Of Happiness Read Online Free

few minutes, both straining to translate the noises coming from the living room. Sean and I make up a small assembly line; I pull garments out from a drawer and he packs them away.
    “How many suitcases do you have?” He breaks up our movements.
    My mouth opens to answer when a violent door slam interrupts my response.
    “Woah,” Sean whispers.
    “The Grant door slam,” I explain. But which Grant left? Maybe both.
    Dad doesn’t appear, and the conversation outside the bedroom continues. Sean and I make eye contact across the room. “Harris is still here,” I surmise. He nods once. Dropping the sports bras in my hand to the ground, I hurry across the room and yank the bedroom door open. I’m just in front of the gallery of family photos in the hallway when I hear the front door close again, this time more gently. My dad and I meet in the middle.
    “He left?”
    “I told him to go.” Dad’s lips are pressed into a thin, straight line. His eyes are dark with displeasure.
    “Why would you do that?” I snap. But I’m not sure why I’m angry with him. Did I really want to talk to Harris now? Only yesterday I walked away from him. 
    “I made a judgment call,” he says gruffly, bypassing me and moving into the bedroom.
    “You don’t get to pick and choose when to be my father,” I call after him. His movements stall, body tenses, and he slowly turns around.
    “I have always been your father, Ed. Always. It’s just taken me awhile to figure out the way to be a good one.”
    Anger slips right out of me.
    Don’t push him away, don’t push him away.
     “Dad.” I stop speaking, then step over to his side and touch his elbow. “Thank you for handling the details with Claire.”
    The tense expression on his face softens and he nods. “Let’s try to go easy on each other.”
    “Deal,” I whisper.
    He sweeps his arm out toward the bedroom in an “after you” gesture.
    Inside my former bedroom, we work efficiently and quietly. Within two hours, the room looks exactly as it did before I moved in a month ago. Everything I brought somehow fit into Sean’s bags, and my additional three.
    I’m the last one out of the apartment, and when I drop my key on the console table next to the front door and shut off the hallway light, the weight of the moment staggers me. I could be closing the door on Harris, Claire, the small routine I had built, for good. A flurry of panic prickles at the back of my neck. Could it be gone so quickly?
    One day at a time , Luke’s voice reminds me. Shaking off the lingering pain, I shut the door behind me with a less-than-satisfying click .
     

 

    P ersistent ringing jolts me awake the next morning.
    Slapping my hand down on the bedside table, I feel around for my phone. When I find it, I answer without looking at the screen. “’Lo?”
    “Did I wake you?” my dad asks.
    “A little,” I mumble sleepily.
    “It’s early, but you fell asleep before we could talk about your plans for the day. Are you working?”
    Last night after Sean, Luke, Dad and I unpacked, we ordered in pizza and watched Friends reruns on their couch. At some point in the early evening, I succumbed to my exhaustion. I realize now that someone must have carried me into bed.
    “Dad, I work every day. Speaking of…” I force myself up into a sitting position, looking over at the alarm clock. It’s a little later than I normally wake during the workweek. “Not that I’m unhappy you’re here, but when are you going back home?”
    “I have a ticket for Wednesday. But if you need me to stay longer, I won’t go.” Vehemence laces his tone.
    Some of the tension I carry softens into a relaxed stance. It’s just now settling in that he took off a lot of time from work to check on me.
    “Okay, well I was going to visit an antique furniture store this morning and review it for my blog. Late afternoon I have an appointment with a client.” Mrs. Fletcher, wife to one of Harris’s colleagues, and a client