Page 14 of The Apparent Trap

“We started talking about the story she’s doing on fire prevention. You know, Californians.” He chuckles like this is some inside joke between weather dweebs. I’m still unable to move. “Anyway, a drink turned into dinner, and it all just sort of . . . snowballed. I think . . . well . . . I really like her.”

His expression is sheepish, and from the way Carmen is looking at him, I wonder if I’ve just stumbled them into a conversation they haven’t had yet. She’s gone from embarrassed to awestruck—another expression I’m not sure I’ve ever seen on her.

“Yeah?” Carmen asks.

My dad whips back around, seeming stunned to remember he said this out loud in front of her, like me walking in on him groping my colleague isn’t the most surprising thing to happen today.

“Well, yeah, Carm. I . . . you make me feel like . . . well. I didn’t think I could feel this way again. And these last few weeks have just been . . . I don’t know, am I crazy?”

Based on Carmen’s grin, I can tell she decidedly does not think he’s crazy.

Maybe I’m crazy? Have I just stumbled into the twilight zone? Did I hit my head? My dad and Carmen? Carmen, who could probably land any eligible man within a hundred miles? And my dad, who collects vintage barometers and goes outside without umbrellas, declaring, “If I can’t see it coming, I deserve to get wet!”

Okay, yeah, they’re both climate geek workaholics . . . But he’s . . . I do the math in my head of their age gap, and that does not make any of this better. They’re twenty-nine years apart! Their age gap is only two years younger than I am!

I want to scream at both of them. I want to quietly pull Carmen to the side of the room and ask if she’s so determined to be a stoic vault, then why did she pick her producer’s dad to start dating? And also whisper to her that, maybe she hasn’t noticed, but this man who does (admittedly, ugh) have a great personality is soon aging into senior citizen discounts while she’s just eked into the age where she can rent a car. I’m not one to shame people for sexual proclivities, but these aren’t people. It’s my dad! My adorable dad whose hands are wrinkled and . . . dear god, I do not want to take that bodily thought any further. Gross. This all just feels gross. How do they not see that?!

And how does he not see that while, sure, she’s beautiful and competent, she’s also a brick wall of impersonal hustle and focus? How could that possibly be good for him?

But clearly they see nothing, because instead of turning to me and saying “Ha ha, fooled you, just kidding!” she reaches out and takes his hand so tenderly that I feel like I’m intruding on someone who’s body snatched the woman I’ve been observing for a month and a half.

“You’re not crazy,” she says quietly. “I feel it too.”

“Really?” he asks, squeezing her hands tighter.

That squeeze unleashes a wave of a memory, crashing onto me without warning. It’s my mom’s hand he’s squeezing. She’s in her hospital bed, the room bathed in cheap fluorescent lighting that I want to believe is making her skin seem more jaundiced than it actually is. He still holds on to her like she’s the most beautiful woman alive.

He’s hanging on to her being alive.

And like a clap of lightning, I get a flash of the aftermath, too, the way I always do whenever my mom’s memory resurfaces. I see my dad’s sweet smile faking it for me while his lungs struggled to breathe without her.

It reminds me how much his heartbreak coated my insides. It made me never want it for myself. It made me content with staying single as the years went by; it made me want to keep from ever covering up my own smiles, even if they then weren’t as big and glowing as they could’ve been. A real smile, a smile that never hurt, was the only way to live.

The reminder makes my heart sink. Because right now, in this moment, the smile on his face is so damn pure. It’s so damn happy.

How could I not root for whatever brings him that much joy?

But much like the tandem memories, reality slaps the question away. Because clearly, whatever this is, it can’t last. She’s not going to let a bad-optics relationship get in the way of her ambition once the understanding of an almost thirty-year age gap settles in. It’s untenable long term—she’s not going to be hitting her stride at forty while taking care of a seventy-year-old man. And the longer they pretend this could work, the harder the heartbreak would be for him.

I have no idea what to do.

I have no idea what I can do.

How the fuck do I stop the person I love most in this world from an inevitable crash he’s too starry-eyed to see coming?

“I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you before,” my dad says, jolting me back from the tornado swirling in my mind.

He’s watching me, tentative. Carmen is back to looking sheepish, but not enough to take her goddamn hand out of my dad’s.

I have no idea how to play this, but I do know enough to know that I need to wrap my head around this situation before doing anything rash.

“It’s okay,” I lie, knowing I need to say something. “I’m always happy to see you happy,” I continue, in an echo of what I said to him the other night. It’s the only viable sort-of truth to obscure the rest of my feelings until I can think of what to do.

And now I’m the one with the fake smile. It practically blankets me, sticky in its dishonesty. I wonder if he can pick up on mine the way I always did with his. Although, maybe I was wrong thinking those fake smiles had gone away soon after my mom died; perhaps he just got better at hiding them. Maybe it’s been naive to have assumed we were forging a path together post-mom, side by side.

But he’s not looking at my fake smile long enough to notice. His eyes are back on Carmen, sappy, like they’re two people who’ve just admitted they really like each other. They’re still holding hands. I’m the most unnecessary third wheel.

“Anyway.” I pivot, needing air and to somehow salvage my dignity by ending this conversation. “We can go over this interview stuff later. I need to track down the video that’s already been shot, so I’m gonna go find Jenna, that AP, and I can do that with her until you, um . . . have a minute.”