Читать книгу For Love Or Money - Tara Taylor Quinn - Страница 11

CHAPTER TWO

“KELS?” BURKE TAPPED on his daughter’s slightly ajar door just before ten that night. He’d let her have the evening her way. They’d stopped for the rice and salad bowl she’d wanted for dinner. He’d done some work on his laptop while sitting with her through the shows she’d chosen to watch on TV—if you could call her dead stare “watching.”

He’d helped with the laundry—even though it was her night to do a load and she’d said she was fine doing it alone...

“I’m decent,” she called through the door after a full thirty seconds had passed.

They’d had that talk last summer, too—with the help of her pediatric psychiatrist, Dr. Zimmers. He wasn’t to walk in unannounced now that she was wearing a bra and having her period. Didn’t matter that Burke was a doctor. He was a bone doctor. Kelsey’s emphasis on “bone.” And she was his daughter. And she had things to be modest about now.

“Can I come in?” he called.

“I guess.”

Better than whatever. He missed the little girl who used to beg to sit on his lap. Or ride on his shoulders. Ride high, Daddy! He could hear that tiny little voice like it was yesterday.

But it wasn’t. Not even the day before that. More like a lifetime ago.

She was on her bed, propped up with pillows, her tablet on her lap. Wearing the flannel, black-with-pink-heart pajama pants he’d bought her just before school started. With an old T-shirt left over from when her mother was a seventh-grade English teacher and insisted the three of them show team spirit, wear team colors and go to all of the athletic activities they could make.

Palm Desert’s vibrant red clashed with the pink heart. The vibrant gold, not so much.

Her long brown hair, usually in a ponytail, hung around her face. At least she was leaving it long. She’d tried to insist on coloring it purple that summer. He’d held firm against that one.

Leaning over to glance at what she was doing on her tablet, Burke took a seat on the side of the double bed. Keeping a respectable distance.

She turned her tablet around. “It’s just Friday’s Fashion Boutique, Dad.” She named an interactive fashion app that he’d seen her use many times before. Kind of like a modern-day Barbie doll, his mother had said when his folks had come from Florida the previous Christmas.

“A good parent checks, Kels,” he reminded her. Another thing he was not going to budge on. All parental controls were in place when it came to her use of electronics and social media.

She had a phone. She could call and had limited text capability—enough to reach him when necessary. Period. And he could see the numbers she called and texted every day if he chose to check.

He didn’t. But she knew he could.

“I don’t care if you look.” She shrugged, turning her tablet back around. She didn’t fight him. Never had when it came to her limited use of social media. And from the horror stories he’d heard from his peers, nurses, even his patients, he had real reason to be thankful for that.

“Dr. Zimmers called me today,” he said, getting right to the point.

She continued to move her finger along the ten-inch glass screen. Tapping and dragging.

“She wants to put you on medication.” He named a brand. Didn’t figure it would mean anything to her.

“I’m not taking it. You can force it down my throat and then I’ll stick my finger right behind it and throw it back up.”

Thirteen-year-old drama queen had joined them.

“We need to talk about that.”

Kelsey’s gaze was resolute when she put her tablet facedown on the mattress and looked at him. In that instant, he could have been looking at himself in the mirror when he was getting ready to put his foot down with her.

“We’ve talked about it, Dad. I’m not going to start taking some upper pill because I’m sad that my mom died. Or because I get sad sometimes when I think about it.”

“You’re sleeping way too much.”

“So get me up earlier. You’re the parent. Help me out.”

He could do that. “You’re a grump in the morning.”

“You can take it.”

She had a point.

“You spend too much time alone.”

“I’m dancing again. Be happy with that for now.”

“It’s not my happiness I’m worried about,” he said. “You know how long it’s been since I’ve heard you laugh out loud, Kels? Or since I’ve heard a note of excitement in your voice?”

He could talk to her about an imbalance of neurotransmitters that could lead to serious depression if not counterbalanced.

