Slow Hands

left Maddy’s mouth without her brain becoming involved in the decision. Her sister hadn’t asked for her advice—but she gave it anyway, unable to stop herself. “You know he won’t make you happy. You know you don’t love him.”
    “I loved my first husband, and I have loved men since. Maybe marrying someone I don’t love is exactly the right thing to do.” She ran a weary hand over her face, looking every bit as exhausted as Maddy felt. “It’s for the best, Mad. I’m just not cut out for it, falling in love and staying in love. My father’s daughter, I guess.”
    How could she argue that, when Maddy had tossed Jake out of her life for the same reason?
    Before she could say any more, though, Tabitha glanced at the clock. “Come on, let’s go. She can’t bitch about us going in first if she didn’t bother to show up on time.”
    Maddy didn’t even have to ask who she was. It was 11 a.m., Deborah wasn’t here, and nobody would keep them from their father’s side.
    Reaching his room and gingerly pushing the door open, Maddy held her breath. She expected him to look near death. Pale and exhausted, weak, stuck with wires and probes and surrounded by machines.
    He was stuck with wires and probes and surrounded by machines, and he did look tired and pale…but not at all on the verge of death. Instead, as he saw them standing in the doorway, he smiled and slowly lifted a hand. “My girls.”
    They flew to his side and cried like babies. Both of them. The Ice Queen and the Rich Bitch, sitting on either side of their father, holding his hands and sobbing their eyes out.
    Which he quickly got bored with. “Enough. I’m fine. Stop or you’ll soak my sheets. If the nurses think I wet this bed, I’ll never be able to show my face at a hospital fund-raiser again.”
    Sniffling, Maddy managed a smile.
    “What’s going on? I’m dying for news,” he said, trying to sound normal, though his weakness was underscored by the softness of his voice and the lines of fatigue and pain on his face.
    “Everything’s fine,” Maddy said.
    “Absolutely fine,” her sister agreed.
    “The wedding?”
    Tabby stared at him, and Maddy read the anguish there.
    “You are going through with it, aren’t you? Don’t you dare let this—” her father waved to his own limp body “—stop you from proceeding.” Then, looking up at the ceiling, rather than at the bride, he added, “ If you really want to marry him at all, that is.”
    Tabby sucked in a surprised breath. Maddy, who’d known her father had been having doubts, did not.
    “If you don’t, feel free to use your old man’s weak ticker as an excuse to get out of the whole mess.”
    Tabitha just stared, her eyes huge in her pale face, not saying a single word.
    Dad didn’t push it. “Poor Deborah, she’s not here?”
    “I’m sure she’ll be here any minute,” Maddy said. “We just took advantage of the fact that we beat her by a few seconds.”
    “Perhaps.”
    “She was very worried,” Tabby admitted, albeit grudgingly.
    “I’m sure she was.” Closing his eyes and sinking deeper into the pillow, he mumbled, “Don’t judge her…I’ve been quite unkind to that woman.”
    Remembering what their stepmother had said—about how her husband had encouraged her to go have an affair—Maddy could only exchange a stricken glance with Tabitha.
    “Shh, it’s okay.” Tabby stroked her father’s thinning gray hair.
    “I don’t love her, you see.” His eyes closed, his words drifting into little more than a whisper, as if he was speaking more to himself than to them. “I’m not sure who said it, but it’s true. The only thing worse than being in a loveless marriage is being in one where there is love on only one side. You’d think I’d have learned that by now.”
    “Stop it. She knew what she was doing,” Maddy said, more worried about her father’s health than her stepmother’s emotions. “Besides, you are capable of love, Dad. Just look at us. There’s no doubt in Tabby’s mind, or in mine, that you love us every bit as much as we love you.”
    A different kind of love—but she wouldn’t allow her father to wallow in self-recrimination, not when he needed to recover.
    Her words seemed to surprise him. His eyes flew open. “Oh, of course I’m capable of love, darling.” His frail hands slid across the thin hospital blanket, so he could grasp his hands around one of each of his daughters’. “I have loved greatly.”
    And