Reston, Virginia

R. J. Tully slammed on his brakes, setting off a screeching chain reaction behind him. The Yukon driver who’d cut in front of him now waved a one-finger salute before realizing he’d have to stop for the changing traffic light.

“This is not my fault,” Tully’s daughter, Emma, said from the passenger seat. She was holding up her Starbucks latte with two hands, the protective spillproof lid intact, not a drip spilled.

Tully glanced at his own coffee where he had left it in the console’s cup holder with the lid still off from when he had put in his cream. He hated drinking out of those spillproof lids. But maybe cleaning up the car’s interior would be an incentive to use them. Coffee had splashed all over including the knee of his trousers.

“Why would this be your fault?” he asked her, but he kept his eyes on the Yukon driver who was staring at him in his rearview mirror. Was he goading Tully into a game of road rage? One of these days he’d love to pull out his FBI badge and wave it at an idiot like this. Especially now that the guy was stuck waiting for the red light just like the rest of the cars he had cut off.

Tully glanced at Emma when she didn’t answer. She was staring out the passenger window, sipping her latte. “Why would you say that?” he asked again.

“You know, you’re late for work because you have to drop me off.” She shrugged without looking at him. “So you’re in a hurry. But it’s not my fault you’re late.”

“The idiot cut in front of me,” Tully said, almost adding that this had nothing to do with him being in a hurry. And it certainly wasn’t his fault, either. Thankfully he stopped himself. When had they gotten into playing the blame game? He and his ex-wife played it all the time, but only now did Tully realize he was taking on the same ritual with his daughter as if it were implanted in their genetic makeup, an involuntary reaction to outside stimuli.

“It’s not your fault, sweet pea,” Tully said. “You know I don’t mind taking you to school. I’m glad to do it. I just need a bit more warning.”

“Andrea got sick. You knew as soon as I knew.” She shot him a look as if daring him to challenge her.

He didn’t take the bait. Satisfied, Emma swiped at her long, blond hair that continually fell across her eyes. He stopped himself from saying anything.

“It’s the style,” she told Tully every time he nagged her about the habit. She had beautiful blue eyes. She shouldn’t be hiding them. Though he didn’t mention it now to avoid the eye-rolling and heavy sigh that usually followed his comments.

The light turned green. Tully eased his foot off the brake, slowing himself down. Maybe the knot in the back of his neck wasn’t from the rude Yukon driver. Things had been tense between Emma and him. It was her senior year. She constantly reminded him how much stress she was under, yet all he saw was that she wanted to go have fun and hang out at the mall or the movies with her friends.

He grew frustrated with her cavalier attitude about studying, about her grades and yes, about college. And while he piled up college-recruitment catalogs on her bedroom desk she covered them with Bride and Glamour magazines, more excited about being her mother’s maid of honor than landing an academic scholarship to the college of her choice.

She reminded him so much of Caroline sometimes. It didn’t help that the older she got the more she looked like her mother, the fair skin, blond hair, the sapphire-blue eyes that knew almost instinctively how to manipulate him. The only thing she seemed to get from Tully was her tall, lanky figure.

He’d be glad when the wedding was over and done with. Only a week left. Perhaps he would survive. He didn’t need Freud to remind him that his daughter’s excitement about her mother’s new marriage didn’t just stick in his craw because she was ignoring her college plans.

Tully didn’t begrudge Caroline getting married. This wasn’t about their divorce. That had been years ago, so many years he had to stop and count them. No, it was the nagging feeling that he was losing his daughter to Caroline’s new life.

Right after their divorce Caroline had sent Emma to live with him so that she could move on with no reminder of her past life. Or at least that’s the way Tully played it over and over in his mind. Now everyone was excited about the wedding and just expected Tully to plod along as the everlasting bearer of stability. He hated that he was so reliable and dependable that to be anything else wasn’t even a consideration.

He glanced at his watch. Reliable, dependable and late. It seemed to bother only him, especially the late part. Even when he called his boss, Assistant Director Cunningham, to leave a message that he would be late, he could hear Cunningham dismiss it, a bit of impatience in his voice that Tully would feel it necessary to call.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Emma said, bringing him back to his senses, back to the task at hand.

She’d flipped her hair back out of her eyes and was turned toward him, giving him that hopeful look of a little girl who wanted to make things right. They had been through a lot together in the last four years and she was right, it shouldn’t result in this current state of animosity. Once again she was the wise one, setting him straight, reminding him what was really important. No, they didn’t have to be arguing with each other and blaming each other. He welcomed a truce.

He sighed and smiled at her just as he pulled to the curb in front of her school. But before he could tell her she was right and that he loved her, she said, “I wouldn’t have to depend on Andrea if you bought me my own car. It’d be so much easier.”

So that’s what this was about. Tully tried to keep the disappointment from his face while Emma pecked a kiss on his cheek. She scooted across the seat and was out the door, backpack in one hand, latte in the other, brushing aside any hopes he had of an actual truce.