Page 29 of The Defender

If he were here, he’d find a way to engage the table in a debate about volcanoes or something, and I wouldn’t want to crawl out of my skin from the awkwardness.

I cut into my salmon with more force than necessary. Forget misaligned planets. I must’ve entered another dimension entirely if I was missing Vincent DuBois, of all people.

“Have you talked to your mother lately?”

My knife slipped and hit the porcelain plate with a clang. A nearby couple stopped eating to side-eye me, but I was too busy gaping at my dad to notice.

Rule number one in the dysfunctional relationship I had with my parents: don’t talk about the other person in front of them. Ever.

The last time I violated this rule, I’d subjected myself to an hour-long tirade about “narcissism disguised as enlightenment” (age sixteen, my father’s words), so him willingly bringing her up over dinner portended nothing short of the apocalypse.

I checked our surroundings for fire and brimstone before responding. “We’ve messaged a few times.”Once in the past month.“Why?”

My dad took a bite of his steak, chewed, and swallowed before he said, somewhat cautiously, “I heard she’s pregnant again.”

I gave up on the salmon and set my knife aside. “She is.”

I wasn’t sure where my dad was going with this. He didn’t know my mom’s new family was one of the reasons I’d moved to London. He thought I’d moved because I wanted to work for the Premier League, which was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

“How are you, uh, holding up?” he asked.

Maybe he was more observant than I gave him credit for.

“I’m happy for her,” I lied. “I already have one half-sibling. What’s one more?”

Don’t get me wrong, I really did like my half-brother. Charlie was two years old and the cutest, happiest baby in the world. If I could hang out with him sans my mom, I would do so in a heartbeat.

But that was the thing. It was impossible to separate them. Obviously, they shouldn’t be separated considering how young he was, but my mom hadn’t any qualms about leaving me with a neighbor or random babysitter when I was that age. She’d never looked happier to be a parent than she did now, and I couldn’t help feeling like I’d been her trial run. A thirty-day-free membership she’d accidentally signed up for and forgotten about for the past twenty-seven years.

None of this was Charlie’s fault, but I couldn’t help the way I felt either.

“How are you taking it?” I asked my dad.

He flicked his eyebrows up like that was the world’s stupidest question, but he didn’t want me to feel bad about it. “Your mother and I have been divorced for over two decades. She could give birth to a two-headed llama, and I wouldn’t care.”

Some of my tension eased, and I snorted out a laugh. “How did you know she’s pregnant?”

“We still have some mutual friends. I didn’t ask. They brought it up first.”

“Ah.” I had no illusions about my parents “coming to their senses” and getting back together. I wouldn’t support that anyway; they were the worst fit for each other. They only married because they’d had a brief fling when my mom lived in the UK. She got pregnant with me, they tied the knot because that was what they were supposed to do, and after what my mom repeatedly told me were the “worst, most stressful years” of her life, they split in a legal battle that made World War II look civil.

But while my mom had moved on, dating a string of men who wove in and out of my childhood and teenage years until she settled down, my dad never remarried. He was too obsessed with work.

“Have you thought about dating again?” I asked.

He was only in his late forties. There were plenty of women his age who would be thrilled to go out with him, and I sincerely thought he needed something other than work to keep him occupied.

“Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “Managing the team is already a handful. I don’t need the stress of a relationship on top of it.”

“A good relationship is worth the occasional stress.”

“In your twenties, yes. When you’re my age? Not worth it.” My dad cleared his throat. “What about you? Have you, uh, met any nice blokes here?”

“‘Nice blokes’? That’ssucha dad thing to say,” I teased.

“I should hope so, since I am your dad.”

“Valid, and no, I haven’t met anyone serious. I’ve been on a few dates, but they haven’t gone anywhere.”