“If you don’t think Gully and I will get in your way,” I say. Gully is lying near my feet and at the sound of his name, he lifts his gorgeous head and gives me one of his soulful, slightly apologetic looks as though to say he realizes that his size means he will always, inevitably, be somewhat in the way. I reach down and run my thumb over his velvety black muzzle.
“Lucy, I’m retired,” my dad says. “I’m sure I’ll be in your way more than the other way around.”
It was a mere month after he retired from the accounting firm in San Francisco where he’d worked for decades that my mother died of a heart attack—no warning at all, their plans for their golden years disappearing along with her. Though I call my dad every week, I’ve yet to get a straight answer as to how he has been spending his time.
Now that I’m home again, I feel more acutely aware than ever that our little family is just the two of us. There are no aunts, no uncles, no cousins. Only this town, the neighbors who have always known us. Where are those neighbors now? I wonder.
“How is it, being retired?” I ask, trying to keep the worry from my voice. “What have you been up to?”
He shrugs. “Oh, this and that. House projects, mostly. All of the little things I never got around to when I was working.”
I glance over his shoulder into the living room. It strikes me that it’s not just clean, it’s immaculate. It’s like no one actually lives there. He’s left everything exactly as it was when my mother was alive, but without her presence, without the whirling, joyful mess she so often left in her wake or her complicated, lovely scent, it feels more like a museum than a home.
I look back at my father. “Do you ever have company over? The Hummels? The Constantinos?”
He shakes his head.
I stare at him. “But you must see them. They invite you to dinner?”
He shrugs. “They invite me, but I’m not up for much socializing these days. I keep myself busy, though. There’s plenty to do around here.”
“Oh, but Dad,” I say, “aren’t you lonely?”
He levels his gaze on mine and says gently, “Aren’t you?”
Heat warms my skin. My father knows that I move too often to make lasting friendships. But I have my work, and the satisfaction of knowing that my gardens bring people both joy and peace. At the end of a long day, I am content to curl into bed with Gully at my feet and a book in my hands. I am fine; I have my reasons for choosing this path. My father chose something else—he chose my vibrant mother, a home, this little suburban community where everyone knows everyone.
“Look at that,” he says then, nodding toward the window and saving me from having to answer his question. “The magic hour.”
He’s right. The light in the kitchen is changing, the strong spring afternoon sun easing into a soft wash of gold. This was always my mother’s favorite time of day, when the sun hangs just above the ocean and its light pours over the coast like honey falling from a warm spoon.
“Magichours,” I correct, emphasizing the plural. At this, my father produces the first flicker of a genuine smile that I’ve seen from him since I stepped out of my truck. My mother swore that the magic hour lasted twice as long in Bantom Bay as it did anywhere else—that it wasn’t one hour here, but two.
Gully stands and walks to the kitchen door. He looks over his shoulder expectantly at me, and I, in turn, look at my father.
“Should we take a walk down to the beach?” I ask. “Enjoy the light?”
“I don’t think so,” he says too quickly, telling me all I need to know about the offers of company he has rejected in the past months. “You go ahead, if you’d like.”
I want to argue with him, but he’s already walking into the living room, settling into the armchair with one of his mystery novels in hand. I frown, then remind myself that I’m staying. There is time.
I head outside, thinking I’ll walk Gully to the beach. Instead I stop on the driveway.
There, at the end of the pavement, the yellow doors of my mother’s studio seem to glow. In truth,everythingis glowing—even Gully. He looks practically ethereal, a halo of golden-hour light making his fur shine.
I walk toward the doors and then stop again. When I was home for my mother’s funeral, I’d peeked inside her studio but had not been able to bring myself to cross the threshold. Now, the fresh yellow paint on the doors makes my stomach twist. What if I look inside and find that my father has taken on the studio as one of his projects? What if he has tidied it the way he has the house, scrubbing away the last signs of my mother’s creative, exuberant spirit?
There is, I know, only one way to find out.
With the sun pressing a warm hand to my back, I open the doors. Gully, either out of protectiveness or curiosity, moves forward first, and I follow.
Immediately I release a long, relieved breath.
The studio is a mess. A truly spectacular mess, just as it always was. Tables of various sizes are crowded with dust-covered tubes of paint, hardened mounds of rags, magazines, photographs, and sketch pads. Brushes, palette knives, and pencils jut out like dried bouquets from glass jars. Fluttering garlands of pastel ribbons and tissue-paper flowers crisscross in arcs below the blue ceiling. Multicolored constellations of dried paint speckle the concrete floor. In the light that streams through the open doors, dust motes sparkle.
Best of all, my mother’s scent laces the air. I breathe in, feeling it drift softly through my aching chest. Gardenia, sandalwood, linseed oil. The very scent that had called me home. My mother’s fragrance has disappeared from the house, but here, in the studio, it remains.
Everythingin the studio remains exactly how she left it, frozen in time.
