CHARACTER
The Do-Overby Lynn Painter

Dad (Thomas)

Dad (Thomas) — Character Analysis

Quick Facts

  • Role: Emilie Hornby’s divorced father; remarried to Lisa; father of Logan and Joel
  • First appearance: Valentine’s Day morning, trading jokes over breakfast
  • Key relationships: Ex-husband to Mom (Beth); son of Grandma Max; father to Emilie; husband to Lisa
  • Defining conflict: Accepts a job promotion that moves his new family to Texas, unintentionally sidelining Emilie

Who They Are

Thomas (“Dad”) is the kind, funny, and often distracted center of Emilie’s family life—someone who genuinely loves his daughter but keeps signaling, without meaning to, that she belongs to his “old life.” Divorced from Beth and fully immersed in a new marriage and two young sons, he takes a seemingly logical promotion that relocates his household to Houston, assuming Emilie will be fine because “college is soon.” That assumption becomes the spark that exposes how invisible she feels. Even his most tender gestures—scraping snow off her van, checking in after she’s late—can’t paper over the fact that his attention is divided, and that division hurts.

Personality & Traits

Thomas blends warmth with inattentiveness, a combination that makes him easy to love and easy to be wounded by. His humor keeps conversations light, but it also masks blind spots—especially his tendency to plan around his new family and invite Emilie to adapt after the fact. When frightened, his care flares into anger, revealing how much he feels and how poorly he sometimes manages those feelings.

  • Playful, witty, and disarming

    • Evidence: His breakfast banter—“Good Lord, slow down. No one here knows the Heimlich.” and “And technically... ‘ass’ isn’t a bad word. It’s a donkey.”—creates a ritual of teasing that signals closeness.
    • Why it matters: The joking builds an everyday intimacy that convinces him they’re “fine,” making it harder to see the deeper neglect Emilie feels.

  • Distracted, even oblivious to impact

    • Evidence: He announces Houston like a calendar update: “You’re going away to college soon, so really, it won’t affect you that much.”
    • Why it matters: He frames life around the logistics of his new household, relegating Emilie to a peripheral timeline and forcing her to articulate needs he assumed didn’t exist.

  • Fundamentally caring, but through acts more than talk

    • Evidence: Quiet caretaking (like scraping snow off Emilie’s van) and his panic when she doesn’t come home after her “Day of No Consequences.”
    • Why it matters: He loves consistently, but in a way that Emilie can miss until a crisis; their “love languages” misalign, fueling her sense of being an afterthought.

  • Fear-prone anger

    • Evidence: He explodes after thinking Emilie ran away, his voice booming at her and at Grandma Max.
    • Why it matters: The anger is love in its most clumsy form—protection expressed as control—deepening the rift even as it confirms how much she matters to him.

  • Visible bond with Emilie

    • Evidence: His “flame-red” hair is “the potent original” to Emilie’s “watered-down coppery-brown.”
    • Why it matters: Their matching hair becomes a living emblem of connection—proof they belong to each other even when their lives don’t line up.

Character Journey

Thomas begins as a well-meaning father confident in the stability of playful routines. The Houston promotion exposes how thoroughly he’s reorganized life around his new family; he expects Emilie to adjust quietly. Her hurt shatters that illusion. In one time-loop iteration, she finally tells him directly that his house is her true home, and his apology—“I guess I thought it wouldn’t matter much to you.”—marks a pivot from assumption to attention. Off-page, he and Beth meet to renegotiate the plan for Emilie’s senior year, ultimately offering her agency over where she lives. By the end, Thomas evolves from a dad who thinks love plus logistics is enough to one who realizes love also requires listening and re-choosing your child.

Key Relationships

  • Emilie Hornby: Their bond is affectionate but out of sync. He interprets jokes and chores as proof of closeness, while Emilie experiences his choices—especially the move—as evidence that she’s been relegated to the margins. When she finally names her need, he listens, and the relationship shifts from unspoken expectations to deliberate care.

