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Alittle before noon, Petra arrived at her father’s house. She parked in front of the closed garage doors and went to the hatch of her Volvo to collect her bags of groceries. Since their meeting with the ADA, she’d felt a constant buzz of anxious doom—usually at the back of her head, but it surged forward and gained intensity whenever she was with her father. When she was with Jake, it was quietest. There were moments then that she barely felt it at all.
Right now, she still held some of the good feeling from the morning. Shower sex, breakfast with some banter and thoughtful talk and kissing, and dinner plans. A bubble of serenity in the turmoil around her.
When she’d told her father she wanted to make him moussaka for dinner tonight and bring Jake over to meet him, he’d tried to make a joke about her fixing him his ‘last meal.’ She hadn’t appreciated it, and neither had he, really.
It wasn’t his last meal. She meant to make him the exact same meal the day he came the right way through those scary gates and returned to his real life. This house would be waiting for him, and she meant it to seem as if he’d only gone out to run an errand. Everything just the way he’d left it.
She pushed in through the back door, into the kitchen, and set her bags on the counter. “Hi, Dad!” she called out, as usual. No response.
With a sigh already weighed down with trepidation, she left the groceries and checked the fridge—no beer there. She checked the freezer for vodka and didn’t find it. She checked the usual shelves and hiding spots and found no dark liquor either. No old-fashioned glasses in the dishwasher, no cans or bottles in the recycling. The kitchen was clear of contraband—though why it mattered at this point, she wasn’t entirely sure.
“Dad?” she called again; then, when he didn’t answer again, she listened for sounds of the shower. The house was quiet.
Really quiet. No television or music. No creaks of floorboards. Was he napping?
Her father wasn’t really a napper, drunken stupors notwithstanding, but maybe he wanted to get in as much comfortable-bed time as possible.
Or maybe he’d taken a walk. He and Mom had often walked the few blocks to Swan Lake and then around it. As far as Petra knew, Dad hadn’t done that circuit on his own, but this weekend was not a usual time.
She knew he hadn’t taken the car, at least, because she’d checked the windows in the garage door. The Lexus was where it belonged.
As she puzzled out where her father might have gone, she unpacked the groceries and arranged the ones she’d need for dinner on the long counter beside the fridge. The boxed baklava she’d picked up from Muhanna Sweets, she set by the window that overlooked her mother’s vibrant garden.
It was still vibrant after all these years because Dad had a gardening service. That was something she’d have to take over while he was away.
When the groceries were settled, she got her phone and texted her father:Hey. I’m here, but I guess you’re not? Where are you? Do you need anything?
She sent it. A second later, she heard the chime that was the default sound of an iPhone receiving a text. Her father didn’t know how to change anything in his phone and didn’t care to be taught.
That chime was close. Petra crossed the kitchen and went through the doorway to the dining room.
The large mahogany table was covered with tidy stacks of papers, a few accordion files, a lockbox, a few other items that seemed familiar, and her mother’s flat, ostrich-skin travel jewelry box, where her most precious pieces had lived since she’d died. And his phone.
Her first thought was that Dad had gotten ready for their work this afternoon. All his affairs were arranged on the table so they could go through everything together.
But that jewelry box puzzled her. Did he mean her to sell the pieces in it? That made no sense; there was plenty of money to keep everything going. He’d offered her the jewelry after Mom died, but Petra hadn’t wanted any of it. Not yet, while the loss still rubbed raw. If she wore her mother’s ruby ring, it meant her mother could no longer wear it.
Then Petra saw the envelope. A regular, white, business-size envelope. Her name—Petey, her father’s name for her—was written in large, bold letters. Her father’s handwriting.
She stared at that envelope for a very long time, unable to move, unable to get closer to it. Something was dawning in her mind, and she wanted it to stop. She didn’t want that thought to form.
“Dad?” she called. Her voice trembled and gave out. With a swallow and a deep breath, she tried again, this time trying to make her voice carry all the way to her father, wherever he was. “DADDY!”
Only silence greeted her.
With a will greater than she’d known she possessed, Petra made herself step forward, to the table, to the envelope that lay atop it, arranged precisely before the seat that had always been hers.
She picked it up. The flap wasn’t sealed. Her hands shook as she pulled out a single sheet of plain white paper and unfolded it. The page was covered in her father’s handwriting. Heavy and bold.
My beloved daughter,
On the table here is everything you’ll need to sort things: the blue accordion file is every bit of important paper regarding the house. The brown is the same for the Lexus. There’s a stack of the most recent bills for the house—all paid—so you have the pertinent information about utility accounts and so on. The large dark blue folder is the most important thing, I think. That’s my will. Of course everything is yours, and I’ve done the best I can to see to it you don’t get bogged down in probate. My life insurance policy is also there, but that won’t pay out. I’m sorry about that.
When she read those sentences, Petra’s legs simply dissolved. She fell to the floor with a thump. The letter sat in her lap, and for a span of time she couldn’t mark, she sat and stared at it without seeing the words on it.
Finally she picked it up with shaking hands and read on.
I can’t survive prison, Petey. I’m so sorry to cause you pain, but I know I can’t survive in there. The truth is, life has been too hard to live even out in the world since we lost your mother. I’m tired. I want to be with her.
