“Opposites attract, you know.” He leaned around her to wet a dishrag and went to wipe down the oak table.

“It’s not like that. We have nothing in common, Daddy, and I’m not going to spend the rest my life arguing like—” She stopped, realizing she was crossing a line. Who was she to criticize her parents’ marriage?

“Like your mom and me?” Her dad finished the thought.

Kate loaded the two plates back to back in the dishwasher and shut the door. The crestfallen look on her dad’s face exacerbated her regret. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, that’s fair.” He leaned against the kitchen counter across from her, bracing his hands against the ledge, reminding her of the way Lucas had stood so many times.

“I’ve always wondered how much you remembered,” he said.

She remembered more than the yelling. She remembered the time her dad had dumped sacks of her mom’s new clothes out the front door. She could still see the new dresses, tags still attached, strewn across the spring green lawn. “When two people are so different, conflict is inevitable,” Kate said.

Her dad shook his head. “Your mother and I weren’t so different.”

“Oh, come on, Daddy. She was a spender; you were a saver. She was messy and disorganized; you were a neat freak. She wanted to go places; you wanted to stay home.”

“Is that what you think? That our marriage fell apart because we were too different?” Her dad drew in a deep breath, exhaled, then straightened and walked toward the living room. “Come sit, Kate.” She followed her dad into the room and sat on the center of the sofa, opposite his recliner.

“Your mother and I had a good marriage in the beginning,” he said. “But soon, we began to disagree about a lot of things. At the time, I thought I was right about everything. I thought it was smart to control the money the way I did. I told myself I was looking out for our best interests. And I thought the house had to be kept a certain way. Your mom liked things neat too, but my standards were high. Unfeasibly high.”

“Mom was a clutter bug.”

“Not initially. The things I did drove her crazy. The way the labels on food packages had to be turned facing front, the way the towels had to be folded in thirds and hung in the center of the towel rack, the way our lives had to run by the clock, down to the second. It all became too much for her.”

“You weren’t the problem, Daddy. It was her. I remember. She was a spendaholic. She used to go out and shop and buy new furniture, new clothes, when we didn’t have the money—”