“Then give me something to get excited about.” Her quiet words, spoken to her tablet, stopped his thought process cold.

Rather than arguing with him, or giving him the rote “whatever,” she’d actually given him a positive opening. In two years’ time, it was a first.

Expecting a request for a smartphone, a trip to Disneyland or a week off school, he said, “I’m not talking about a momentary fix, Kelsey. You know that.” Though he was tempted to give her any of those things, all of them, to reward the open, non-defensive approach. “Maybe you need to try the medication...”

If Lil, Kelsey’s mom, had been able to take something for her paranoia, would she still be alive? Not that the paranoia had been the actual cause of death. No, the onset of labor at the beginning of the third trimester had done that.

“Dad, you promised me...”

A promise he might have made a mistake in making. Lil had, by example, made her daughter petrified of “drugging herself up.” She’d been almost fanatical about medication—to the point of toughing it out through headaches so she didn’t have to take an over-the-counter painkiller. She’d had Kelsey on the same pain management regime.

It had taken Burke getting really angry, raising-his-voice angry, before Kelsey had taken the antibiotics she’d needed for strep throat the previous year.

The girl seemed to think putting drugs in her body was disloyal to her mother. But there was so much she didn’t know. Some things Burke hoped to God she never knew.

Still, antidepressant medication was not going to be as easy a win.

Maybe because he didn’t want to medicate her, long term, either. Not unless she truly needed the help.

“It’s been two years since Mom died.”

“So give me something to get excited about.”

There it was again. That opening.

In all of the advice he’d received over the past two years, most of it well-meaning, and some of it professionally sought, no one had told him that raising a thirteen-year-old was going to make him dizzy. He’d never have believed, even a year before, that his sweet, rational, logical-beyond-her-years little girl was going to morph into a confusing mass of humanity that he could no more predict than the weather.

“What, Kels? What can I give you that you’d be excited about?” Knowing as he asked the question that he’d walk through fire to get it for her. As long as he didn’t think it would do more long-term harm than good.

She grabbed her tablet. Swiped and tapped so fast he didn’t know how she could possibly even read what she was choosing. She stopped. Seemed to be skimming the page. And turned the tablet around to him.

“This,” she said. “I wanted to enter but I can’t because I’m just a kid, and besides, you’re the master chef left among us.”

Lil had been a certified chef. Official ranking. In addition to teaching, she’d put in the hours necessary in professional food service. Because her dream was to open her own catering business. She’d talked him into taking classes, too, while he’d still been in med school. As something they could do to spend a little stress-free time together. And to his surprise, cooking had been right up his alley. Engaging him scientifically and yet offering him a relaxation he’d been unable to find elsewhere.

“I’m not a master chef,” he told her. He’d obtained a culinary art certification. That was all.

He looked at her tablet.

Made a cursory visual pass. Then read every word in the headline.

She was handing him the tablet, so he took it. Heart sinking.

She wanted him to be on a reality cooking show. As in, television. Like he could just pick up a phone and volunteer.

Like he had a chance in...any chance at all of making it on the show.

“It’s that one filmed here.” Kelsey was up on her knees, beside him now. He swore he could still smell that sweet baby-powder scent that had entered their home with her thirteen years before. “In Palm Desert. Family Secrets. Remember, they had that Thanksgiving special where they chose the first one of this year’s contestants...”

He remembered.

He’d wanted to go to Disneyland over the holiday. Thanksgiving—a food day by all counts—was one of the hardest without Lil. Kelsey wasn’t bouncing back from her mother’s death at all. If anything, with the onset of puberty, her moroseness was getting worse. He’d thought to distract her by heading to the coast for the holiday.

Instead she’d been adamant, to the point of tears, which always suckered him, that they cook dinner together, with all the trappings, and spend the day watching cooking shows. To honor Lil.

“So now it’s open auditions for the other seven contestants. It’s right here in town, Dad. You want me to be excited about something? Audition for this show.” She’d scooted closer, was resting her chin on his shoulder as she looked at the tablet with him.

