“You have nothing but time, and a good friend is hard to find. Take it from someone who knows.”
He finishes his beer and tosses two twenties on the bar. “I’m sorry about what happened, Charlie. But I’m glad to see you on your feet. You were all I could think about today. Let’s hope tomorrow brings more light.”
He lifts his thick glasses onto his hair, and my breath catches as he heads toward the door, past Seton, out into the rainy evening. I should run after him, but my body won’t move, my limbs frozen in shock, because I’d recognize those blue eyes anywhere. They stare back at me every morning from my own mirror.
That was Mark Kilgore, my father, the man who disappeared into the White Mountains a quarter of a century ago.
Chapter Thirteen
Here’s where I should confess that seeing my father isn’t new. I’ve spotted him from time to time out of the corner of my eye, lingering on the edge of a crowd. When I’ve looked again, he’s been gone, leaving me wondering whether he was ever there in the first place.
The first time I saw him was years ago, when he hovered on the periphery of a soccer game. I must have been six or seven and playing in the summer league in Hero, because Seton was on the team, too. I moved the ball down the field, in control, ready to strike, but spotting my father was enough of a distraction that I lost the ball and the other team scored. As kids ran onto the field to celebrate, I searched the sidelines, but my father was gone.
I can’t remember whether Mrs. Haviland came to the game or if we met her at the Landing afterward, but I do know she bought us ice cream. “Sometimes you win,” she told me as we sat outside on a wooden bench, “and sometimes you lose the ball and the other team scores. That doesn’t matter in the end. Be kind, and focus on the positive.”
By then, I’d pieced together some of my family’s history. I knew Mrs. Haviland had grown up with my father. I also understood that my mother avoided her, but that Mrs. Haviland did things like taking me for ice cream. “You look just like him,” she’d say sometimes, especially when we were alone.
Later that night, at Idlewood, I lay in bed while Reid read me a story. I yearned for the times when I was away from boarding school,together with my mother and brother, when Paul and Hadley would visit, when we felt like a family. “What would you do,” I asked Reid, “if Dad came home?”
Reid put the book aside. “What do you know about Dad?” he asked.
“He went away.”
Reid turned off the bedside lamp. “You should go to sleep.”
“Dad came to my soccer game today,” I said into the darkness, my voice barely a whisper.
Reid stood and retreated to the bedroom doorway. “You couldn’t have seen Dad,” he said. “And if you did, don’t tell Mom, whatever you do. Dad was a bad man, and you’ll upset her.”
Chapter Fourteen
The crowd in the pub swirls around me as I stare at the empty stool where my father sat not thirty seconds ago. In the background, Freya Faith sings “Landslide,” while Seton stands guard by the entrance. As if in slow motion, I get up and dash outside. On the street, a wave of people surges at me, shoving forward to escape the heavy rain. I force my way through them until I reach the middle of the road, asphalt shining under the streetlamps, and search every direction for that ponytail. Off in the distance, a motorcycle engine roars.
My father’s gone.
I tap record on my phone. “I saw him,” I say, my breathing heavy. “My father sat beside me at the bar. We talked for, I don’t know, five minutes.” As the words form, doubt creeps into my mind as it has before, eroding the certitude that propelled me out here to the street.
“Itwashim,” I say.
I know it was him.
I step toward the pub and hold the phone close. I want to capture the patter of the rain and the music in the background. This time, I speak slowly and deliberately. “Mark Kilgore, my father, was at the Landing in downtown Hero, New Hampshire. He drank a beer. He talked to me about friendship. He called me by my name.” I pause, trying to remember his exact words. “He said he was here visiting an old friend, someone he was worried about.”
Someone such as Andrea Haviland, a friend who nearly died today. Could Julian have been onto something when he talked about the past folding in on the present? Because my father appearing out of nowhere on the day of the Burkehaven fire can’t be a coincidence.
Back inside, Seton still stands guard by the doorway.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” she says.
I search her face for a sign she saw what I saw, that she understands who was here tonight. But why would Seton recognize my father, especially when his appearance has changed so much? “That man sitting next to me at the bar—”
“Ponytail. Glasses.”
“You saw him?”
“Of course I saw him. I’m trained to notice these things.”
“Did you recognize him?” I ask.
