I drop to the couch, reeling.
“I loved Iris, but it didn’t matter,” he says. “I wanted the gold.”
My mother lied to me about lying to him. He’s not lying, I can tell. And my mother—this is something she would do.
I look at Nash. He shrugs.
“Thought I would find it then we could be together,” Cap continues. “By the time I wised up, your mom was married. You were older. Too old to want a dad, I figured. Nobody wants to be the deadbeat.” He chuckles, self-deprecating. “I was too proud to grovel, and too much time had passed.”
I open and close my mouth—twice. Completely thrown.
“Nash figured it out.” He glares at Nash. “Bastard didn’t want me lying to you. Something about things being better out in the open. Clean slates and people making mistakes and all.” The way Cap directs his gaze at me feels like an attack. “Sorry about that, kiddo. Don’t blame your mom though, she just wanted what was best. I didn’t know how to do that.” He takes a hit off Penny, almost daring Nash or me to tell him not to vape in the house. “Then I didn’t know how to let everything else go.”
I start to ask him what that means, but once again, the reality of who my dad is or isn’t breaks apart before coming back together. He knew, he didn’t care, and my mother is a plague on my life.
My eyes meet Nash’s. He’s somehow just as shocked as I am even though he already knew.
My mother lied to me.
About my father.
Then lied to get me here.
Again.
I’m shaking and hot and mad enough to smash Nash’s fabulous Poulsen and Wortz coffee table to smithereens.
Afraid I might do just that, I calmly say, “Excuse me,” and walk to the back door. I slide it open, step onto the patio only to be instantly pelted by rain, then close the door.
Somewhere between numb and enraged, I let myself get soaked, seething with my fists clenched at my sides. My mother lied to me.Again.I can’t even blame the tumor, she’s pathological at this point. A menace.
The door opens and closes, and both men appear on either side of me.
“She deserves to have a goddamn brain tumor,” I say to nobody and without an ounce of guilt. She has upended my life and I’m here chasing my tail trying to help hers. I glare at Capthrough the downpour. “Andyou. You make me call youDadand play along.” My entire gene pool is made of assholes. “You didn’t even care to know me for forty-two years!”
Cap grunts. “Want to scream?”
“Yes.” Because yes, I really do. I want to scream. At him. At her. At a Frenchman.
So, I do. I scream.
And to my surprise, I hear one deep voice then another. Cap and Nash scream right along with me. In the rain, until Nash starts laughing, Cap starts coughing, and I feel less stabby, we scream.
When I look at Nash, he wipes the rain off his face and gives me a little smile that makes me laugh. Only he could make this feel better.
He slides the glass door open, and we step inside, dripping.
“You drag me over here,” Cap barks. Like he didn’t just drop a bomb on my life, then scream in the rain. “You gonna feed us or what, asshole?”
Despite every line crossed and secret spilled in the last twenty-four hours, Nash makes us blueberry pancakes.
The rain falls all day.
All day we watchAntiques Roadshow, and I listen to them tell stories as they alternate between playing chess and pool. My dad wins every time, but the way Nash says “Got me again” and gives me a wink leads me to believe it’s all by design.
It’s one of those days that looks like nothing but feels like everything. A gift of ordinary to make up for all the days of it we’ve missed. What things might have been like if life were different and we had all been made less flawed and messy.
When the day ends much sooner than I want, Cap hobbles out to the shed—Nash alongside him with proper blankets and pillows—and I call Bennie.
