Page 256 of One Wild Wish

“Ted Mercer.” He searched my eyes, the way a lost sailor searched for land, unsure he’d find his way home.

I wanted to be that for him. Home. A haven. The center of his world. There was too much to absorb. “Ted Mercer,” I repeated. That I could focus on. The name I’d longed to find.

He was the Tom or Ted Uncle Rex had mentioned. The man who’d wooed my mother with hot dogs and Long Island Iced Teas and romantic gestures under the stars. “Do you know his address? Is he still in San Francisco?” As the reality of the news sank in, hope replaced my shock. “I’d like to go now. Look him up first, obviously. But we should go.”

No matter August’s deceit, I still used the word we . I didn’t want to do this alone.

“Gwen.”

I stood and waved him off, antsy to get moving. “Save the apologizing. I’m still upset with you and not sure where we go from here, but I need someone with me for this, and I’d like that someone to be you. We’ll sort through the rest later. I just need to find him, before—”

“Gwen.” He stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

“Honestly, August, I don’t want to deal with this now. My birthday wish is up at midnight. As much as we need to talk this out, finding my father is more important. I want to meet him today. With you. It’s supposed to happen today.” I shook out my hands, one rushed-out sentence away from hyperventilating.

August gripped my hips. “He’s dead, honey.”

I jerked backward. Thickness clawed at my throat. “What?” The syllable barely choked out.

Devastation rang clear in his pained eyes. “I went to see him when I arrived in San Francisco, to make sure he wasn’t someone who’d hurt you. The woman who answered told me he’d passed away.”

“What?” I’d heard him. The words had registered, but their meaning hadn’t. I was supposed to meet my father. Today. It was going to happen today. “I don’t understand.”

I didn’t want to.

“He had a heart attack.”

I sank back to the bench. I was surprised it didn’t cave under the weight of this crushing news. I’d wondered when I was younger, had considered that he might be dead, but it didn’t jive with my mother’s vehemence to keep the information from me. There would have been no harm sharing a deceased man’s name.

I pressed my hand to my breastbone. The pressure didn’t ease the pain.

“Gwen, honey?”

I didn’t glance up at August. My father was gone. I’d never meet him and ask if he was an adrenaline junkie, like me. Find out if he hated mayonnaise. Ask why he’d left my mother. Why he’d never wanted to meet me.

If he’d even known I existed.

“I was sure I’d meet him today,” I whispered. August crouched again, held my knees tight. His face blurred through my watery gaze. “When did he die, did she say?”

He didn’t reply.

I wiped my building tears, needing to see August clearly, the security in his tender gaze. It was the wrong move. Tension tugged a sharp line between his brows. A muscle in his temple bunched. “There’s more I need to say. I’m sick about it, wish I could go back, do things differently, but…”

He trailed off, and I shrank smaller.

I didn’t ask him to spit it out this time. I sat immobile, my legs too numb to stand. Instinctively, I leaned away from him.

He gripped my knees like they were a lifeline. “He died two weeks ago.”

“Sorry, what?” The same question I’d asked this entire conversation. The only one that came easily.

“It was a couple weeks ago. A heart attack, she said.”

“Two weeks ?”

He nodded.

“But you said you’ve had the letter two months?” The fragments of information slotted together in appalling clarity. Two months. Two weeks. The time in between I’d lost. If August had told me first thing, when he should have, I’d have met my father.