I roll my eyes. Unbelievable.
Me: You idiot. Oklahoma.
The three dots that indicate he’s typing pop up. I roll over onto a pillow that’s fallen to my side, rubbing my eyes, and finally, the reply comes.
Colt: I thought she was with you??
And my heart fucking sinks.
Me: She’s not there?
Colt: Is she supposed to be?
Me: I’d think so. Camp is over. She didn’t go home?
Colt: I can talk to Montse. But I think we would know if she’d come back.
Shit. I know Montse’s her mom, which reminds me, with a sharp pang to my heart, that this is actually none of my business. And anyway, I feel awful giving Colt something to chase circles around right now, especially after hejustgot engaged – something I learned right after Friday’s team dinner, causing another inconvenient pang of guilt. He should be relaxing, celebrating.
It’s not my responsibility, I immediately remind myself. Jordan is a grown woman. She’ll do what she wants to do, how she wants to do it. She doesn’t need me pulling out my hair trying to figure out where she’s gone, and she probably doesn’t want me doing that, either, given everything that happened in the past week, the fight on the field. Maybe we pulled it together in the end, but that didn’t really matter, did it? The damage was done.
Phone still in hand, I pad out of bed and over to the chest of drawers against the wall, tug on a shirt. The photo above the chest of drawers is still noticeably askew. I chuckle humourlessly.
I take a sip of water, fish a pill out of the pack next to the bedside lamp and pop it, washing it down with what’s left in my clear blue bottle. Quietly, knowing Tali will still be sleeping in after the day she had yesterday, I sneak out into the hall.
Her door’s a crack open, the same as it always is. She can’t sleep with it closed, likes to have a way to run into my room fast in case it rains and starts to thunder badly. She also firmly believes keeping it open will encourage the dogs to come in. This is true. I make my way down towards her door, a sparkly pink sign emblazoned with ‘TALISE’ hanging outside, and gently push it open. The first thing I see is, as expected, Scout and Boo lying at the foot of the bed, all curled up. They love that kid; I’m not surprised they made their way inside, or that she keeps letting them. Tali has her pale pink covers pulled up to her chin. She looks tiny in comparison to the huge mounds of frilly pillows and numerous dog plushies she sleeps with, a sea of fluff.
Eventually, I plod down the stairs, and sit myself down at the island with a bowl of yogurt and granola. It’s eerily quiet,lonely. Everyone in the house is up there with Tali, as if to remind me I royally screwed up, an unintentional cold shoulder. My phone’s still in my hand. Some part of me is still unconsciously waiting, hoping, to hear word back from Colt about her.
The worst part is that at the counter, I can still picture Jordan fixing herself that salad, fitting so effortlessly into my house, my life. Maybe I could say it felt like it was destiny, but that would be an understatement. At the end of the day, it felt like she was my purpose, that she was my missing piece. My compass. Where the arrow pointed, I would follow her. I had been so lost for the longest time. She’d found me.
I look back up toward the staircase. Everyone in the house. Tali and the dogs, my world.
Don’t you want to take a chance, Rodney?
If I had taken that chance, she might still be at that counter. And I wouldn’t feel like my world was far, far away from me in this moment.
I crunch on a spoonful of granola and lean my head against my hand. Jordan would take a chance. She would believe in me, believe that even if it wasn’t possible to restore my world to perfect, I could start to fix it.
The argument between Declan and Jordan at the big game floods back to me. Tali looking back at the gates that Jordan had left through. And Charlotte in the Boston stands.
If Jordan had been right that night – about the fact that therewerestill good dads left in the world – I can’t keep doing this to Tali. Maybe I can’t get Jordan back. It might be too late for that. But I have to fix the root of this problem. I have to go back to where my fears started, back to what has made me sovery scared to take a chance, if I want to show my daughter that I’m that good dad. That I’ll champion for her, come what may.
I know exactly what I have to do.
Charlotte already has both of her bags and her backpack packed, standing in a neat row along the wall of her room, when I arrive at the little Whittaker bed and breakfast she’s staying at.
It’s probably the first thing I notice when she opens the door. It’s about eight in the morning. When I’d messaged her asking to meet, she had curtly let me know she would have to leave at nine to catch her flight. But some odd motivation had entered my body – some part of Jordan’s strength. I needed this. I promised her I would drag myself out of bed and show up well before she left.
Now, I look like a mess, but she’s totally put together, wearing a high-end sweatset in a dark maroon and sporting a perfect ponytail. My hair points every which way, there are probably crease lines on my face, and she may well not be able to take me seriously. I’m a couple of years too late. But I’m here for my daughter.
‘Rodney.’ She clears her throat. ‘What did you need?’
‘Let’s head to the sunroom. Please,’ I add.
Charlotte looks like she really isn’t taking me seriously. She plants a hand on her hip. For a moment, I think I’ve already lost the battle. But then, she nods.
We walk downstairs in dead silence. The sunroom, which is built into the back of the bed and breakfast, has exactly two wicker chairs in it and windows all around. It’s just sunny enough that the room is illuminated in a faint glow, but not somuch that it blinds us. I take a deep breath before I sit down in one of the chairs, and Charlotte takes a seat across from me.
