“Let me put your leash on,” I say. “Please.”
I see his eyes soften. His hand winds out of the blankets, and he reaches for my open palm. There are wires coming out of his fingers, and his hands are cold—colder than I remember—but they warm as soon as I cover his with both of mine.
“Daddy,” I say. “There’s so much still ahead.”
He squeezes my hand and clears his throat. Marcella turns toward the windows. I can see how much anger is still in her, how much she’s struggling with.
“We can’t go back,” he says.
I make a move to respond, but he holds my hand tightly.Not yet.
“For so many reasons. We’d still end up here.”
“No we wouldn’t,” I say. “We’d put the stent in. It could buy us a decade.”
“But what about the decade we’ve already had?” His voice grows loud. It sounds, in this hospital room, almost booming. “I don’t want to take it back. I loved that decade. I loved my life.”
I look to Marcella, but her back is still to us. I see, from her reflection, that she is crying.
“We had all that time,” he says. “We spent it.”
“So let’s spend it again.”
“We can’t,” he says.
“Why?”
His face softens. He delivers the next part gently.
“Because,” he says. “You wouldn’t have Leo.”
Leo. Suddenly he rushes into frame, and then he’s all I can see. Our first meeting, almost five years ago on the beach in Santa Monica. Bowling on one of our early dates at Highland Park Bowl, me getting three strikes in a row, even though I hadn’t bowled since childhood. Our engagement. Our wedding in Malibu. Leo cooking short ribs in the kitchen, the bungalow filling with smoke from a forgotten head of cauliflower in the oven. Director equipment all over the dining table, boxes of unfiled mail. His shoes by the door scattered like leaves.
Morning coffee and walks to Kings Road Café and his arms—wide and warm and beating with life.
Leo.
I look at my dad. And in him I see it, too. I see our first paddle out, barely three years old, eyes red with sea water. I see afternoons at school, running to his Toyota, knowing there would always be a chocolate chip cookie from Emil’s. I see homework in the living room and trips to the Country Mart for fresh wax and turkey sandwiches and dinners on the deck—white wine late into the night. I see volleyball games out of state and Dad at the airport Starbucks, taking every kid’s order. I see our mornings and midnights.
I see our moments like heartbeats. Next and next and next.
How can I choose? My father and my husband.
“Dad,” I tell him. “I can’t lose you.”
From on top of the hospital blankets he squeezes my hand. “Lauren,” he says. He looks into my eyes.
My dear papa, my dad.
“You never will.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Lauren leaves shortly after, a mess of tears and anger. Marcella wants to take it back, too—hell, she wants to take it back just to protect her daughter from this, this devastation, what is coming—but what would it mean to take it back? Dave is right. Nothing has happened, no car accident, no sudden slip of the wheel. Just the slow and unrelenting passage of time.
After her daughter leaves, her husband seems to fold into himself, and into sleep, and once his chest is moving—up and down, up and down—she slips out, too.
She doesn’t know where Lauren is, but she suspects that she won’t be at home, not at the beach. She expects she is talking to her husband. Marcella likes Leo. He is not who she would have chosen for Lauren, but now that he’s here—and since he has been—she knows he is right. He is foundational to Lauren in the way she has always felt she was foundational to Dave. Dave was the fun one, Marcella held the base, and she likes that her daughter will get to fly free.
