“And even after all these years, your new wife never knew I existed?”
He nodded, but he didn’t look as regretful as I wanted him to look. Maybe I never really knew my father, and all the feelings I had felt for him and thought he had for me were imagined.
I pushed the plate farther away and stared out the front window of the restaurant, which advertised itself only as a breakfast and lunch place. It was simply decorated, with some pictures of the family who owned it on the dark-blue-painted walls. Two paintings of lake scenes were hung near the entrance. There were three other booths like the one we were in and then about twenty tables of two and four seats with a small counter that had a half dozen stools. Nobody was looking at us in particular. No one had smiled at him or nodded when we had entered.
“You don’t come here much, do you?” I asked.
“No, why?”
“No one’s said hello. No one asked you about me. That’s probably why you chose for us to come here.”
“Oh.” He smiled. “You pick up on things quickly.”
“Mazy used to call me Miss Marple. The famous woman detective,” I added. I wasn’t only clinging desperately to my happier memories with her. I was trying to tell him that he couldn’t fool me. No more lies. I almost told him what Mazy once said about liars. Liars have to have good memories.
He smiled and looked at the other patrons.
“Yes, I don’t know anyone here, really. I mean, I’ve seen some of these people. It’s not that big a town. If I go out for breakfast or lunch, I usually go to the Sandburg Club. It has a pool and four tennis courts. You’ll be able to go there, too. My father-in-law created it.”
“You’re my father, but you can’t admit it, but you can admit to being my uncle? How can you make this work?”
The waitress came to take our plates, and Daddy ordered more coffee.
“I was always anticipating last night,” he said. “I mean, I hoped Mazy would live long enough to see you through public school and maybe even college. The money’s there, but…”
The waitress brought the coffee. He sipped some and looked up, as if he was trying to remember everything.
“I told sort of a half-lie to Ava. Your mother and I for the longest time were really brother and sister, as you know. I just… never told Ava that the woman I married was the woman brought up as my sister. She would have hated that.”
“Why?”
“It sounds incestuous. Anyway, I told her I had a sister who married a man in the navy and was a bit—well, not a bit, but completely estranged from our parents because they disapproved of the marriage… which our parents did, by the way, disapprove of us.”
“Felt it was incestuous?”
“Obviously it wasn’t, but as a result of all that, she and I were estranged from our parents as well. That’s what I told Ava.”
“Half-truths,” I said. “Lies as tools.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You remember that?”
“Why not? There’s so much of it in my life. And apparently, so much in yours.”
He winced now like someone slapped across the cheek.
“Anyway. So I had told Ava about my sister and told her that we were never close. I kept it vague enough, claiming it was painful to discuss. That’s worked.”
“I always believed that people who love each other can easily tell when one is lying,” I said. “I guess I was wrong.”
He closed and opened his eyes. Maybe I really was Mazy’s granddaughter in more ways than I had anticipated.
“It’s not lying so much as being creative to protect everyone. Anyway, I told Ava that my sister had a daughter, and last night, I told her a messenger had come to our house to tell me my sister had died. I didn’t know my brother-in-law had deserted her a year after you were born. Which is perfect, by the way.”
“Why?”
“This way, you don’t have to recall anything about your father.”
“You mean for me it’s like my father didn’t exist?”
“Yes,” he said, missing my point about him entirely.
After a moment, I asked, “What do you mean by a messenger?”
“I implied it came from the police, the chief himself. It’s all carefully laid out. You’ll see.”
“What if she asks the chief or says something and he tells her he doesn’t know what she’s talking about?”
“He won’t contradict what I said. He’ll play along.”
“Why?”
“I’m on the town board. I voted to give him the job, and my vote counts the most now.
“So,” he continued, “I told them that my niece was coming today. I sat with Ava and your… cousin Karen and explained you were coming to live with us and that I knew little about you except that you were an excellent student, in the tenth grade although you were only fourteen, because you were in an honors program, which is true, right?”
“I thought you said Mazy didn’t keep you up on all that.”
“Oh. I didn’t mean that part. I never heard about your having trouble at school or that stuff about witchcraft.”
Where were the lies, the tools? Where was the truth? How would I ever know? Could I live, even just breathe, in a world of so much deceit? I seriously now wondered if I should have done what I had been tempted to do last night and walked on past the Dew Drop Inn and caught a bus to anywhere.
