Setting my sunglasses and camera on an empty patch of the table, I slide into what must have been Joy’s chair, given the remains of a green smoothie and the uneaten half of a piece of avocado toast. “Hey, Dad.”
He looks up in surprise and just stares at first, hitting me with the awful possibility that he won’t recognize me here. I’m about to take off the ball cap to help him out, when he removes his reading glasses, breaks into a smile, and says, “Hello, middle one.”
I’m stunned. “Middle one,” which he had always thought a clever takeoff on “little one,” was his nickname for me in those fond moments that were so few and far between.
I had forgotten.
But this was anicememory.
More confident with him on my side, I push Jack from mind and relax. “Sorry I’m late. I meant to get here sooner, but, well, vacation and all.” No lie there, though far safer than mentioning the search for a gun or time with Jack. “How’s your wrist?”
“Fine,” he says. But he is studying me like I’m the clue in a crossword puzzle that has him stumped.
“My hair’s a mess,” I try, explaining the ball cap. When we were kids, hats at the table were forbidden. In a place like this, though, I’m far from the only one wearing a cap. Ocean air? Humidity? Vacation? Skimming past the other hats, I spot my daughter. “Looks like Joy is keeping busy.” The words are barely out when she heads over.
His blue eyes actually soften. “She’s a good child,” he says, and again I hear fondness. Of all the things he doesn’t know in his current state, he should know this. Joy isn’t just a good child. She’s thebest.
Leaning in to kiss my cheek, mybestchild scolds in a whisper, “I was worried, Mom. Like, I was starting to think something popped, you know, burst in your head and you didn’t wake up?” She straightens with her server smile in place and asks in a server voice, “Coffee?” Before I can reply, she has righted a clean mug from an unusedplace setting and is filling it to the top. She knows I take it black—just as I know, with quick remorse, that she worries when I’m not where she expects me to be. I’m all she has.
At least, I always have been. She has barely finished topping off my father’s coffee, when Anne waves her over, and she’s off—but not before bending to me and murmuring, “You need to tell your sister plastic straws are bad. I mean, where has she been? Didn’t she get the memo? She uses them like they’re air.”
Smiling, I watch her go. Anne may be part of the family she’s always wanted, but that doesn’t mean she gets a free pass, which actually raises another issue. “Is it legal for Joy to be working?” I ask my father.
He is frowning at the spoon in his hand. Grabbing the cream, I add some and gesture for him to stir. In the process of doing that, he seems to have forgotten the question. So I repeat it.
“Is it legal for her to be working?”
“Is that what she’s doing?” he asks back.
“Well, pouring coffee.” But I have to amend that when I see her turn from the window with a plated breakfast in each hand. “And serving food. Are there liability issues for the shop since she’s underage?”
The question hangs there, but I’m distracted watching her. She sets the plates down before a Vineyard Vines pair, and wipes her palms on her apron while they talk. From there, she turns to clear a nearby table whose occupants have left. She certainly seems to know what she’s doing.
My father hasn’t answered.
Again, I repeat the question. “Is liability a problem?”
“What does Anne say?” he asks—and it strikes me that he doesn’t remember the law. Too quickly, he adds, “She’s only helping until the other one comes.”
Well, that does make sense. It also raises an issue I want to discuss. “I met her—Lily—outside. She must be in the kitchen by now. Amazing how much she looks like Elizabeth.” When he doesn’t react, I ask,“Do you know why she’s here?” I’ve heard Jack’s thoughts. I want to know his.
“Why do any of them come?” He grapples with the question. “She needed a job. For summer. I think she has something else for the fall.” It’s another plausible statement, but in the next instant, he looks stricken. He presses his lips together and looks at me in desperation. He is clearly trying to remember what that something else is.
“Is her family struggling?” I ask.
“Struggling?”
“With money?”
“I think. Yes.”
“Do you know why?” When his blues sharpened, I softened the question. “What do her parents do for a living?”
He draws back. “How would I know?”
His voice is too loud. I drop mine even more in the hope he will take the hint. “Do you know that she is Elizabeth’s great-niece?”
“Objection!” he bellows. “That is irrelevant to the point. The prosecution has no business raising it.”