  • Lisa: Thomas’s marriage to Lisa is steady, child-centered, and time-consuming. Lisa isn’t antagonistic to Emilie, but her presence symbolizes the “new life” Thomas prioritizes—bedtimes, carpools, promotions—structures that, by default, exclude his teenage daughter’s emotional reality.

  • Mom (Beth): Post-divorce, their dynamic runs hot: efficient co-parents until a crisis pushes them into shouting matches. Crucially, their lunch after Emilie’s breakdown shows they can collaborate when it counts, converting conflict into a plan that honors Emilie’s autonomy.

  • Grandma Max: As Thomas’s mother, she’s both his support and his pressure point. He expects Emilie to know Grandma Max will move with them—a sign of how inward his planning has become—and he still barks at her in panic, revealing how fear for Emilie can override his usual respect.

Defining Moments

Thomas’s most telling scenes track how quickly “practical” decisions can wound—and how quickly he can learn when confronted with the cost.

  • The Texas Announcement

    • What happens: He casually reveals the Houston move and assumes Emilie will stay with her mom.
    • Why it matters: It compresses Emilie into a footnote in his plan, crystallizing her fear that she belongs to his past, not his present.

  • Valentine Morning Banter

    • What happens: Jokes about the Heimlich and the word “ass” establish their routine rhythm.
    • Why it matters: The lightness sets an expectation that they’re connected—making the later betrayal feel sharper because it violates the tone he helped create.

  • The Post–Day of No Consequences Confrontation

    • What happens: He arrives terrified and furious after thinking Emilie might be missing or worse.
    • Why it matters: His fear-coded anger exposes the depth of his care, while the blowup shows how his protective instincts can make him misread what Emilie actually needs.

  • The Apology and Realization

    • What happens: After Emilie names her need to belong in his home, he admits, “I guess I thought it wouldn’t matter much to you.”
    • Why it matters: It’s the hinge of his arc—from presuming to asking, from deciding for her to deciding with her.

  • The Compromise

    • What happens: He and Beth meet, then offer Emilie the choice of where to live for senior year.
    • Why it matters: Action replaces intention; he reallocates power to Emilie, proving growth through logistics that finally center her.

Symbolism & Themes

Thomas embodies the tension of Grief and Healing in a blended family. He is the parent who “moves on” well—new marriage, new sons, new promotion—while leaving his first child to carry the grief of what the family lost. His arc models repair: recognition of harm, a sincere apology, and structural change that welcomes the child back into the present tense of the family.

Essential Quotes

"Good Lord, slow down. No one here knows the Heimlich." This line is classic Thomas: protective impulse wrapped in humor. It reads as teasing, but it’s also a father’s reflex to keep his daughter safe—an affection that later curdles into anger when fear spikes.

"And technically... ‘ass’ isn’t a bad word. It’s a donkey." His wordplay undercuts tension and creates an inside joke. The levity sustains intimacy, but it also lets him glide past heavier conversations, which is part of why he misses Emilie’s deeper needs.

"I’ve been offered a promotion, but it requires we move to Houston... You’re going away to college soon, so really, it won’t affect you that much." The corporate tone—promotion, requirements, timelines—reduces Emilie to a scheduling detail. It reveals the blind spot at the heart of his arc: he confuses logistical feasibility with emotional harmlessness.

"Wow. Um, I’m going to be honest here, Em—I didn’t expect this. I guess I thought it wouldn’t matter much to you." This is the moment of recognition. He finally sees the gap between what he assumed and what Emilie feels, opening the door to genuine repair.

"What’s wrong is that my daughter never came home last night. What’s wrong is that you ignored my texts and stayed out without telling me where you were. We called all of your friends and were just about to call the goddamn police because we thought you might be dead!" His panic erupts as accusation, translating love into volume. It’s messy and imperfect, but it proves that beneath the distraction is a father whose fear is as big as his love—and who must learn to communicate both without causing new harm.