Page 145 of Dying to Meet You

He hands her his helmet. “You’re not riding without this.”

She has her first wave of guilt when she puts on the helmet. It hadn’toccurred to her that she was asking him to be unsafe or break the law. But they’ll be home in five minutes. Tops.

He shows her where to put her feet and where to hold on. They head off at a speed she estimates to be, like, fifteen miles an hour. He’s driving more slowly than she even thought a motorcycle could go.

It’s still fun, though. Like flying.

When they get home, her mom’s car is in the garage, which is a little weird. Natalie thought she needed it for work today.

The kitchen door is locked up tight, as it should be, and her father is right on her heels.Everything is fine, she assures herself, turning the key in the lock.

The dog trots to greet them, wagging her tail.

The cat does not, and when Natalie crosses into the living room, she finds her mother lying on the sofa, the cat in her lap, reading one of the printouts the journalist gave her.

“Mom? Don’t you have to be at work?”

“Theoretically,” she says, sitting up. Her voice is strangely cool. “And I was at work, but I left because Hank is after me to have a meeting, to convince himself that I’m still a loyal member of the team. And I cannot look that man in the eye today. So I came home. How was day two on the job?”

“Easier,” Natalie says, but she’s still studying her mother, who has wild hair and tired eyes. “Are you okay?”

Her dad approaches, wearing an expression of concern that probably matches Natalie’s. Because her mom looks rough.

“I’m just sitting here, digging through these annual reports. Trying to find what Tim found. Trying to work out how to keep everyone safe.” Her expression hardens. “Speaking of safety—I thought we agreed you wouldn’t be a passenger on that motorcycle.”

Uh-oh. “It was my idea,” Natalie says quickly.

Her mother stands, unseating the cat and tossing papers onto the coffee table. “Harrison, I need to speak to you for a second.”

His face falls. “Of course.”

“Your place or mine? Oh wait, it’sallmy place.”

Oh shit. Natalie has the unfamiliar urge to put her hands over herears. It’s just dawning on her that one of the few upsides of not having a dad is never having to listen to her parents fight.

He follows her into his room, where her mother closes the door with an angry click. Natalie is left outside, helpless and feeling sick. Knowing this is all her fault.

For maybe ten seconds she can’t make out their low voices. But then it escalates quickly.

“I said no motorcycle!”

“I’msorry. It was only supposed to be once!”

“But you don’t get to do this!” her mother shrieks. “You don’t get to parachute in here and be the cool dad when it suits you. It’s not fair to the child you abandoned. And it sure isn’t fair to me.”

“I made a mistake!”

“You make too many of them. This isn’t working. Find somewhere else to stay.”

Lickie lets out a whine of distress, and Natalie knows just how she feels. This is a disaster. She’s chasing him away again, even though he still loves her.

I’ll always love her, he’d said, and it’s so obvious. Can her mother not see it? Or worse, does she really not care?

Natalie sinks down on the sofa, noting the half-empty coffee cups and balled-up sticky notes. She starts gathering up the debris just to have something to do with her hands.

While she’s throwing the trash away in the kitchen, she hears the den door fly open and her mom’s quick footsteps on the stairs.

Her father doesn’t emerge from the den. But when she sits back down on the sofa, she can see an oblique view of Lickie’s tail wagging from inside that room. The dog needs everyone to be happy and calm.