Lucy and Gully step off the path to allow him room to pass.
“I’ll see you later,” he tells the dog. After a few steps, he stops and looks over his shoulder at Lucy. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
She gives him a small, sad smile that makes him wonder how he could ever have thought she looked even a bit like Millie. “Thank you,” she says.
He turns and heads toward the hole in the wall that will lead him into the sunken garden and then back to the home, to his quiet apartment, to his chair by the window.
Chapter Fifteen
California wild lilac: A flowering native California plant in the buckthorn family whose cones of delicate blossoms emit an intense, boiling-honey scent that recalls first love
Over the weekend, I tell my father about the time I spent with Adele and Vikram. I tell him how the scents of the flowers that I cared for transported them back in time, stirring forgotten memories, and that the experience seemed to have awaked a vibrancy within them.
My father hardly bats an eye. “Scents are remarkably powerful,” he says.
“Hardly a day goes by that I don’t strike up a conversation with one resident or another,” I go on. “It’s an entirely different sort of job from the more solitary ones that I’m used to,” I say, grinning at him meaningfully.
“Oh, I see,” my father says. “These old folks are your new friends, are they?” He sighs. Then, after a beat, he groans and lifts his hands in surrender. “Fine. A deal’s a deal. Let me get my sweater.”
My dad drives us into town. Seeing him behind the wheel of his old sedan, looking steadily at the road ahead, lifts my spirits. Already he seems more like his old self. But once we’ve parked and begun walking toward the Shark Bite Café, he spots the small crowd gathered inside and his pace slows. It’s Sunday morning, and we’re not the only ones in Bantom Bay with coffee and croissants on our minds.
I slow my pace to match his. The truth is, I hadn’t expected the café to bethisbusy. I am almost as hesitant to face the crowd as he is. All of these people had loved Jack and Jack’s parents. If they knew the role I had played in—
“Are you okay?” my father asks, glancing over at me.
I nod and try to shake off my anxiety, reminding myself that the whole reason I’m here is to help my dad.
In the café, behind the counter, Roger’s eyes go enormous when he sees us. “Gregory! Long-lost Gregory!” he booms out over the five people in line ahead of us. “It’s great to see you!”
My father seems to shrink into himself as heads throughout the café swivel in our direction.
“Gregory! Hi! It’s beenages. How are you?” says a smiling woman with silver hair clipped back in a barrette and a big cotton tote bag hanging from a shoulder. She looks vaguely familiar to me—I think she might have worked at the community center at some point when I was growing up. I wonder how my father knows her. Probably, if I had to guess, through my mother.
“Fine,” he says quietly. “How are you, Patty?”
Before the woman responds, the door swings open and Naomi Lawson, my mother’s best friend, walks in.
At my side, my father goes rigid.
Naomi has barely taken a step into the café before she spots my father and stops. “Gregory,” she says. It’s as though she’s seen a ghost. Then she notices me and blinks. “Oh, Lucy!” she cries, and steps forward to wrap me in her arms.
It’s wonderful and terrible to be held by Naomi. She reminds me so much of my mother. She smells, as she always has, of plums and old books and marigolds.
“Hi, Naomi,” I say, swallowing.
“It’s so good to see you,” she says. Her eyes swim a little as they search my face. I think she might be looking for my mom in me, and my guess is she sees her. “We have all missed you so much, Lucy.”
She swipes at the bottom of her eyes and looks over at my dad, whose shoes appear to be glued to one spot on the café’s floor. “You, too, Gregory. I hate that it’s been so long. I hope you’ve been getting my messages.”
“Yes, I have,” my father says, looking more uncomfortable by the moment. “Thank you.”
“Did you know that your retirement not-so-coincidentally aligned with a serious dip in my coffee revenue?” Roger teases my dad from behind the counter. I turn to realize we’ve made our way to the front of the line.
“We’re here to make up for that,” I say, taking my dad’s arm.
“Say, Gregory,” Roger says. “Naomi and I and a few others are going over to Glen Davis’s house on Tuesday night. Glen bought this model train kit that he’s hoping to put together to surprise his grandson with at his next visit. Long story short, the kit turns out to have a million parts and poor Glen can’t make heads or tails of it,so we’re all going to see if we can give him a hand. In exchange for our help, he’s supplying wine, beer, and his famous lasagna. Oh, and magnifying glasses. He says the pieces are tiny.” Roger takes a breath and passes two coffees over the counter along with a bag of pastries. “Care to join us? I know everyone would love to see you.”
I shoot my dad a hopeful glance. I can’t help thinking it’s the exact sort of invitation that my mom would have said yes to for the both of them. My dad would have gone to Glen’s to make my mother happy, but I bet he would have come home buzzing with the thrill of having put something together with a bunch of other people. He’d probably have been the lead engineer, quietly telling everyone else what to do, and they would have had that train assembled in record time.