“That trouble happened pretty soon after I began school,” I said. “Then she must have called you about my honors status. How else would you know?”
“Yes. A phone call from her was unusual. We only spoke when I called her.”
I thought for a moment.
“Maybe she thought something was happening to her and she had to call you finally,” I said.
“I don’t know. She didn’t say anything about herself. She was kind of proud of how you had handled your first day and your achieving honors status.”
“She was,” I practically whispered. She was so proud of me, I thought, and I had left her lying on her bed alone and her cat, poor Mr. Pebbles, wandering about looking for me.
“So let me tell you more,” my father said, his smile returning. I could see how proud he was of how well he thought this was going. For me, it was turning my stomach. I was sorry I had eaten anything first.
“Your cousin Karen’s in the ninth grade, and your baby cousin Garson, named after his great-grandfather, is almost a year old. We weren’t going to have any more children, even after we were officially married, but Ava was bored with her work at her father’s company, and with Karen a real teenager now, we just let it happen before Ava was too old to get pregnant. She’s thirty-nine.”
I was silent. I don’t know what he expected me to say. Great, I’ll have a new young mother? I’ll have a cousin instead of a half sister and a cousin instead of a half brother? Does that make it easier to accept? Did he really think this solved it all?
“My cousins,” I muttered.
“You could be a great help with Garson,” he added.
“What if I forget and call you Daddy?” I said. I think I said it more just to be difficult, to throw new problems in his way and maybe make him rethink his lies as tools. He was looking too confident.
However, I really could see myself doing it, calling him Daddy, especially when I was frightened or sad.
“Well, everyone will just think you had made a mistake or had come to accept me as someone in that role. I think Ava and Karen would feel sorrier for you than anything else.”
“Feel sorrier? Why?”
He shrugged. “Your need to have a father.”
“Don’t you think I did? I do?”
“Sure. You’ll claim that your fictional mother had boyfriends after her husband left you both, but none of them stuck.”
“None of them stuck? What if they ask me why not?”
“You can say anything that comes to mind. They drank too much, were on drugs, worthless, trying to live off her, anything you want. Those are good
reasons why none of them stuck.”
“And what about describing my mother?”
“Just tell them what you remember about your real mother. I have some pictures you can use of Lindsey when she was in college. You don’t have any pictures of your father because he left so quickly, even before you were born.”
“Well, it’s true. I don’t have pictures of my father,” I said. “You didn’t leave any pictures with me. Just a coloring book.”
“Saffron…”
“I have it in my bag, you know. There are pictures still left to color.”
He pressed his lips together.
I looked out the window again. I could still just get up and run out.
“I really hope this will work,” he said. “For all of us.”
“Isn’t it easier to just tell the truth?”
“I’d have to explain everything,” he said.
“Everything? You mean leaving me at a train station and then pretending I don’t exist for years?”
He sipped his coffee, his eyes suddenly cooling, making him look distant, lost in his thoughts. I waited until he looked like he realized I was really sitting across from him. I imagined I looked ready to explode.
“Why make it so difficult, so complicated, for everyone now? If we do what I’ve planned here, the result will be the same. You’ll have a new home, a family. And as I told you, we’re an influential family in this community, too, Saffron. There are benefits.”
“So you work for Mr. Saddlebrook?”
“Yes. I’m his senior adviser. You’ll like the private school, Karen’s friends, everything.”
“Private school?”
“Yes. Grades kindergarten to twelve, too. It’s quite impressive, small class sizes, on a great property with a beautiful athletic field and running track. My father-in-law paid for the gymnasium. There’s a thousand-seat theater. Community theater projects often use it. Karen’s in the dramatics club. She’s quite the little actress already and very popular in school. She’s doing well in all her subjects, and she’s very helpful around the house and with Garson. In fact, Ava depends on her. We have a part-time nanny and a maid. It’s how Ava likes it. Karen’s very responsible, and she’s pretty because she looks more like Ava.”
The pleasure in his face when he talked about his new daughter was like a bee sting. Would I ever bring that pride and joy back into his face? How could I if he wasn’t even permitting me to be his daughter?
He stopped, probably because of the expression on my face.
“I know, I know. This is all making it tougher on you,” he said. He reached for my hand again; this time, I let him take it. His fingers felt warm. I was thrown back for a moment to his taking my hand when the three of us went somewhere. Sometimes in the later days, Mama would forget to hold my hand.
