“Gracie?” he says.
“Yeah?” I say.
“It’s Dad,” he says.
“Whose dad?” I say. I’m trying to process what he’s saying, and then I know, with a sick feeling in my stomach. It’s my dad.
The dad who left when I was three years old. The dad who never wrote and never called. The dad I never wanted to see again.
The dad I had imagined was dead.
THREE
"Let’s all go into the house,” Shay says.
I notice that Shay and Diego have come up on either side of me. I can feel Shay’s agitation, and I know she isn’t happy to see Nate.
That’s my father. A man called Nate.
“Do you want to go for a walk, Gracie?” Nate asks.
“No, Nate,” Shay says sharply. “Give her some room.”
“I’m giving her the whole outdoors, Shay,” my dad says pleasantly.
I’m so confused. I feel dizzy, as if I can feel the earth’s rotation.
“This is turning out to be quite a day,” Diego says.
I look at Shay. “Can we just go inside?”
“Of course, sweetie.” Shay puts her arm around me and keeps it there as we walk toward the house.
We sit in the living room. The house is small, but it has so many windows that it never feels dark or claustrophobic. To one side of the fireplace is a sofa with deep cushions, and facing it are two big, comfortable armchairs. In the middle is a table that we sometimes eat around on cold nights.
Nate picks the sofa and looks encouragingly at me, and I know he wants me to sit next to him. I sit in one of the armchairs. Shay sits in the other chair, and Diego leans against the wall.
“I apologize for not calling,” Nate says to me. “I was going to. And then I was just going to drive by first, just to see…and Shay was outside, and she saw me.”
“Why did you come?” I ask.
“I heard about your mother.”
I shake my head. “It’s been two years.”
“I know. There was no way for me to know, Gracie. I would have come right away if I’d known.”
“Let me get this straight,” I say. “You don’t come for my birthdays, you don’t come when I’m sick, you don’t come for thirteen years, but you would have shown up for a funeral?”
Nate shakes his head. “Okay, I deserved that.”
“You’re darn right you did,” Shay murmurs.
“Oh, please,” I say. “Listen, you didn’t have to show up. You could have called. Or sent me an e-mail.”
“There’s so much to tell you,” Nate says.
“Yeah, me, too,” I say. “I was three years old when you left. A few things have happened.”
I’m trying not to have it all come back to me, but it’s flooding in, and I’m holding myself together because I just might fall apart. I am thinking of the years. The years before I was able to just wipe the notion of “father” out of my life. Watching other kids with their dads. Imagining him knocking on the door. Closing my eyes and picturing it. And mostly, seeing a three-year-old girl with her dad, seeing how the father holds her hand, or picks her up, or leans down to talk to her…and thinking, How could he do it? How could he leave me?
Mom had always said that Dad was a “complicated man.” When I was little, she’d just say he loved me very much…and leave it at that. But later, she would tell me sometimes that she’d loved him despite the “better angels of my nature.” When she quoted Abraham Lincoln, you knew it was serious stuff.
Nate stands up. “I know this must be a shock to you. Maybe it’s better that the first visit be short, so you can process this.”
Shay stands up quickly. “That’s a good idea. What do you think, Gracie?”
I’m picking up so much turmoil from Shay. She hates having Nate in this house. I can feel it. Is she afraid of him? Afraid he’ll snatch me away? Afraid I’ll go with him?
“That might be best,” I say.
“Will you walk me to the car?” Nate asks me.
I look at him, really look at him, for the first time. He’s always been not quite a person to me. Now I see…myself. I always thought I looked like my mom. She always told me I did, too. But now I know she was lying. Lying to protect me. Because I wouldn’t have wanted to know how much I looked like him.
And that pulls me out the door with him, somehow.
The front door thuds behind us. It sends a shudder through me, as though it’s cut me off from Shay and Diego forever. Since we’ve been sitting inside, dusk has fallen, and the light is deep blue and smudgy with shadows.
