I bit my lip, glancing at Ethan. He nodded in encouragement, and I looked back at Dad. Well, why the hell not. “Maybe we could check it out tomorrow?”
Dad looked surprised. “Of course. Unless—you’d rather go with your friends?”
“No, Dad,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended. I just didn’t think I should have to spell out wanting to hang out with him. I softened my voice. “It’d be fun if we went.”
Dad looked pleased. “Great.”
When I glanced over at Ethan, he smiled so broadly back, my heart hurt.
Eleven
’Sconset was a picture-perfect village on the far side of the island, all tiny cedar-shingled cottages and pink roses climbing up trellises. A gentle haze softened the line where the cerulean water met the almost cloudless sky. Only wisps of cirrus clouds marred the blue, like an artistic afterthought.
We followed a public cliff walk along the bluff, through the backyards of mansions. Sometimes the path wound beneath brambling, shady hedges, while other times we could see sweeping vistas of bent sea trees, gray-purple flowers, and scraggly grass. Wooden staircases stretched several stories down to the shore, worn out by decades of hard weather. The day was hot but not unbearable, and the breeze off the water kept me cool.
Dad and I had always loved hikes, even if he said his creaky old bones couldn’t keep up with me. (Admittedly, I often teased him about this same thing.) He loved nature and history, so historical walks were basically his favorite thing. “ ’Sconset started as a seventeenth-century fishing village,” he told me when I asked. “It became a resort town during the whaling heyday, and later an artist colony.” He gestured down the bluff. “There was aneighborhood called Codfish Park, where a lot of working-class African Americans and immigrants lived, Cape Verdeans and Irish, with their own shops and bakeries. Many of them worked as domestic help or at the old casino in the early nineteen hundreds. Oh! And ’Sconset is where the first distress call from theTitanicwas heard.”
When the path ended—erosion had cut it off, Dad said—we traipsed through a public alley between two mansions to a main road, which led to the lighthouse.Sankaty Headhad been inscribed on a boulder at the entrance. Dad took a few pictures of me—with my head in them, thank god—and I took a selfie of both of us to send to Aunt Lou and Grandma and Grandpa.
A yellowing informational sign readSankaty Head Lighthouse, Established 1850, with a photo of the lighthouse next to houses that no longer existed. The first bullet point announced the beginning of the US Lighthouse Establishment under Alexander Hamilton in 1789.
“You likedHamiltonso much when you were little,” Dad said. “I don’t know if you still do, but I thought you might be interested.”
“Dad, everyone likedHamilton. It was a cultural phenomenon.” When the concern on his face didn’t lessen, I softened. “I still like it. This is very cool. Oh, look!” I pointed at another bullet.1842–1845: Nantucket Astronomer William Mitchell Observes That Nearly 45,000 Ships of All Designs Have Passed Near the Nantucket Shoals.“This is Maria Mitchell’s dad, right?”
“Right. Probably work they were doing for the Coast Survey. He drew a really good map of the island, too.”
I laughed. Dad probably hadn’t meant to be funny—it probablyhadbeen a really good map—but I liked that someone could be remembered for a map.
Also, I thought it was very sweet Maria and her dad worked together. “You could do another whole book on fathers and daughters who worked together.”
An expression of delight crossed Dad’s face. “I could! Hm…Monet’s stepdaughter, Blanche, was also a painter. And Rashi’s daughters might have taken dictation from him.”
“Rashi—the scholar?” I recognized him as a Talmudic scholar but couldn’t recall much more.
“Yes, from eleventh-century France. His daughters married his students, and were more involved in scholarship and rituals than women usually were at the time…”
We walked around the squat lighthouse, admiring the sunshine washing over the land, before returning the way we’d come. In the village center, we ordered ice cream and ate our cones at small tables out back.
“Can I see your apartment?” I asked when we’d finished. “It’s on the way back to town, right? It’s been a couple weeks and I still haven’t seen it.”
He looked abashed. “There’s really nothing to see…”
“Dad.”
So we hopped off the local bus, the Wave, halfway back to town, in what Dad said was the Tom Nevers neighborhood. The trees here were tall and dense, moss carpeting their trunks. It reminded me of the forests at home, where I’d spent countless hours wandering through oceans of ferns, clambering up pines, and balancing on fallen logs. The speckled sunlight made theforest feel magical, and fleeting nostalgia stabbed at me as we walked down a bike path.
Dad rented a room in a townhouse complex, a real suburban-development vibe—a shared pool and lots of parking. Dad pointed out a nearby Salvadoran store where he got his coffee and lunches, and where I was sure he used his schoolboy Spanish, then led me to his front door. It wasn’t locked, and Dad laughed at my scandalized reaction.
At least none of his prized possessions were in the downstairs common area, which consisted of a shared galley kitchen for the four boarders. Enough space to scramble eggs, but not for involved cooking projects. Too bad—Dad loved cooking.
Dad’s room was on the third floor, and he led me up carpeted stairs, past a shared bathroom and laundry room. He unlocked the door. “It’s not much…”
The room was neat as a pin, and not much larger. It was shaped like an L; the short leg contained a bed tucked beneath the eaves, while the long side had a window overlooking the road and the woods beyond. Cozied up to the foot of the bed was a desk, piled high with books, papers, and my dad’s laptop. The rest of the room had a mini-fridge, microwave, and two armchairs facing each other over a round end table.
“It’s nice,” I said. It felt more like an Airbnb than a place to live: not bad, but impersonal. And sharing a bathroom with strangers seemed highly unpleasant, but then again, Dad usually shared with me, and I spent a large (and unfairly maligned) amount of time on my hair in the mornings.
“Have you seen the new British movie, with the blimp?” Dadasked. “It has that young actress you like, the redheaded one, and the man who looks like a string bean…”
