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14
TYLER
My bedroom was haunted by the ghost of Juliette from the other night and to avoid her I found myself sitting cross-legged on the floor of the attic, a box of Savannah’s book reports open in front of me like a treasure chest. I was lost on page three of a grade-school science report on penguins. Apparently, her favorite animal.
I didn’t know that.
I didn’t know that if she could go back in time she’d go to Paris in the 1800s. Or that her favorite book in third grade was Freckles.
All this paper, yellowed and soft with age, the pen fading to pencil as I went deeper into the box, carried clues about a sister I didn’t really know.
But I was determined to find out. To stick around and know her.
My future was wide-open and dusted with possibilities. I had a chance to make amends and earn back the family I’d left behind.
“You find anything?” Richard asked, his head poking up through the crawl space.
“No gems,” I answered without looking up. Even as a kid, Savannah’s research was so freaking thorough, no wonder she became a professional researcher; it was like a gift or something.
“I’m thinking I must have missed something in the—”
“They’re not here, Dad,” I said, turning a page in the report only to find a drawn diagram of a penguin, adorable in its crudity. “We’ve been through every inch of this house. Every inch. And there are no gems.”
Richard wiped his forehead, leaving a trail of cobwebs and dust. “You might be right. But we haven’t really searched the—”
“I am right,” I said, setting the report neatly back into the box. “This search is done. It should have been done before it even started, but as of now—” I put the lid back on the box and shoved it into its space in the eaves. I pulled out another box simply marked Katie.
A niece that I barely knew.
“It’s over,” I finished.
I tore off the lid. Dust and baby powder wafted up to me.
“What you got there?” Richard asked, pulling himself up into the attic. The boards creaked and Richard paused, as if waiting for the floor to give up under him.
“Baby things,” I said, taking out a pink blanket and what looked like a well-loved stuffed rabbit missing an ear. It was sticky, but smelled good, like jelly and baby shampoo. “Katie’s.”
It had been a few years since I’d seen my niece, but saying her name brought back the sensation of her hand in mine, that wild-child spark in her eyes. I’d taken her down to the restaurant in the hotel where I’d been living and we’d had pancakes for dinner, ice cream for breakfast. I’d taken her swimming in the big wave pool and taught her to float on her back, her little belly sticking up like an island out of the water.
I put the rabbit by my knee, pulling out a tiny pink baby hat and a hospital band.
Hope was a rocket I forced myself to sit on.
Juliette had come to me. Naked and plain in her desire and confusion and I was sure. One hundred percent sure that we would see each other through it. We were starting on our second chance. And it was going to be rough, I had no doubts, I was still an O’Neill and she was still Police Chief. But we were going to try.
Though I wished, I really wished, that Katie was here. That Savannah was here. Margot. All of the women in my life. They could join hands with Juliette and yell at me, or whatever they wanted to do, but they’d be here.
“That’s my granddaughter,” Richard said, pulling out from the box a picture of Katie and Savannah in the courtyard, back when it was a jungle.
I snatched the photo out of my father’s hands. “You’ve never even met her.”
“Blood is blood, Tyler.”
“You sound like an idiot,” I said. “Laying claim to people you left behind, like you have the right.”
“I was left,” Richard said, indignant. “Your mother took you children away—”
I was stunned by the lies Richard kept telling himself to make his pathetic life okay. Though I had to admit, I used to do the same.
“Remember my first big win?” I asked.
“Of course,” Richard said, as if I had won a college football game instead of taking people’s money.
“You’d gotten me that fake ID and paid my way into that big game in Henderson. I won more money than I’d ever seen. You said, ‘that’s my boy,’ and used my money to buy rounds for the bar.”
Richard looked taken aback. “It’s what you do—”
“It’s what you do,” I said. “It’s the Richard Bonavie way, and I ate it up.”
But no more.
“You should think about moving on, Dad,” I said, stroking Katie’s blanket, the fine weave catching on my newly calloused fingers. “The gems aren’t here.”
