Free Right Moves by Ava McKnight Page A

“Claire, I’m not exactly worthy of walking you down the aisle.”
    I tamped down the hard lump that swelled in my throat. “That’s not true. You’re my father.”
    “Some father,” he muttered under his breath.
    So he knew how his actions had impacted me. We’d come full circle. That thought spurred me on.
    I said, “In a lot of ways, you’ve been an ideal parent. I never lacked for anything. I was surrounded by wonderful people you personally hired. I have a trust fund that has allowed me to invest in a business I believe in, helping me to keep jobs for people I genuinely like.”
    He nodded, though his expression didn’t change. He still looked like a man on trial for a serious crime. I was about to let him off the hook when a picture frame on the corner of his desk caught my eye.
    I lifted it up and stared at the spitting image of myself…though this photo was not of me.
    A peculiar rage rose within me. Although, maybe it wasn’t quite so peculiar. There was a familiarity to it, I realized, that I had ignored for decades. It was that anger I’d suppressed long ago.
    With my arms spread wide as I still held the photo, I demanded, “Why on earth would you keep a photo of her, Dad?”
    He shot to his feet and I took a step backward.
    “I don’t expect you to understand,” he told me.
    With a shake of my head, I said, “Good. Because I don’t. We’ve both wasted too much of lives wishing she’d never left and praying she’d come back. At what point did that exceed the ridiculous, Dad? Twenty-three years have passed and, until recently, until I met Jack, I was incapable of forming any type of relationship with friends or a boyfriend. I didn’t date. I didn’t invite people into my life, because in the back of my head, I feared I’d get too comfortable with them in my life and just when I let my guard down, they’d rip the rug from underneath me by leaving.”
    “I’m sure she had her reasons.” He defended my mother, which only flamed my fury.
    “What reason could she have had?” I suddenly shouted, twenty-three years of pent-up angst getting the best of me. “She had everything . You were good to her. I didn’t cry or fuss or antagonize her in any way. She had a beautiful home and credit cards and country club memberships. You said yourself she wasn’t interested in working, that she liked her ‘ladies who lunch’ group and the way everyone treated her, like she was the Queen of England. What more could she possibly have wanted?”
    “I don’t know,” he said between clenched teeth. “I honestly don’t, Claire. I loved her more than anything. I gave her everything her heart desired and when you came along, she was just so…proud of you, Claire.”
    This took me aback. “How can you say that? No one leaves someone they’re proud of.”
    “No?” he demanded as insistently as I’d just done. His intelligent green eyes misted and he said, “Think about it, Claire. You were seven years old with an aptitude that suggested you should already be in junior high school. Not only were you smart, you were beautiful, even as a child. Scary beautiful in that way that made everyone around you treat you as though you were a delicate China doll, they were so worried they’d break you if they even shook your hand. You were perfect in so many ways and yet… I left you, didn’t I?”
    I sucked in a sharp breath as tears stung my eyes. The corners of my mouth quivered, but I managed to say, “Explain that to me.”
    He shook his head, but he didn’t turn away. He plunged forward. “I’m just saying that your mother got everything she wanted and then she must have realized she wasn’t good enough to keep it. She was never challenged by life, she’d never worked for anything—it was all just given to her. In a lot of ways, I felt the same at the time. This business was handed down to me. I didn’t need to do more than maintain the norm and we’d all have still lived well beyond our