“Until Margo showed up.”
“But you brought her to him first. He was so happy seeing you, Joy. I will never, ever forget the look on his face when he saw you at the clinic last Friday, and when he reached for your hand and then didn’t take his eyes off you the whole way home. You’ll always have that memory. Papa wasn’t naturally a happy person, not in the sense of being cheery or jovial and lighthearted. But when you played this piano for him, when he was sitting here beside you, he was peaceful. You gave him that.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I say with the confidence of a new memory now inked in. And if that memory is an exaggeration of the truth? It doesn’t matter. Joy isn’t the only one who needs it. The idea that my daughter helped my father in his last days comforts me as well.
Unfortunately, my thirteen-year-old needs more. “But why didhe die so soon after I came? And why like that? He was supposed to die of Alzheimer’s.”
Well, I’ve thought about that, too. “There’s an upside to it,” I reason. “He didn’t want to live to be a vegetable. This was cleaner.”
“Did he know it was happening?”
“He knew his heart was weak.”
“But when it happened, did he know?”
“That he was having a heart attack? I don’t know.”
“Was he in pain?”
“He was unconscious when we reached the shed, so I’m guessing no.”
“But we werehere,” she argues, sounding hurt. “Didn’t he want to spend time with us? I thought he liked being with me.”
“He did. Oh, baby. He didn’t choose to have a heart attack. It just happened.”
“Does that mean it could happen to you?”
A heart attack can happen to anyone. But that isn’t what she means. She means, if my father had a heart attack, might I one day, too? Genetically speaking, yes, if I am Tom’s biological daughter. But am I? For a split second, I think of the scrap of gauze that I’ve squirreled away. It has bits of blood on it, and while I didn’t think corpses could bleed, ongoing CPR must have caused leakage when they inserted an IV line.
Will I use it? I can’t go there yet. As for what Joy heard, we haven’t discussed Anne’s accusations, and now isn’t the time.
Framing her face with both hands, I look her in the eye. “Anything can happen to anyone, but if I have trouble breathing, I’ll see a doctor. I am not going anywhere, Joy. Got that?” When she nods, I thumb the last tears from her cheeks and smile. “Want to read?”
The switch takes her off-guard, but the new light in her eyes says I’ve hit the jackpot. She wags a finger between us. “Together? Tonight?”
“Papa would want that,” I say, and the thought is a good one, if,again, more wishful than true. My father never read to me. He never read toanyof us. Despot that he was, he thought we should read to ourselves. But I do like to think he approved of my reading to Joy. It plants another memory for my daughter that may not be based on fact, but that will benefit her in life. “Yes. Papa would want it.”
So we read. Though we haven’t finishedThe Art of Racing in the Rain,Joy picksNumber the Starsfrom the bookshelf in my room. She isn’t as familiar with Lois Lowry as I was at her age, and there is an argument to be made that reading about the Holocaust is no more appropriate than the other after the day this has been. But the book, which made such a deep impression on me that I remember it to this day, is about bravery, heroism, and ultimate triumph. So we climb into bed and start.
It’s a distraction for Joy. Likewise for me, but only at first. As her head grows heavy on my shoulder, I feel the weight of our future and, with it, the same confusion I felt earlier. We’re not facing a World War, certainly not one in which Joy can be snatched from me. Still, I feel fear. I want to see the future but can’t—not about my daughter, not about my sisters, not about an ongoing role of Bay Bluff in my life.
Midway through chapter three, she falls asleep. Closing the book, I treasure the weight of her head on my shoulder for a while. Then she turns away onto her side, breaking the contact, and my tether is gone. The night is dark, the sea sounds powerful through the open window. I am insignificant against it. I feel lost.
Slipping deeper into the sheets, I listen for movement in the rest of the house, but the utter stillness only reminds me that Tom Aldiss is dead. How to process that, when my feelings for the man are so mixed? I try to distract myself thinking of the people who came by today, but their faces blur. Jack, my parentage, new info on Elizabeth, Anne pregnant—these issues have been put on hold by death. I don’t even feel better when I think of New York. Job, condo, friends—all seem like another world, distant and distinct.
The ocean floods the darkened room with the rumble of the tide. I might as well be out there, floundering in the night waves, because I can’t see a freaking thing. Always before in my life, I’ve had direction. I’ve known where I wanted to go. Hell, five days ago I did. But something has upset the balance. Dad’s death? Being in this place again with Margo and Anne? Seeing faces from the past? Being with Jack?
Being. With. Jack.
I’m trying not to think about him, but it isn’t working. I can push thoughts of him to the back of my mind, but they slip forward again. That’s what this place does to me. He’s always in my head, hovering like a gnat.
After swatting him away yet again, I cave. I’m tired of fighting. With all else that’s going on, I want to be weak.
Slipping from bed, I pull on my sweatshirt and run quietly down the stairs. Minutes later, I’m on the beach, that much closer to both the ocean and his house. The latter is dark, save the kitchen light. I could cross the sand, climb the steps, and open the door.
But my feet don’t budge. They’re asking me why I would go there. And they’re right. I have to get through this myself. It’s what I’ve done all these years. It’s what I’ll do again when I leave this place.
