“Sure,” Leda said. “Plenty of time.”
“I don’t want to miss him,” Steve said.
“It’s early. You won’t miss him,” Leda said. “Run away.”
Henry pushed back from the table and patted his stomach. “I’ll go with you.”
“After eating a hero?” I asked.
He shrugged. Leda told him to put his plate in the dishwasher.
Steve paused for a moment to look at my hair. “She does good work,” he said. The compliment was for his wife, not for me. Steve Ha could not care less about my hair.
“Go,” Leda said. When they were gone, she asked me how I planned to manage this.
“I don’t think it’s going to be complicated. I’ll wait and see ifEddie tells me, and if he doesn’t tell me, I’ll ask him. I’d rather hear his version before I talk to Mom. Whatever happened, I’m pretty sure he did it, though. He seems to carry a lot of guilt.”
“But then so do you, and so do I, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t do anything.”
Which was why she was Dr. Ha, “Your Therapist.”
My dress was jade green with a rounded neck and half sleeves, fitted waist and full skirt, though not too full, appropriate for any formal retirement party, anniversary party, or wedding. With my hair done up, you could still see the trace of the scar that ran along the side of my face, but like everything else, it had, with time, faded to insignificance. Steve and Henry came back from their run and got cleaned up. Leda put a silk blouse on with her jeans. When the doorman called to say that Mr. Triplett had arrived, the four of us went down the hall to wait in front of the elevator.
“This is sort of ridiculous,” Henry said. He was seventeen.
“You think it’s ridiculous because you’ve never known the fleeting pleasure of having a decent stepfather,” Leda said to her son.
“There are a lot of cultural experiences you miss out on when your parents stay married,” Steve said.
“You’ve deprived me of everything,” Henry said. Then the doors opened and the elevator presented Eddie Triplett in a tuxedo holding a small vase of lilies of the valley.
He raised his free hand and covered his mouth to stare at the four of us while we smiled like fools. His eyes blinked hard behind his tortoiseshell glasses. “Look at you,” he said.
“Hi, Eddie,” Leda said.
“Look how beautiful you are, all of you.” There was a womanwith him in the elevator, her Pomeranian on a leash. He turned to her. “Have you ever seen such a beautiful family?”
“I have not,” the woman said generously.
I held out my hand, as if he were standing outside in the rain. “Come on.”
He shook his head. “It’s too much.”
“That’s true,” Leda said. “But you can’t stay in the elevator forever, and I will only hug you in the hall.”
“Go on,” the woman said, maybe hoping to get to her own floor but not wanting to rush the moment.
Eddie stepped forward then, straight into Leda’s arms. He gave her the flowers, and when she introduced her son and husband, he hugged them as well.
Where had this happiness been? Not with our father in his apartment near the docks, and not with our mother and the exceedingly positive Lucas Ekker. The joy of childhood had come in moments with Leda and in moments with Eddie Triplett, who had been with us for such a short time. We walked to the Has’ apartment as a family, all of us touching him.
“Heavens, would you look at this?” Eddie said, going to the long bank of windows to take in the view of the park.
“It never gets old,” Steve said.
“You live in the city?” Henry asked.
“Downtown,” he said. “Chelsea.”
