Dad’s study was empty with the light flipped off. Dad’s study at his old house had been larger, with lots of dark oak and heavy pieces. The bookshelves had spanned up to the ceiling, and I remembered standing on Jamie’s back to reach books from the higher ledges.
This study, though, was small, with space for a few bookshelves, a chair near the window, and a desk in the corner. The surface was clutter-free, with papers and pens neatly stacked and put into place.A cluttered desk equals a cluttered mind, he’d once told me.
For how he’d been lately, I expected to see clutter everywhere. The room, though, was perfectly clean, as if this was what he’d spent his days doing. Not sulking, but tidying.
I inched further into the space. There were three photos on Dad’s desk, two at each corner and one in the middle. The one in the middle was a photo of him and Mom from one of their vacations years ago, his arm around her waist. The one at the far left corner was a photo of him and Destelle, giving peace-signs at the camera at an Alderton-Du Ponte gala. And in the corner at the right, angled, was a photo of Dad, Jamie, and me.
It was probably seven years ago, from a day we’d spent at the bay. Dad was crouched down, and Jamie was on his back, shaggy brown hair, arms strangling Dad’s neck. Dad was tucking me to his chest, and the three of us smiled widely at the camera.
I didn’t remember the photo, but I could remember theday. It’d been a few weeks after Destelle had left on her summer road trip, after Destelle had called to say, for the second time, that she’d been pushing back when she would come home. Jamie and I had been so disappointed, so Dad had proposed a beach day.
It felt like forever ago.
“Feels like forever ago, doesn’t it?”
I jerked at my thoughts spoken aloud, turning to find Dad standing in the doorway.
Dad’s dark hair was wet, dripping onto the shoulders of his dark gray T-shirt. He’d shaved, too, scrubbing off the stubble and leaving a slightly pink canvas behind. His eyes were still hollow, and his cheeks were still pale, but he looked more alive than when I’d last seen him.
He stood just inside the study doorway, eyes locked onto the picture frame in my hand. “Do you remember why we went to the beach that day?” he asked.
I cleared my throat. “Because Destelle wasn’t coming home. You were trying to cheer us up.”
Dad shook his head slightly. “You spelledperspicaciousright.” His eyes were still on the picture frame. “You’d been struggling with it for weeks. You kept switching thePand theI, leaving out aC. You kept spellingpersipacious. No matter how many times we practiced, you kept spelling it wrong.” He smiled at the memory. “You finally got it right, so we went to the beach.”
I turned my back to him and set the photo down, and from that angle, he wouldn’t have been able to see my hand tremble. “I don’t remember that.”
“It’s interesting, isn’t it? How easily we remember the awful parts, but not the good ones.”
The words sounded like a hidden lesson. I felt my shoulders stiffen. “I’m sorry for being disrespectful,” I got out. “It was wrong of me. And it was wrong of me to talk to Destelle the way I did. I shouldn’t have stormed out. I’m sorry.”
I expected him to nod, to dismiss me, to turn into a ghost like he always did. In fact, aside from our fight, this was the longest conversation we’d had in months. Surely it wouldn’t last much longer.
Dad scratched his cheek, uneasy in his newly scraped skin. “Do you want to have a seat?”
I looked at him in surprise. Wordlessly, I sank into the chair under the window, in the direct sunlight. Dad sat down at his desk, and I wasn’t sure if it was because it was probably too big for the space, but Dad looked so small behind it. Shoulders hunched ever so slightly; a man with his confidence lost.
I swallowed hard, and even though I was going to wait until Dad spoke first, I suddenly needed to chase away my thoughts. “Mom said she talked to you.”
“Nellie,” Dad began, and then stopped. It took me a moment to realize he was only speaking my name as if trying it out for the first time in a long time. “Eleanor.”
And then he lifted his gaze, settling on me. Dad’s eyes were dark, the same eyes all of us siblings shared. They were dark, could almost perfectly blend in with his pupils, and from here, they were bright. For the firsttime in a while, they were bright. “Have you ever done something you knew was wrong because you were afraid?”
It was a rhetorical question. He knew about the garden. He knew my answer. Still, I nodded.
“That’s how I felt. Realizing you were following in my footsteps, I was scared. And I said things I shouldn’t have.” There was another long pause. “When I look at you, do you know what I see?”
S-I-L-L-Y, I spelled the word on impulse. “Someone misguided?”
“Someone smart.” Dad scratched his cheek again. “Calculating. You know what you want, and you figure out how to get it.”
I turned away, feeling too exposed. My eyes landed on his framed Mullhound College diploma on his wall, right beside his law degree from Harvard. “You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“It’s not. Not inherently. But you have a hard time deciding on whatyouwant.”
I grumbled, “I know what I want.”
“Tell me, then. Tell me why you chose Mullhound. And don’t say it’s because I went there.”
