Hush by Nancy Bush Page B

Deneuve.

    Annette Deneuve Rendell. Thirty years old today.

    ―Is Faith coming?‖ Annette asked Coby a tad anxiously, finally daring an even touchier subject.

    ―I haven‘t talked to her.‖ Coby and her sister were close in times of crisis, but they didn‘t have a lot in common on a daily basis and their general relationship consisted of sporadic phone calls, amusing e-mails, and a line or picture on Facebook from time to time. But if Coby had difficulty with Annette, Faith was, well, not into acceptance at all.

    Coby distantly realized that her heart was pounding as if she‘d run a marathon. It had been seven years since her father had married Annette, but their romantic relationship had started not long after the beach trip. They‘d met during that fateful night, which felt like the end of one life for Coby and the start of another. At the time Annette was eighteen and Dave forty-one. Of course, they kept their mutual attraction secret for a long while for a lot of reasons, the o ne Dave copped to most often being he wanted more time to pass since he was newly divorced. Bullshit , Coby thought, then and now. Her father just didn‘t want to look at the fact that he was seeing a teenager. Couldn‘t work that into his overall view of himself. A teenager.

    Jesus , she thought, feeling the wrongness of it all sweep over her once again. It was not okay for her father to date one of her classmates, no matter whether it was legal or not. It just simply was not okay. And no amount of trying to logically accept it would ever make it okay.

    But . . . whatever. A lot of years had passed. A lot of water under the proverbial bridge. She wasn‘t going to change his mind now. Coby loved him and Daddy Dave was still a good guy, even if his crown was tarnished a bit in his love for a girl only a year older than Coby herself and one the same age as Faith. Coby had mostly kept her real feelings about the union to herself. Mostly. Her sister, her mother, and everyone else except for her friend Willa, who, though she still lived across the country, had become a deep confidante, did not know the extent of Coby‘s ambivalence. Willa had given the marriage ten years and had wagered a hundred bucks on the outcome. Unfortunately It looked like Coby was going to win that bet.

    ―Let‘s get you a drink,‖ Dave said, and Coby walked toward the kitchen across the familiar reddish fir floor of the living room, which had been remodeled and expanded westward to show off a commanding view of the restless Pacific. Tonight she could just make out the ruffling white edges of the waves in the darkness beyond.

    The house itself was several short flights of stone stairs above the beach, and apart from the laurel and a few scrub pine trees to the south, there was nothing but sea, sky, and sand. And tonight, shifting, pouring rain and a low, keening wind.

    ―Hope you brought your suit for the hot tub,‖ Annette said. She was standing at the sink as Coby entered the kitchen and nodding toward the window and the outside deck. Coby raised her brows as she glanced outside again to the helllish weather and Annette laughed. ―JK. Just kidding.
    How‘s Cabernet suit you? Red wine makes bad weather better.‖

    ―Perfect,‖ Coby said.

    Then Coby saw through the window above the sink that Annette wasn‘t completely kidding about the hot tub. Sunk into the wooden deck on the south side of the house, it was clearly heated and ready, a cloud of steam on its surface spiraling upward through the slanting rain.

    Feeling her dad‘s eyes on her, Coby turned and gave him a smile. He hugged her again, as if he couldn‘t help himself, wrapping his arms around Coby in another hard squeeze that always seemed to convey the question: Do you still love me? Is this okay? Am I still a good father?

    Coby hugged him back before sliding away from his embrace, hoping this time that he would be assured that she was on board with his marriage when she clearly