Callie stumbled a few steps back. Tension knotted in her neck and throbbed in her head again, though she was fairly certain it had nothing to do with her hangover. "Dad. Uh...hey."
"Nice of you to come see me," he huffed. "I had to hear from Windell that my own daughter was back in town."
Windell was her father's best friend. He annoyed Callie almost as much as her daddy.
"I'm sorry," she winced at her own lie. "It was kind of a last-minute decision to come back here. I'm waiting to hear about an internship in New York, and I...wanted to see you." The saliva in her mouth took on the distinct flavor of battery acid as she continued to spew forth lies in an effort to please her father.
"What kind of internship?"
"Photography." Callie had no idea why she was suddenly, stupidly hopeful that her father might show some kind of interest in her work. He never had before. She'd been telling herself for years that she didn't need his approval. She didn't need him at all. Yet some ridiculous part of her still sought out the praise she knew was never coming.
Abe helped himself to a seat at her nana's kitchen table. "People take their own pictures now. Didn't you hear? Everyone has a camera in their pocket. Even if you'd tried to call to tell me, I probably wouldn't have gotten it. Stupid cell phone company. I swear I don't know where they find their techs. I spent two hours arguing with them last week because they bundled my cable and cell bill. Cable went out and they expected me to wait for some idiot service tech to come out here and get it fixed. When I told them they didn't have brains enough to get out of the rain, and that they could just cancel my cable and I'd go with somebody else they said I couldn't because then my cell would also be turned off. I swear, this is what we get when we let dumbass kids run companies. Like I've got time to deal with stupidity like that. Some of us actually have to work to make a living."
"How long did they want you to wait on the tech?" Callie asked tentatively.
"I don't know. They wanted me to be home between eight and twelve or something. If one of my clients has a problem with my work, then guess what I do. I get off my ass and go out and fix it right then."
Callie's father had tried on several ventures for size throughout her life, none of which ever panned out quite the way he thought they would. According to her father, his businesses always failed due to someone else’s stupidity. She wasn't certain whom his clients actually were this time, and she didn't care enough to ask. As far as she could remember, money had always been much shorter than his lengthy list of ideas on how to make it.
"Delphia, how about some eggs?" Abe demanded.
Her grandmother gave him a weary nod and put butter in a skillet. Callie ground her teeth. She needed to get rid of him so she could soothe the rough scrape his presence always left behind. That had been her purpose for as long as she could remember. She would go along behind her father and try to ease the strain he always dumped on the people he interacted with. She tried to make everything better. She also needed him to go so she could get back to thinking about Ford. "So...uh you said something about clients. I thought you were working at the power plant."
"I am, but Windell and I also have our own startup. We were talking one night about funny stuff we say all the time and decided to put a few of them on T-shirts. We haven't quite figured out the inventory system yet, but we're getting there."
"But you already have clients who already have problems with your T-shirts?" Surely, he knew how insane that sounded.
He rolled his eyes. "This is what I get for letting your mother keep you in public school. Where did you even come up with that question? Did you leave the contents of your head out there in LA or something? And what happened to Derrick? He seemed like a nice guy."
Just like every conversation she'd ever had with her father, he left her uncertain which question to answer and what the correct response might be that would prove that she wasn't stupid. "But you just said...the thing about the cable company," she huffed. "And Derrick and I are breaking up."
Her father wasted no time giving her an incredulous look. "God, you are just like your mother."
No one in the kitchen was under any impression that he was being complimentary. Every time Callie had to endure her father she always came away from the experience drained, and yet she never seemed able to place her finger on the exact puncture where he managed to siphon out her peace.