But now he says, “I don’t think so, Roger. But thank you for the invitation.”
Roger nods, clearly disappointed. You can’t keep a man like him down for long, though.
“Fair enough,” he says cheerfully, shaking off his disappointment as easily as a Labrador shakes off water. “But you know, Gregory, all this coffee can’t drink itself. You’ll be back in again soon, won’t you?”
I can see my father weighing his response and I have a sinking feeling that he’s about to tell Roger the truth, and that the truth is that he has no plans to the leave the house again anytime soon. Naomi and maybe, possibly,everyonelingering in the Shark Bite is looking at my dad as he considers his response.
It’s like watching someone with a needle approach a little kid holding a balloon.
My father opens his mouth—
“Of course,” I say before he can speak. “We’ll see you soon.”
On the drive home, I look over at my dad.
“It’s hard to see them, isn’t it? It feels like Mom should be there, too.”
He stares through the windshield. I’m beginning to think he’s not going to respond when he says, “She made it all look so easy. Talking with people. Connecting. Sharing her feelings.”
I nod. Sometimes I think that my mother’s heart must have been enormous, so big that it had already held a lifetime’s worth of love a million times over by the time it stopped working. She would never have wanted to live any smaller, to love any less.
“I’ve always thought that you’re like her in that way,” my father says. “Or you used to be, before you and Jack broke up.”
I look over at him. “Broke up? No,” I say quietly. “That’s not quite what happened.”
His brow furrows. “What do you mean? After that terrible accident, Jack moved away, and you were so upset…”
When I first heard that Jack had survived crashing his car, I’d been overcome with relief, but my relief had proved to be short-lived. One of Jack’s legs had been too damaged within the crush of metal and had to be amputated. My heart ached for him; I knew that the happiest moments of his life had all taken place on the football field. But his playing career was over… and soon, so was his parents’ marriage. Between Jack’s suddenly rampant drinking andthe car accident, their family never recovered. His mother closed her gallery and moved with Jack to Colorado. And then… silence.
“I know how hard that was for you,” my father goes on. “You were heartbroken. And you’ve… well, you’ve never really seemed the same since, Lucy. All that moving from place to place. All that time alone.”
Through the car’s open windows, the honeyed scent of California wild lilac tumbles in, whispering to me of first love.
“You’re right,” I say quietly. “I haven’t been the same since Jack’s accident.”
My dad pulls onto our driveway. He turns off the car and a sudden, weighty quiet falls over us. The sight of that stretch of grass beside my mother’s studio makes my throat feel tight. My dad and I both sit there, not moving.
I take a deep breath and look at my dad. “I haven’t been the same, but it’s not because Jack broke my heart.” I think of how hard it has been for me to open up to people since that day with Jack in my garden, and I amend my words. “That’s not thewholereason.”
I swallow. I realize that I want to tell my dad. I want him to know the truth. I will never have the chance to tell my mom, but Icantell my dad. I am so tired of the weight of this secret. This shame. The words, at last, spill from my lips.
“It’s because Jack’s accident was my fault,” I whisper. “I caused it.”
Confusion flickers in my father’s blue eyes. “What do you mean? You weren’t even there. That accident couldn’t have been your fault—”
“Itwasmy fault,” I insist. “All of it. Jack’s accident. Losing his leg. Losing his dream of playing football. His family breaking apart. I’m responsible for all of it.”
“Oh, Lucy,” my father says. “Of course you’re not.”
“Jack was… troubled,” I forge on quickly, before I lose my nerve. “I think he was depressed. I’m not sure anyone else knew that. And no one knows that a week before his car accident, he visited me in my garden. I hoped that a scent among the flowers I grew might help him—that it might jog his memory of a moment in his life that might be meaningful to him, that could heal him in some way.” I pause, holding my dad’s gaze evenly.
“Go on,” he says. His face reveals none of the skepticism that I know he must feel. “What happened?”
“The scent of the flowers made Jack remember something. I don’t know what. But he became very upset. More upset than I’d ever seen him. Whatever he remembered… it tormented him. That whole week, he wouldn’t speak to me. He looked terrible. I could tell he hadn’t been sleeping, and that he was drinking. And then… and then he drove himself right into that tree.”
For a beat, my father is quiet. “And all these years,” he says at last, “you’ve blamed yourself?”
I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes. “Jack could have died,” I say. These are words that I have said to myself over and over again. “That was a path thatIset him on. I regret what I did to him, and to his family, every single day. I wish I could rewind time and change things. I wish I could take it all back. When I’m here, in Bantom Bay, I feel so much worse. I think of Jack, and what I did, constantly. And I know that people still look at me and think of him. Everyone here is kind, and I know that they think well of me, but that’s only because they don’t know the truth. If people here knew the part I played in what happenedto Jack, how I ruined his life, they would…” I trail off, emotion overtaking my voice.