“My own dad was manic-depressive,” Nate says. “Your grandfather. He died when I was in college. He killed himself. They didn’t diagnose him correctly, I guess. He lived in terror for a lot of the time, and he tried not to take it out on us, but he did.”
Well. Nate sure didn’t believe in small talk.
“I never felt I was loved, growing up,” Nate continues. “I mean, I don’t want to boo-hoo all over you. That could get messy.” He flashes an uneasy smile. “I’m just trying to explain a little bit of why it took me so long to get myself together. Only one person in my life really loved me as a child, and that was my aunt Jane. I was afraid I would grow up to be my father. After you were born, it all crashed down on me, all that fear. I was terrified I’d turn you into something you wouldn’t want to be, Gracie.”
I realize that I’m holding my breath so I won’t miss a word.
“I was afraid I’d turn you into me,” he says.
I don’t look at him. I look at my shoes. I look at every individual blade of grass, because if this is an apology, it just isn’t doing it for me.
“Some mornings I couldn’t get out of bed,” he says. “I thought—It’s happening to me. I’m going to ruin Carrie’s life, and Gracie’s life. They’ll be better off without me. I’ll tell you. If you get to the place where you think the people you love most in the world are better off without you…well, it’s a very bad place.”
He starts walking again, and I walk beside him, listening now.
“I went to New Mexico because I didn’t know anyone there and nobody knew me,” he says. “I found a therapist. After some treatment—well, eventually, I got better. I found out I’m not manic-depressive. Just screwed up. And I worked on my problems, and when I got clear, I realized…” He swallows, and his voice cracks. “I’d blown it. It was too late. I couldn’t just walk back into my own front door. It wasn’t my home any longer. I lost any right to think that. And I was a coward, and so I kept…putting it off. I’ll call on her birthday, I’d say. Or Christmas. Or summertime. And months went by, and years…and I remembered what a therapist had told me—If you can’t be there every day for her, don’t do it. She’ll be better off.”
He stops, his hand on the car door. “I think you were better off without me. That’s the honest truth.”
“So what’s different now?” I ask.
“I met someone. I got married. And she wants to have kids. And my track record…well, I just thought, I already have a kid. I don’t want to be one of those dads who has a second family and forgets he ever had a first. And my wife…she’s a good person. She’s the one who pointed out to me that I couldn’t be a father to a new child if I didn’t try again with the child I had.”
“So she told you to come here. You wouldn’t have come otherwise.” For some reason, that makes me furious.
He lets out a breath. “I’m not going to lie to you, Gracie. That’s true. But what you have to know is, Rachel makes me do a lot of things I didn’t think I was capable of doing. She makes me a better person. I want to live up to what she thinks I am.” He pauses and then he says, “I’d like you to meet her sometime.”
I hear in his voice a hopefulness that makes me angry…and sad, too. Does he really think that he can come here and make everything else go away?
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Well.” He clears his throat. “I’m going to ha
ng around for a few more days. I’ll call tomorrow and, if you want, I’d like to take you to lunch. Or anything.”
“I’ll see,” I say. It’s as much as I can give him, and it feels like too much.
FOUR
I let the door shut behind me when I walk back into the house. The living room is dark now. Shay and Diego are in the kitchen. I smell something funny, something I’ve never smelled in Shay’s house. It’s unpleasant. I wrinkle my nose.
Underneath my feet the hardwood floor feels spongy. I smell mildew and stale air and I want to cough, but I can’t seem to catch a breath of pure air…
And suddenly, I realize I’m having a vision, and I’m trapped in the vision, and I can’t get out, and I can’t breathe, and there’s a roaring in my ears…
Shay turns on the light, and the living room springs forward, all comfortable and warm. I feel my hammering heart.
“I thought I’d light a fire,” she says.
“That would be good,” I say. I tell my heart to slow down.
What had I seen? Was it Shay’s house or another house?
Did it have to do with the drowned man? Or my father?
