“Your mother and I had already decided to separate before I even met Mia,” he answered, sounding embarrassed. “Things between us hadn’t been good for a long time. My job, her job, the second child I wouldn’t give her—it all slipped through my fingers before I’d even realized,” he admitted, staring at his own half-eaten plate. Apparently he hadn’t liked his eggs very much either.
He stroked his beard with one hand as he stared out past the wooden porch railing. The sea, in its infinite nature, accompanied our voices with the sound of waves, shaking the air at random intervals. Matt stared out into the blue expanse, as though his thoughts were written there.
“Even if I hadn’t met my current partner, Judith and I would have broken up because the love was over. The passion was over. She constantly asked me for a divorce. There’s still a lot of affection between us, and we have the most beautiful thing in common: you. You are the fruit of our love, but the marriage was destined to end.” He sighed. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I can’t turn back time. I can only try to keep the past from impacting my future and yours, which is why I’m trying everything I can to make it up to you.” His eyes locked on mine, and I could see the pain that he’d been suffering for so long. I’d stopped considering him my father four years ago, and, for him, that must have felt like an eternity.
“If you made a mistake with someone you loved, wouldn’t you want that person to give you a second chance?” he asked.
I considered his question. The person I loved most in the world was my mother, and, yes, if I let her down, I probably would have done anything to have her forgive me. Maybe it was the same for Matt, but something inside made me doubt his sincerity.
“Having a different woman by my side doesn’t erase the love I have for my daughter.” My father took my hand, and I flinched at the unexpected gesture. “You will always be the woman I love most in this world. No one could replace my daughter, not Mia, not anyone else.” He said it with such certainty that I felt it in my chest, like a vibration that made me tremble. In that moment, Matt wasn’t lying, and he communicated that fact to me with his whole body, starting with his eyes.
In his gaze, I saw myself, and, for a brief moment, I also saw the bond that once united us.
So I made the decision not to dig up the past and just accept his invitation to spend the afternoon wandering around the small boardwalk that was within walking distance.
Every time I went there, I marveled at how different it was from my life in Detroit. It wasn’t just the beach and the water and the food vendors—everything here was an explosion of color, games, and entertainment. Every Friday night in the summer, they would set off fireworks, and I always watched them with my grandparents when I was a kid.
“You were scared of them,” my father said gruffly when I reminisced about those nights. We’d been walking for a few hours, chatting about this and that. He took a decisive bite from his hot dog as we walked.
“That’s not true,” I said defensively, strolling along beside him. The sun was almost down, and I lost myself, staring into the bright spectacle of the sunset. Rays of light broke through the edges of some of the clouds and covered everything they touched in gold and orange.
“Hungry, weren’t you? Next time, we’ll go out for lunch.” Matt pointed to the all-but-finished hot dog in my hand. I’d devoured most of it in a couple of bites because, in the end, we’d given up on the eggs and scraped our plates into the trash. I nodded and balled up the dirty napkin in myhands, waiting until I found a trash can to toss it in.
“I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid. Did you know that?” he asked, apropos of nothing, as we trod slowly down the wooden boardwalk that ran the length of the enormous beach.
“Really?” I tugged my coat tighter around myself and arranged the edges of my scarf underneath my collar, all without taking my attention from him. Despite the low temperatures, the day had been sunny and nice.
“Yes. I even submitted to a few poetry competitions. Won some of them too,” he admitted, a nostalgic smile spreading across his face as his eyes turned back to the sea.
“So what made you study medicine then?” I asked.
“Your grandfather,” he said immediately. “He was a doctor, as was his father before him. So he wanted me, his eldest son, to continue the family tradition. I kept writing in secret for a while because I knew he’d never allow me to keep pursuing my dream. But when I found myself at a crossroads with regard to my future, I put my passion aside and threw myself fully into my studies.” He stuck his hands into his jacket pockets and pulled off his sunglasses to better enjoy the colors of sunset that would so soon give way to stars.
“What about Uncle Robert? Why didn’t he have to go to med school?”
My uncle had walked a different path. He’d become a lawyer, and he lived in Chicago now. He was unmarried with no children, and he didn’t have a great relationship with Matt.
“He was the lucky one—my father gave him a choice. For me, he already had a whole life planned out,” he answered, his voice full of bitterness for a man who was long gone and, perhaps, not as kind as I’d believed him to be.
The ringing of Matt’s phone interrupted our conversation. Matt excused himself and answered, “Hey, honey,” he said.
It was surely Mia calling; she was the only woman he’d greet like that. I kept quiet and soaked in the peaceful atmosphere all around us. Hardly any people. Hardly any cars. Some places were already closed up. It was perfect.
“Oh, I see. So, it’ll just be the three of you? Why isn’t he coming?”
I turned to Matt to see what he was talking about, and he shot a brief look at me before sighing deeply. “Well, try to talk him into it. Do you wantme to talk to him? I don’t get his attitude on this.” He frowned and scratched his eyebrow with his thumb. They were probably talking about Neil.
He didn’t want to join us? Why not?
Was he so disgusted with me now that he had to avoid me at all costs?
I couldn’t hide my disappointment. After we had shared so much, were we now just going to ignore each other? On top of that, I still felt enormously uncomfortable when I thought about what I’d done with him. I didn’t regret it, not at all, but it was still difficult, dealing with the emptiness caused by his absence.
But even though Neil seemingly had no further interest in me, something held me back from fully believing that.
He couldn’t have been lying the last time we were together. I didn’t want to believe he could be that cruel. He’d made love to me; he had given me something of himself, and I had experienced it all firsthand. It hadn’t just been some figment of my imagination.
That was the thread of hope I was clinging to with both hands, lest I fall and shatter into a million pieces.
