I don’t totally understand it, why his pride in me matters. But it does. It matters.
After dinner, he suggests we visit Miles at Cherry Hill, so we leave our car at the brewery to pick up later and take a cab up the peninsula.
The winery is bustling.
Miles waves at us from behind the bar, but he’s too busy to come talk. He murmurs something to Katya, who flags us down at the very end of the bar, sliding an open bottle and three glasses over. “On the house,” she shouts over the noise.
We take our bottle and glasses out to the circular tables on the lawn, the sky turning periwinkle at the edges while the sun holds on for a few more breaths.
I scan the lawn. “No open tables.”
“Chairs are bad for you anyway,” Starfire replies, a curious but confident pronouncement. She removes her bedazzled sandals and lowers herself to the ground. Dad and I follow suit. With the sitting, not the shoe removal, but the grass is so intoxicatingly cool that I don’t blame her for wanting to feel it between her toes.
Dad pours the wine, then passes out our glasses, and there we watch the colors melt across the sky.
“I could see us here, Star,” Dad says, and she sighs.
“Me too. We should ask Karen what she thinks.”
“Karen?” I say.
“Our psychic,” Starfire says.
“The one who told you about the Titanic?” I verify.
She nods. “That’s why we were so surprised about you and Miles. Karen told us you and Miles would go the distance. She’s never been wrong before.”
Not sure how Starfire has confirmed that her past life was indeed an Oscar-winning film, but I let it go.
Even as the lawn clears and the tables empty and the sky goes dark, we stay half-reclined on the grass, watching the string lights pop on, listening to the occasional bat flap past.
When Miles clocks out, he brings us a half bottle of red left over from his shift, and pours each of us a small glass.
Dad proposes a toast: “To our gracious hosts.”
Starfire adds, “To my beautiful new family.”
I feel a twinge.
Of guilt? Like I’m betraying Mom if I let Dad back in?
Or maybe just fear. That I’m doing what I swore I never would: making space in my heart for someone whom experience has taught me not to trust.
People change, I think.
I can.
Dad can.
Miles shifts in the grass beside me, his knee brushing mine like a question. Are you there? Are you okay?
I can be.
I can be here, in the moment, instead of watching for smoke, ready to run.
I lift my glass into the ring we’ve formed. “To family.”
OceanofPDF.com
27
SATURDAY, AUGUST 3RD
14 DAYS UNTIL THE READ-A-THON
Two things happen Saturday morning.
First, Ashleigh calls out sick and Landon has to fill in for her. Second, a storm rolls in, driving everyone in Waning Bay inside, and most, it would seem, of the under-eight crowd into the library.
I’m kept running right up until it’s time to start gathering Story Hour supplies, at which point the automatic doors whoosh open, carrying a distant rumble of thunder and a sideways sheet of rain inside, along with Miles Nowak.
He stops on the mat inside the doors to rustle his wet hair, like a dog shaking out postbath, and I suppress a deeply charmed grin.
When he looks up and catches me watching him, though, he doesn’t return the smile. Mine dissipates as he approaches and sets a cup on my desk. “Brought you tea.”
“Thanks.”
I can tell he’s waiting, so I take a sip, the spicy sweetness zinging from the back of my tongue to the base of my spine.
“Delicious,” I confirm. “Did you come all the way here to bring me this?”
He gives a flimsy grin. “I came all the way here to hear a story.”
I lean around him, half expecting to see an ostrich-feather-clad Starfire and my Canadian-tuxedoed Dad in tow.
Miles glances down at his hands braced against the desk and clears his throat. “Ah. So.”
“They’re not coming,” I say. “Are they?”
He inhales slowly. My stomach’s sinking. I do my best to intercept it.
It’s not a big deal. If anything, it’s a relief. I always feel awkward being observed by nonlibrary people during Story Hour. Now I can finish my workday in peace and meet Dad and Starfire at the axe-throwing bar she was so excited about.
Miles is still looking at me like I’m a puppy whose paw he’s just accidentally stomped on.
“It’s fine,” I assure him. “I’m reading a book aloud to some kids. It’s not my Broadway debut.”
“No, I know, it’s . . .” His gaze cuts over my shoulder and back to me again. “You should probably go get set up, right?”
The way he says it, I can feel the gap where something unsaid hovers.
My heart speeds. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he says. “It can wait.”
“You’re freaking me out,” I say.
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” he says.
“But it’s what you’re doing,” I say. “Just tell me what’s going on, or I won’t be able to concentrate.”
He leans away from the desk, hands gripping the edge, and blows out a breath. “I didn’t think this through.”
“Miles.”
“They left, Daphne.”
“Left?” I say. “Who?”
“Your parents,” he says. “Your dad and Starfire. They got a last-minute invitation to meet some friends up in Mackinac.”
I glance toward my phone. It’s on the desk, face up. No new messages. No explanation.
Of course there isn’t. There never is. The explanation is implied: something better came along.
There is no reason for me to feel surprised. There is every reason to feel nothing. This is what I should have expected.
Last-minute invitation, Miles said.
To meet some friends up in Mackinac.
The “friend” he made yesterday, no doubt. Some guy who owns a hotel and likes the Grateful Dead. At least, that’s my guess, if I have to make one. And I do. Because Dad didn’t tell me himself.
Miles murmurs, “He left you a note.”
I flip my phone face down, searching for today’s Story Hour books among the mess, but my hands feel clumsy, like my brain’s just learning how to operate them.
“I told him to call,” Miles says.
I find the books, the smallest bit of relief seeping into me at the feeling of something solid in my grip. “Not his style.”
Miles reaches across the desk and curls one hand around my wrist, running his thumb over my veins. “I’m sorry. I should’ve waited to tell you.”
I can’t help a snort. “No, really, Miles. It’s better that I know now.”
Otherwise I would’ve kept waiting for him to show up.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
“You should get to work,” I say.
I don’t want to be seen like this.
I want to be left alone with my embarrassment and hurt.
In the end, it was relatively easy to let go of Peter, to accept his actions as proof of the truth: that our relationship, our life together, his feelings for me were never quite what I’d thought they were.
And I stopped longing for him when I accepted this, because how could I miss someone who didn’t exist?
So why can’t I seem to do the same thing with my father? Why can’t I stop missing the dad I never had?
