The two laughed as they walked on past.
Strange.
He finished his rounds and headed home. When he walked in the kitchen, Chelsea was setting the table for dinner. Faith was washing pots and pans. Seeing her with her hands in the dish bubbles at his sink brought him up short as a jolt of longing shot through him. A good, I-like-this-scenario jolt.
For a split second, his life felt normal. A brief respite in a rocky five years.
He shook it off and focused on his daughter. The huge grin Chelsea gave him made him want to look over his shoulder to see if the comical Kendra and Jeannie were outside making faces.
“What’s up?” he asked them.
“We started dinner,” Faith said with her back to him, wiping a dish towel over the outside of a frying pan.
“You have a phone message. I left it on your desk,” Chelsea said, and the grin somehow managed to broaden.
He narrowed his eyes. “You sure are cheerful.”
“Oh, I’m just excited about the party this Friday.”
“Party?”
“Daaaad. You know this info. Faith said she told you.”
“Oh, that party. Well, you aren’t going to any parties with boys.”
“I think you’ll change your mind.” She gave him the happiest, most hopeful grin and batted huge, puppy-dog eyes. Must be some new manipulative tool she’d picked up.
“Chels—”
“Pleeeease…You have to let me. I’ll be on my best behavior. I promise. I just have to go or I’ll be a total outcast.”
Talk about exaggeration. “You’re impossible.” He glanced at Faith, who seemed awfully busy drying the already-dry skillet. “Faith, you sure are giving that pan a work over.”
“What? Oh.” She looked a million miles away. She pulled her gaze away and placed the skillet in the cabinet. “Time to go home.”
He’d thought maybe she felt guilty about encouraging Chelsea over the party. But now he realized she hadn’t even been listening to them. She seemed distracted.
After Faith told Chelsea good-night, she headed out the back door to make the short walk next door.
He followed her to the porch and leaned against the railing. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
She finally looked directly at him. The glow from the setting sun made her eyes look bluer than usual. Such a pretty color.
She puffed out air that blew her bangs off her face. Then she messed with her ponytail. “I’m just out of sorts. Don’t know why.”
“I guess Chelsea and I have put an extra burden on you the last few days. I’m sorry.”
Her brows drew downward. “No, it’s not that at all.”
“Then tell me.” He motioned for her to sit on the steps beside him.
She started to join him, but then she popped back up. “No, really. It’s nothing. I’ve got to go. And you need to go return Hannah’s call.” She gave him a crooked smile, then walked away. “Good night.”
Hannah? Now why would she be calling?
Must be something to do with security at the bank.
He walked inside to his desk, picked up the sticky note with Chelsea’s loopy handwriting, then dialed the phone number she’d carefully written with a huge smiley face beside it.
“Hi, Hannah. Chelsea said you called.”
“Oh, hi, Gabe. Thanks for calling back. I, uh…well, this is awkward…but I was…uh…wondering, well…”
“Is something wrong?”
“Would you like to go to dinner this Saturday night?”
Dinner? “Is there something going on at the bank?” He hadn’t heard of anything. But he couldn’t keep up with every business in town.
A high, bubbly laugh burst out of her. “Oh, I’ve messed up this whole thing.” She laughed again. “I’m trying to ask you out.”
Ask him out? “For a bank business dinner?”
“For a date!” she practically hollered, as if trying to get it through his thick skull. He felt thick-skulled at the moment. “A date. You’re asking me to dinner as a date? Not something bank-sponsored?”
She chuckled. “I never once mentioned work or the bank. You just assumed.”
Surely he’d been tossed into some parallel universe. He didn’t go out on dates. And women never asked him out. What was going on?
Chelsea’s big grin, her smiley-faced sticky note, Faith’s awkwardness…
“Hannah, did someone put you up to this?”
“No. It may have been suggested, but I—”
“My daughter.” He would ground her for a month. For a year. And she could forget ever having a cell phone. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I hate that she put you in this position.”
“Oh, don’t apologize. It seems like a good idea. I just never thought you would consider it.”
“You’re right. I’m nowhere near ready to date. I’m sorry Chelsea put us in this awkward position.”
“Maybe it is time, Gabe,” she said softly. “For both of us.”
Faith’s face flashed into his mind, almost as if she’d spoken the words. He shook his head to clear the thought. “I appreciate the offer, Hannah. Maybe another time.”
As soon as they hung up, he stomped to Chelsea’s room and banged on the door, making the hand-painted name plate bounce and rattle.
“Come in,” she said as sweet as sugar.
He marched inside and found her sitting on her bed reading a teen celebrity magazine. “Don’t try to get me dates.”
“Who, me?” Her face radiated pure innocence from the frilly pink pillow shams.
It was enough to defuse his anger. But embarrassment still made the skin on his face feel a size too small. “Don’t be playing matchmaker.”
Chelsea scuttled over to the edge of the bed and looked up at him with an innocent expression. Her hair was shiny and her cheeks rosy. “Hannah sure is pretty. And not dating anyone.”
“Doesn’t matter. Now, behave. Dinner’s in ten minutes.”
She reached out with her small, soft hand and touched his arm. “Just think about it. You never know what God may have planned for you.”
Chelsea’s faith—and her ability to talk about it openly—always threw him off balance. But God? What did God have to do with this lark?
He left Chelsea to her magazine and strode to the phone in the kitchen. He hesitated for a second, hand on the receiver, but knew he had to act now. When Faith answered, he said, “You were in on this, too, weren’t you?”
“On what?” she asked, almost as innocently as his daughter. “Oh. Hannah’s call. Sorry about that.”
“I’m not ready for this. And I can’t replace Tina, anyway.”
Silence. But then Faith sighed. “I know.”
For some reason, white-hot anger smoldered beneath the frustration. How could anyone dare to try to fix him up with a woman? “Tina was everything to me. The best wife, best mother. Anyone else would pale in comparison.”
Faith was