three of us could hide till you were an adult.”
She gasped a little. Gotcha, Ray thought.
“But — No. Not Pop. He wouldn’t.” Lisa sounded confused, and no wonder, considering the way Ray was turning her truth inside out.
“Yes — Pop. He was ready to throw everything away to protect you from whatever I was running from. His job, his uniform, his oath to enforce the law. All for you.” Ray waited a beat. “Still think he’s not your real father?”
She started sniffling, and pretty soon, she worked her way into honest tears, the good kind, the guilty kind. Not like the ones she squirted earlier when Ray called her by her name. He let her cry on her own for a couple of minutes then turned her and drew her into his arms.
“Well, Lugnut? Got anything to say?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her breath hitching as spoke. “I didn’t mean it!”
“You never mean to step on someone’s toes, but it still hurts like a bitch,” he said, running his hand up and down her back. “I’m not the one you have to say sorry to.”
“Where — where is he?”
“Chopping wood. Considering how worked up you got him, I suggest you include an offer to finish chopping that wood as part of your apology.”
She nodded, leaving her snot and tears on Ray’s coat, then steeled herself to walk out of the barn. At the door, she turned back to Ray. “I really didn’t mean it. I was just so mad at him.”
“Find a different thing to say the next time you get pissed at either one of us.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Ray left the barn as well and went to sit on the front porch and congratulate himself for sending Lugnut on an all-expenses paid guilt-trip. Kid deserved it for putting Ben through that, though Ray wondered what he would do the next time she turned on them — and there was no doubt she would.
About ten minutes later, Ben came out the front door. He eased himself down on the porch behind Ray before pulling him into the vee of his legs. Ray relaxed against Ben’s chest and pulled Ben’s arms around him.
“Lugnut apologize?”
“She did.” They sat and listened for a moment to the sound of wood being chopped out back. “At least, I assume she did. She had difficulty speaking at first. What did you say to her?”
“I told her about when we came here.”
“Oh?”
It was an old family story, one they’d been telling Lugnut since she was old enough to ask where Mommy was. He and Ben had shaved it down, of course, made it into her own little fairy tale, because a four-year-old kid could only understand so much.
“Explained how you were ready to chuck it all away to protect us, because I’d fallen asleep before I could explain why we came, and you thought there was some kind of custody battle going on.”
“Ah.” After a moment, Ben said, “As I recall, you phoned me from Whitehorse to warn me you would be here in an hour and to tell me to keep the light on and get a bed ready. You also mentioned something about being hungry enough to eat a caribou. Whole.”
“Yeah. So?”
“After your request for sanctuary, you told me that Laura had died, and that if you had one more conversation with Elizabeth Deaver, you were going to kick her in the head, and then Lisa would be in real trouble.”
“And?”
“And when you arrived, you spent the next five hours explaining in rather graphic detail exactly what you wanted to do to Mrs. Deaver if she ever again came within fifty miles of you or Lisa. At which point, you finally crashed on the sofa and slept for the next twelve hours.”
“You gotta point to all this?”
Ben sighed. “My point is that perhaps you should have done something other than lie to her.”
“Lie? What lie? I didn’t lie.” Ray knew that at the bottom of his soul. He absolutely didn’t lie to his kid. No way, no how.
“You told her —”
“Would you or would you not have taken me and Lugnut deep into the bush to protect us if you’d thought I was running for a good reason?”
“I — well, yes, but —”
“I didn’t lie.” Ray turned his head and caught Ben in a kiss before he could start in again. “Truth is she’s been your daughter since the minute you laid eyes on her, and that’s the only truth she needed to hear. End of story, got it?”
Ben gave him a lingering kiss. “Got it.”
“Good.”