By the time Shay has placed the kindling and wadded up newspapers and built her foolproof-fire system, my heart rate has returned to the normal range. I curl up on the couch and reach for the wool throw that’s folded on the back. I pull it over my legs and sit back against the sofa arm so I can look at the flames.
Shay sits down opposite me. Her dark, curly hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she’s in her floppy fleece pants, so I guess she’s not seeing Joe tonight. Since she’s been dating Joe, Shay’s wardrobe has improved to an amazing degree. She’s a little overweight, round and pretty, and she’s started wearing filmy blouses and velvet pants instead of her denim shirts and jeans. She’s even exchanged Chap Stick for lip gloss.
“You look pretty shaken,” she says. “I know I was.”
“I just don’t get what he wants.”
“He wants to know you, sweetie.” Shay pats my leg. “Diego told me about Dylan Brewer. You poor baby, what a day. How do you feel?”
Here is the part where I’m supposed to share my feelings. Sometimes having a family is hard. What I want to do is look at the fire and zone out. I don’t want to talk about my feelings. I just want to ignore them until they go away.
After my mother was killed in the car crash, I had to go to something called “grief counseling.” I hated it at the time, but I came to have a great deal of respect for Dr. Julie Politsky. I learned that telling someone how you feel doesn’t mean you’ll fall apart and won’t be able to put yourself back together again. I learned that it’s possible to put yourself back together again, one piece at a time.
Dr. Politsky showed me the road map. Shay put me on the road.
So even though at this particular moment I don’t want to talk about my father, I do.
“I feel angry and sad and confused and sick to my stomach,” I say. “I feel like telling him to go away forever. But I know I should at least hear him out.”
Shay squeezes my knee. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I have his address. You can always contact him when you’re ready. You don’t have to be on his timetable.”
That was true. I hadn’t thought about it that way. “He wants to have lunch tomorrow.”
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know.”
“So sleep on it. I have an idea. Joe had to cancel, so it’s just us for dinner tonight. I’m making black bean chili and cornbread for dinner. Then let’s watch some really goofy DVD. Diego has a date with Marigold.”
I groan, and Shay smacks me on the knee playfully. “Shhh,” she warns.
“I just can’t get used to her,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“I just don’t understand him.”
Shay shrugs. “What you need to know, honey, is that sometimes you can fall for someone you don’t even like very much. I think that might have happened to Diego.”
“But he defends her all the time.”
“A little too much, I think. I think he’s trying to convince himself, too.”
There’s a knock at the door. Shay and I both look at the door as if there’s a werewolf behind it. We’re both afraid that Nate has come back.
“Don’t let him in,” I say.
“We don’t know it’s him,” she murmurs. She gets up and answers the door.
I hear Joe’s voice saying hello.
“I thought you canceled,” Shay says. “Because if you didn’t, I’m busted. I’m wearing my very oldest sweatpants. Don’t look.”
“Gross,” Joe says. “But I’m afraid I’m here in an official capacity. Is Diego around?”
“Is it about that poor drowned guy?”
“Shay,” Joe says, “did you hear me say official?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Then can you not kiss me when you say that?”
I smile, and a moment later Joe walks in. Shay hollers for Diego, and I say hello.
“How are you doing?” Joe comes closer to give me the once-over.
“I’m okay. It’s not like I saw anything.”
Diego walks in the room. “Hi, Joe.”
“It’s official business,” Shay says.
“Hi, Detective Pasta,” Diego says.
Before we knew Joe Fusilli, before he practically became a member of the family, we used to call him Detective Pasta. It must be hard to be named after a curly noodle, even though Joe claims an ancestor of his invented it.
“There was a break-in and some malicious mischief on a house down in the new development,” Joe says.
Frowning, Shay moves a little closer to Diego.
“I don’t think you did it, Diego,” Joe says. “But did you hear any kids boasting about it? It seems like some kind of prank, and I know that crowd you hang with now doesn’t like the weekend people.”
