I'm going to be honest here. At 19, I wanted nothing to do with my dad, he was a mean alcoholic who had put me through h*ll as a teen. I felt abandoned, neglected, and although I never expressed my hate for him, I felt it deep down and felt guilty for it because he was my father.
My stepmother said the same exact things you said. My dad said the same things your AH says, too. Their relationship is what it is. She's only 19, and a lot of the stuff she went through in an alcoholic home is yet to be revealed to her. Believe me, I'm 42 and still working on the crap from the fallout from having a dad who was an alcoholic. I just recently told my stepmother some of the things that went on in our home as children(she married my dad when I was 18) and she had no idea. My dad wasn't going to tell her all the problems we had, or how he behaved, or how he was too drunk or asleep to attend our graduations or birthday parties.
Also, when my dad was dying I didn't go visit him either. I loved him but I didn't trust him, I needed to love him from afar. The pain was too great and I never knew how I would act/react. There was a lot of emotional baggage to deal with and maybe I did things wrong, but it was a way to protect myself. His daughter may be OK talking to him on the phone ( I know I was OK with that, and I was relatively close to my stepmother, she even got me a summer job at her company the summer I turned 19), but she may not feel comfortable with close quarters, with true intimate adult parent/child relationships. That is where I struggle today.
I don't know if this was helpful at all, everyone's experience and relationship issues are different and the dynamics can change over time.