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Startled, she jumped hard enough that she dropped the photo. It fell face first into the music desk on the piano, the glass front hitting the hard wooden edge and splintering a large crack.
“Oh!” she said as an enormous rush of guilt hit her. Not to mention, an acidic sting at the symbolism of what she’d accidentally done. And also, an actual sting from the glass slicing her finger when she tried to catch the frame and stop it from falling all the way to the floor. “Ouch!” She gasped and looked at the damage she’d done. The jagged crack cut across the smiling family like a lightning bolt, and a bead of blood sprouted on the tip of her index finger.
“Gemma? Are you here?” her father called again.
She stuck her finger in her mouth to suck the blood, hoping there wasn’t a shard of glass in it that would cut her tongue too. As the coppery taste of pennies filled her mouth,she considered shoving the broken photo under the bed and hiding the evidence. Instead, she froze in a panic and heard her father approaching.
“Gemma? Are you in here?”
He found her at the piano, bloody finger in her mouth and possibly the only photo that existed of their family broken in her hand.
“Hi,” she said as if she had been caught doing something illegal.
Roger Peters looked the part of industry mogul comfortably at home in his linen shirt, khaki pants, and loafers. He otherwise looked a lot like Patrick with his height, slim build, and fair hair, which Gemma had a hard time reconciling since she loved her brother and felt conflicted about her father at the very best. The last time she had seen him was nearly a year before at a soiree he hosted that happened to line up with Patrick’s homecoming—a coincidence Gemma realized was likely his own attempt at buffering their reunion.
He stayed in the doorway and his brow furrowed at the sight. “What happened?”
Shame for snooping flushed her face. His eyes traveled to the broken picture frame, and worry that he thought she’d smashed it on purpose hit her with another helping of guilt. “I accidentally dropped this, and it cut my finger.”
His eyes went wide, and he entered the room. He reached out, she thought for the broken photo and to perhaps scold her, but instead took her hand. He tenderly rested it palm-up in his own palm and frowned at her bleeding finger. A little red droplet had reappeared with gusto. “Let me get you a Band-Aid,” he said like she was a child, and in that oddmoment, she found herself not jerking away but instead letting him take care of her.
“Okay.”
They walked across the hall to the guest bathroom, and she didn’t realize she still had the photo in her other hand until she needed to set it on the counter to wash out her wound.
“Why do you have this?” she asked as her father opened the medicine cabinet. The mirror swung out into the clean, tiled room decorated in hues of soft blue and seashell. Gemma saw neat rows of toiletries lined up inside and wondered if her father had enough guests to warrant stocking the bathroom for regular use.
He pulled out a box of bandages and eyed the broken photo. He seemed to mull his answer; she saw his jaw working like Patrick’s when he was deep in thought. “To remind me of things I should have done differently.”
His response struck her like a blow to the chest. She heard layers of pain and regret in it that she didn’t know he harbored. He looked at her with a sadness in his eyes and a soft curve of his mouth like he wanted to say more but didn’t know how.
“I’m sorry I broke it.”
He peeled the wrapper off the little Band-Aid. “I’ll get it fixed, don’t worry,” he said with a certainty that made Gemma wonder where that dedication had been when their actual family broke.
She held out her finger and let him wrap the bandage around it. She’d had plenty of scraped knees and skinned elbows as a kid, but she couldn’t remember her dad ever being the one to patch her up. It was always her mom wipingher tears and planting whisper-soft kisses on her injuries. Having him do it now felt equally out of place and welcome.
“There you go,” he said once he finished. He crinkled up the wrapper and tossed it in the trash.
“Thanks.”
“Might make playing the piano tough for a little while, but it didn’t look too deep.”
Gemma scoffed, feeling the familiar distance settle between them. “Dad, I don’t have a piano in my apartment. I hardly play anymore.”
The soft smile that had been lighting his face dipped into a frown. “Ah. Well, I have two here if you ever want to come by and use one.”
“Thanks,” she said, rote and noncommittally as she did to all his thinly veiled pleas to win her affection and invite her company.
An awkward beat filled the space, and her father looked around as if he just realized they were standing in his bathroom.
“Where’s Patrick?”
“In New York.”
“Oh.”
Another pause passed.