“Look, Mason is a bit of a jerk, but he wouldn’t do something like that,” Diego says.
“Tempers are running high because of Hassam’s Farm,” Joe says.
Diego nods. “I know.”
“Mason’s best friend is Andy Hassam. Mason has worked at the farm stand.”
“I’ve worked there, too,” Diego says. “Practically every kid in this area has had a summer job there.”
“Did anyone steal anything in the break-in?” Shay asks. I can tell she’s trying to turn the conversation, because Diego is starting to look angry.
“No. The house is empty. It was just sold—or, at least, someone put a bid on it. A Seattle businessman,” Joe says. “I’m just looking at the resentment factor. His name is Hank Hobbs.”
I see Shay start at the name. Joe, who never misses anything, sees it, too.
“You know him?”
“Sure,” Shay says. “He’s a major contributor to the wetlands reclamation project. We almost had to shut it down last month until he pledged a million dollars.”
Shay is a scientist with a special interest in wetlands. She works for an environmental company here on Beewick. Their major project for the past four years has been the restoration of this wetland area on Beewick, down near the ferry on the southern part of the island. Twenty years ago, a corporation, Monvor Industries, polluted and flooded the land. The final part of the restoration is scheduled for next week, when the last of the land will be drained.
“Maybe Hobbs was targeted,” Shay says. “He was once vice president of Monvor. He’s contributed to the reclamation project out of guilt, I imagine. But maybe somebody found out about his connection to the original pollution. It hasn’t been publicized; he wanted to keep things quiet. Have you talked to him?”
“I’ve got a call in to him,” Joe says.
The timer goes off in the kitchen. “That’s my cornbread,” Shay says. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”
Joe shakes his head wearily. “I’m still waiting for lab results. We still haven’t IDed the body
.”
“I’ll take out the cornbread,” Diego says, and heads for the kitchen.
“I’ll help,” I say. I trail after Diego while Shay walks Joe to the door.
Diego puts on oven mittens and still manages to look fairly manly. He wrestles the cast-iron pan full of cornbread out of the oven and kicks the door shut with his foot. I start taking down plates to set the table.
“So?” I say.
“So, what?”
“So, did you tell Joe the truth, or do you know who vandalized the house?”
Diego is busy sliding the hot pan onto a trivet. He throws the oven mitts down.
“Of course I don’t know,” he says.
“Are you sure it wasn’t Mason and his dinosaur pals? They definitely have it in for the weekenders.”
“They’re not idiots,” Diego says. “They wouldn’t do that.”
Wouldn’t they? Diego is so deluded that he thinks Marigold has an interesting mind. He’s completely head over heels.
How far would he go to protect her brother?
FIVE
Sometimes just a question will rock a household, even if the answer is what you want to hear. I can tell that Shay is worried about the crowd Diego is hanging with. Diego is a pretty independent guy, so it’s unusual that he’s spending all this time with Marigold’s brother.
The fact that my father has suddenly shown up hasn’t made things any easier. When he calls on Sunday, I tell him I’m busy. I’m just not ready to deal with it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But even though I tell him I’m not ready, I still think about him all day, so what’s the point? I can feel his presence on the island. I wonder what else he has to tell me. I wonder if I can ever ask the questions that burn me up inside. I know he’s staying at the inn in Greystone Harbor, and so I stick close to home all afternoon. I don’t want to run into him in town.
Shay has to work on Sunday afternoon, and Diego is off with Marigold, so I take out the photo album my mom made for me. I don’t have that many photos of my dad in it, but I’ve memorized every one.
There is one I used to look at all the time, taken before they were married. He’s at the beach, and he’s wearing a dark T-shirt and loose khaki pants. They’re rolled up at the ankles. He’s sitting in the sand, his hands around his knees. The wind is blowing his hair, and he’s laughing. Really laughing. This is the photograph that used to break me, because he looks so happy. So handsome. So much like a dad someone would want.