One Good Dog by Susan Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

foreshortened by scheduled commitments. The riding lesson, the tennis lesson, the important birthday parties. Foreshortened by stalling. Ariel is not happy about spending time with him and she makes sure he knows it.
    Adam tries not to think about how, not that long ago, Ariel was Daddy’s little girl. She played the part so well. “Take me, Daddy!” When she was little, Ariel wanted to go everywhere with him, cried and tugged at his pant leg as he headed out the door on yet another business trip. He remembers the chirp of her babyish voice on the phone, asking him to remember to bring her something special from Hong Kong or London. When had the pleas for his attention devolved into demands for possessions? At some point, she’d stopped asking him to stay home on weekday mornings until it was time for her to go to school, stopped warbling the kind of endearments to him that some of her friends did with their fathers. He stoppedbeing Daddy and became the Nameless One. And this “situation” hasn’t helped. Now they are strangers forced into companionship by the courts. Twenty minutes later, Ariel finally reappears, tiny low-slung breeches pasted to her pipe-stem legs, her T-shirt with its slightly suggestive motto arced over her pubescent breasts, hiked well above her belly button. He says nothing and is still rebuffed when he reaches out to hug her, given the side of her face, her mouth screwed up as far away from his lips as it can get.
    Ariel and Adam get into his car without any conversation. His daughter slumps into the passenger seat and plugs herself into her iPod, an effective wall. Do not disturb.
    When Ariel was born, Sterling declared that one was enough. And that was okay; he didn’t need a big family. Dandling this tiny creature on his knee, Adam was as terrified as he’d ever been. He knew nothing about being a father. Thank God the nanny they hired had been a keeper and so much of his worry vanished as Mrs. Sanchez made sure that Ariel was happy.
    “Good lesson?”
    Ariel pulls away one ear bud and cocks an eyebrow at him.
    “Your lesson? Was it good?” A wisp of something slides across the field of his memory. There is a familiarity he hasn’t seen before in Ariel’s expression. She is growing up; her facial bones are becoming the structure of the woman she will be. She is adopting expressions that come only with disappointment in men.
    “Yeah. It was all right.” A flat, expressionless answer. Before his fall from grace, she’d chatter to him about her riding lessons all the way home, often the only conversation they had, and one that he only half-listened to. His shrink, Dr. Stein,tells him to be patient. Ariel’s sense of security has been damaged. Everything she ever thought about her father has been compromised by his actions.
    Adam tries again. “Oh, come on. What was good about it?” His peripheral view of his daughter’s profile reveals a firmly set jaw. She replaces the ear bud. Slowly, her head begins to nod in time with whatever questionable music is pouring into her ear. A sweat-darkened lock of hair falls across her cheek. She loops it back over her ear, and suddenly Adam knows what’s familiar to him. She looks like his sister. Ariel is exactly the age Adam remembers his sister best, fifteen, the year she ran away. The year when she was his only ally.
    “Hey, little bro, can I help you build your tower?” Adam’s sister grabs a handful of red and yellow Legos. He’s building a fort, but that’s okay. If Veronica wants to build a tower, then that’s what they’ll build. The idea of ten minutes of her attention warms him, a slight flush of pleasure Adam will never quite experience again in his lifetime. The pleasure of an adored sister spending time with him. Veronica loops a strand of dark blond hair behind her ear. The strand falls back across her cheek as she reaches for another block.
     
    Adam presses his hand against the place over his ribs where he has an