I think about the beanie he sent me, wonder if he conflated it with the hat from this memory.

Honestly, I wonder if it’s even a real memory, or just some scene in a movie he overlaid my face onto after the fact.

“You really don’t remember?” he says.

I shake my head. This clearly bothers him, but I can’t think of anything comforting to say. The fact is, the most memorable parts of my childhood are the ones he missed, his absence exactly what gave them their weight.

“It was a really special day,” he murmurs, treading water in place, mouth turned down in a frown.

I hate that I feel guilt right now. I don’t want to feel like Dad can still trigger that in me. Like all I want is to make him happy, make him proud, earn his shine.

Miles catches my eyes, his smile gone, his hand cupped around his eyes against the sun, creating that illusion of seclusion again.

It’s a look like, You good?

Or maybe like, I’m here.

And I know he won’t be forever, or maybe even very long, but it helps knowing that right now he is. That can be enough.

I turn toward the water, pulling my dress over my shoulders, sun beating against them. “On the bright side,” I say, “since I don’t remember that, I’m definitely not afraid of fish.”

I toss my dress at the bench, step through the open gate, and leap into the water.

The cold rushes over my head, needles through my every pore.

When I come up, when the sun hits the crown of my head and I see Miles standing at the back of the boat, Julia and Starfire and Dad swimming in lazy circles in the sparkling water, I think of what Starfire said.

It does feel like a rebirth.

People can change, I think.

I’m changing.

We eat dinner at Jesse’s Table, a farm-to-table spot with a deck overlooking the water. I’m pink-cheeked-and-nosed from the day in the sun, while Dad’s, Julia’s, and Miles’s tans have only deepened. Starfire is bright red but unbothered. “It’ll turn into a tan by tomorrow,” she told me when I offered her aloe back at the apartment, between the boat ride and the restaurant.

As soon as we’re seated, Dad sweet-talks the host into taking an order for a bottle of wine. When the server arrives a minute later, Dad asks for recommendations on appetizers, and she lists six or so. He orders one of each, “for the table.”

I feel my first ping of anxiety in hours, imagining Dad nonchalantly telling our server to split the check evenly at the end of the night. I’m trying to do the math in my head to figure out whether I can cover Julia’s and Miles’s portion of these things they decidedly did not order.

But everyone’s in a great mood, tipsy on the sunshine and wine and the barbershop quartet practicing on the gravel patio of the ice cream shop two doors down.

By the time we make it through the appetizers, we’ve polished off the pinot blanc. Dad slips off to use the restroom (smoke in a stall) and comes back announcing he’s ordered champagne so we can toast my birthday along with his and Starfire’s nuptials.

She’s barely touched her first glass, instead devoting her full focus to peppering me with questions about my childhood. It strikes me that Miles is right, that the key to being able to talk to anyone might just be curiosity.

But it also takes a kind of fearlessness, to invite someone into your space and ask to be invited into theirs. I can, a little too easily, imagine hanging up a needlepoint encouraging me to Be More Like Starfire.

Even when her questions lead to yet more proof that my father wasn’t actually around for my childhood, she shows no visible signs of disappointment, just shoots a follow-up question my way.

I try to ask her things too, and she answers easily—yes, she grew up in Vermont, she was on the ski team at her school, she’s been a vegetarian since birth, she has six siblings, all of them brothers—but she ends every response with a new question for me.

Meanwhile our server, who clearly loves Dad, brings out three off-menu offerings from the chef. On the house.

While we’re eating our main courses, Julia and Starfire compare their birth charts, and have the kind of conversation about water signs that’s indecipherable to nonastrology people. Dad asks Miles about work, and excitedly pitches the idea of going for dinner tomorrow at the winery once I’m off work. “If you’re not too sick of it,” Dad says to me. “Don’t know how often you eat there.”

“We can go there if you want,” I say.

“Oh! And we have to go see Daffy at the library,” Starfire puts in.

“You should go on Saturday, so you can see Story Hour,” Julia volunteers.

“What’s Story Hour?” Dad asks.

“It’s just when I read to a group of kids,” I say.

“She does the voices,” Julia adds.

“Does she?” Dad’s eyes light up. “Like that one gal at the old library we used to go to! What was her name? Leanna?”

He definitely should know her name, since he briefly dated her. Afterward, I noticed we started frequenting a different branch.

“How did you get started at the library, anyway?” Starfire asks. “Did you always want to do that?”

I couldn’t feel more exposed if I’d unzipped my skin and poured my innards onto the table.

“Bet I know the answer to that one,” Dad says.

I can’t decide if that makes it better or worse.

He sets his elbows on the table and leans forward. “When Daphne was little, she was a big-time reader. And I had this girlfriend who worked at a bookstore, got a huge discount. So I’d always bring books when I came to visit.

“But me and Holly—Daph’s mom—neither of us really had ‘disposable income,’ per se. So I always got in trouble with her. I’d get Daphne the first book in a series, or worse, the second, and then Holly would have to buy her the first. She finally told me she wanted me to stop bringing presents. Thought I was trying to buy Daphne off.”

He rolls his eyes as he says this, but also shoots Julia a wink. “Maybe a bit. Anyway, we compromised. I’d take Daph to the library every time I was in town instead. You’d think I’d brought her to Disneyland. Put this girl in a room full of books, and she’s happier than anyone I’ve met. Never understood it myself, but it was cute as hell to watch her stack up as many as she could carry and slide them onto a desk higher than her forehead to check them out.”

Starfire puts a hand over her heart at this.

My own is beating a little fast, uncomfortably.

His telling of it feels so different from my own memory. What loomed so large for me, bigger even than the magic of being surrounded by bright colors and free books, was being excited to show him what I’d found. Wandering the stacks in search of him. Finally spotting him flirting with a librarian, hardly aware of me there, waiting for his attention.

One of my earliest memories of joy, and one of the first times I realized I’d always come in second.

“Excuse me.” I push back from the table and stand. “I’ve got to use the restroom.”

I serpentine through the tables on the deck into the restaurant, adjusting to the dim Edison bulb chandeliers before cutting over to the bathroom hallway.

Both are occupied, but it’s not that I needed to pee so much as I needed to breathe, while I wait out this confusing torrent of feelings. I lean against the gilded wallpaper and close my eyes, willing my heart to slow.

“You okay?” comes a soft voice.

I open my eyes. Miles steps uncertainly into the hallway.

“Yep. Mm-hmm. Fine!” I say. “Bathroom’s in use.”

He nods. “Then I’ll leave you to it.” He turns away, and I feel this desperation.

To let it out, or just to keep him here a moment longer. “I never know how to feel when he’s around,” I blurt.