“You have to use your own family recipes,” she said as he sat there, feeling more lost, more alone, than ever before. “It’s the recipes that are the real competition,” she went on, her voice gaining an energy that seemed to encompass their entire world.

“There’s an audition, and then four weeks of competition between eight candidates. Then whoever wins at least one of the four competitions goes to the final round. Each week you’re given a category and you have to make your family recipe with a secret ingredient. It says here that the candidates have to appear for one day of extraneous taping, too, before the competition starts.”

She was setting him up to let her down. He could see it so clearly even if she couldn’t. There was no way he was good enough to compete against real chefs.

“You can use Mom’s recipes, Dad! It’s a way for her to get what she wanted—to have her cooking recognized and appreciated. It’s a way to keep her alive. Like make her immortal or something. You have to do this...”

It was best to be honest with her. To face the tough stuff head-on. He’d been told. And he also just knew...

“I can’t.”

She slouched back. “I knew you’d say that.” There was no accusation in her tone. Just resignation. “That’s why I didn’t say anything before. It’s probably too late anyway. The auditions are this weekend and they were only taking walk-ons, without preregistering, if they had space.”

She hadn’t been going to ask him. Until he’d told her they had to find something to be excited about.

Lil, if you can hear me, now’s the time to jump in. What happens if I try and fail? Do I send our baby girl further into the dark hole she can’t seem to climb out of?

Will your recipes sustain me? Us?

“I was going to say I can’t force them to take me on.” He improvised while he waited for some kind of sign from above.

He’d take one from below or beside if it was clear enough.

Kelsey stared at him. And he could have sworn there was a glimmer of light in her blue eyes. His eyes.

“I took some classes, Kels. I do well enough here at home. I’m nowhere near the cook your mom was. TV? That’s for people like your mom. Real chefs. With real experience. And the auditions will be judged by people who are used to eating from the best of the best. All of which is completely out of my control.” He couldn’t make this happen for her.

“Like Mom always said, cooking is a lot about artistic talent, about knowing what foods go good together and stuff. She always said you had that talent, too.” Her tone wasn’t pushy. Or even persuasive. She sounded like a lost little girl. “Besides, this show is about the recipes. And Mom’s are the best.”

“And I might not be able to do them justice.” It wouldn’t be the first time he’d let Lil down. Or Kelsey, either, though he hoped she never knew just how badly he’d let them both down.

“You tell me that the important thing is to try.”

“I have no problem with trying, Kels. I’ll go to the audition.” He would?

Her mouth dropped open.

“But you have to understand that I might not win. And if I don’t, you have to be willing to find something else to get excited about.”

What was he doing, here?

“You’re going to do it?” She didn’t move. Just sat there. Staring at him. But the glisten in her eyes told him that he had to grant her request.

“And you’re going to help me,” he said, speaking the words that came to him as they presented themselves. “We have three days...” He’d have to cancel his appearance at a fund-raiser for the clinic Wednesday night. And dinner with the Montgomerys, friends of his and Lil’s who still continued to invite him and Kelsey over on a regular Friday-night basis. “You are in charge of choosing the recipe for the audition. I’ll make it each night this week, under your supervision, and you taste the finished results and give me feedback.”

“I’ll do all the dishes,” Kelsey said, still just watching him.

“Okay.”

“Okay? As in you’re really going to audition?”

“I’ll call tomorrow and get myself on the schedule.” There was a special slot for locals, he’d just read. And according to the website, which had been updated that day, there was still an opportunity to sign up. Which Kelsey must have known, too. Since she’d also read the website’s advertisement.

She was staring at him. “For real.”

“I said I would.” And he always did what he’d told her he’d do. Even if he was a few minutes late on rare occasions.

“Woooooo-hoooo!” Her scream hurt his ears. And warmed him up so much he laughed out loud as he caught her flying toward him. Her hug was heaven.

And Burke warned fate that it better not let him let her down.

Not this time.

Not again.