The Guest House Read Online Free Page A

sure.”
    “Hey, before I forget . . .” Owen glanced at her. “Your mom left me a message this afternoon. She said she tried your cell twice and you didn’t answer.”
    Meg pulled at a hangnail on her pinkie. “I’ll call her back later. My phone’s almost dead.”
    “Why don’t you call her now,” he said, gesturing to his cell in the cup holder.
    “I’d better not. We might lose the signal.”
    “I never lose a signal around here.”
    “No, really, I can wait till we get to Grandma’s. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
    She was making excuses, Owen thought, and he wondered why. Before his divorce, he’d never been a suspicious person. Now it seemed he saw secrets everywhere. He turned his attention back to the road and let the worry go. Most likely Meg just didn’t feel up to a call with her mother. As much as Heather and she got along, Meg would often claim exhaustion after one of her mother’s phone check-ins. Some days Heather’s text messaging was interminable; Owen could hear the alerts chiming out insistently.
    Of course, his real worry was that Heather had found some reason to require Meg to return home early, some urgent commitment she couldn’t be excused from, no matter what court orders said. The previous summer had seen a similar battle, when Heather had informed him that Meg needed to get back to the city a week earlier than planned to start field hockey practice. Never mind that Meg wasn’t even fond of the sport, or that it had meant leaving the custard stand shorthanded at the last minute.
    “So what’s this about George’s opening in LA?” he asked.
    Meg spun to face him. “Mom told you about that?”
    “She left it in the message.”
    “What did she say?”
    Owen glanced at Meg, thinking she looked stricken. “Just that it was over Thanksgiving and she wanted you to go. Is something wrong?”
    “No, nothing’s wrong.” Meg turned back to face the road, reaching out to turn on the radio. “I don’t have to go, you know.”
    “Do you
want
to go?”
    She shrugged, pressing at the radio buttons too fast to actually hear her selections. Try as Owen did to pretend otherwise, the mention of his ex-wife’s boyfriend still squeezed the air out of his lungs.
    “You know, it’s okay if you do,” he said gently.
    Meg smiled but didn’t answer, and Owen didn’t press, just let the sound of an old Dire Straits song fill the car. They drove on in silence, and even though Owen knew there might be lots of reasons why Meg had fallen so quiet, most of which had nothing to do with him, it was still hard not to calculate the time they spent in each other’s company not talking. Before the divorce, he’d never worried too much if they had gone whole days without a real conversation. Now the shared minutes were precious, as quantifiable as any limited thing. As of today, he had exactly twenty-eight days left with his daughter before she’d pack up and return to New York City.
    Twenty-eight days.
    In a few weeks, he’d get that figure down to hours. Then minutes.
    And all he could think, for the thousandth time, was that none of this had been his idea.

2
    R egardless of the differences between mother and daughter—and there were plenty—when Lexi and Edie shared a kitchen, they were a seamless team, matched to perfection. Lexi, compulsively tidy and organized, always handled the prep work, while her mother, wildly messy and too impatient to be bothered with exact measurements, let alone recipes, took orders at the stove. Tonight’s menu was an ambitious one—orange-curry shrimp and roasted root vegetables—but Lexi was determined to make it a special meal, knowing it was the first family dinner since she’d returned from London, now that Meg was home for the summer. Team Wright was back in Harrisport; a celebration was in order.
    At her chopping board, Lexi heard the telltale hiss of boiling liquid and glanced up to see the rice bubbling over while her mother stared out the