“But it’s going to be all right, Saffron. It will be. I’ll take care of all the arrangements at your new school. I’ll use a lot of what Mazy did. We have a great deal of influence there, obviously. Once you start, no one will question anything anyway.”
He signaled for the waitress to bring the bill.
“Where am I supposed to have lived?” I asked.
He reached into his pocket to produce a notepad.
“It’s all here,” he said, handing it to me. “The important facts. If you look troubled when answering questions Ava and Karen ask, they’ll slow down and maybe stop asking altogether. Last night I laid the groundwork. I explained how hard things have been for you and how it’s better to help you forget the life you had before this. So they’ll take it slowly, I hope.”
Maybe, as Mazy would say, that would be the silver lining in all this: I could forget the past.
I opened the cover of the notepad while he was paying the bill. When had he done this? Last night? Years ago, anticipating my arrival? When? Then again… why did it matter when?
Reading the fictionalization of my life wasn’t a shock. I had lived with fabrication ever since my father left me at the train station.
“Costa Mesa, California?”
“You mother moved there after your father deserted you. He was stationed in San Diego. You’ll see when you read through the details. Then you can go on the computer and study up on Costa Mesa and the whole area so you’ll feel more comfortable talking about it.”
“What computer?”
“Oh, I’ll buy you one right after we leave here. Didn’t you have one at Mazy’s?”
“She wasn’t fond of the way young people use them, but she had promised to buy me one for my next birthday.”
“Oh. What I think you should do is return to the Dew Drop Inn. I kept your room for the day. I’ll bring you the computer in an hour and make sure you know how to use it. After work, I’ll come get you, and we’ll say you flew into the Albany airport and took a bus to Sandburg Creek. You just arrived, and I picked you up at the bus station. You made your own travel arrangements because you didn’t want to be in the hands of any social service agency. You had no one else to help you. That will make Ava and Karen feel even sorrier for you.”
“I did flee to be sure I wasn’t in the hands of any social service agency.”
“See? We’re building around the truth. It’ll be like the first time you and I met, too. That will help make it work. Don’t be shocked or surprised at the questions I might ask in front of them. Just study those notes. Don’t worry. It’s all going to be just fine. You’ll have everything a daughter of mine would or should have.”
“Except a father,” I said.
He blew frustration through his lips.
“You’ll have a father in every way. I’ll be involved in your education, everything you do. You’ll be part of this family. There’ll be birthdays and Christmas. If you want, if it’s easier, call me Derick after a while. Karen fools around and calls me Derick sometimes. You guys are going to be great together.” He smiled. “I’m getting excited about this.”
Was he serious? Excited about being my uncle and not my father?
“Excited?”
“About making it work. Ava will be taking you for new clothes the moment she realizes you left with practically nothing. You could actually wear some of Karen’s clothes for the time being. I can see you guys wearing each other’s things. You’re about the same size, height. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the same shoe size. Karen’s a generous girl. She’ll be willing to share.
“We’ll work on the guest room and make it really your room. Ava will enjoy doing that. You can tell her what your favorite color is, and she’ll buy more for your room.”
“Fictional or real color? Is it in the notepad?”
“What? No, real, of course. There’s nothing like that in there, just important basic facts. Ava will get you new bedding and maybe change curtains and get area rugs, bathroom towels, everything. Karen will love being involved, too. She’ll be happy to help you make decisions, share ideas, I’m sure.”
I stared at him. It seemed redundant, useless to ask, but I wanted to ask if she was generous enough to share her father.
“Look,” he said, “I know in the beginning this is going to be hard for both of us, but it will work, and you’ll have a real family again. And eventually, we’ll all be living in Saddlebrook. It’s a magnificent estate. We could live there now, but as I told you, Ava likes being independent from her father. It’s going to be fantastic.” He paused, then added, “Trust me.”
It was as if those two words were the magic words that would unlock a chest of images. Trust me? If I closed my eyes, I could remember and see him taking my hand and leading me to the train. I could hear him talking about our new home, our new beginning, how now I would go to a real school, not a homeschool, and have friends and parties. He was going to buy me so many nice things to replace what went up in smoke. He’d be with me all the time and work hard at making me happy.
Didn’t he fix my collar and give me a kiss on the cheek before he turned and closed his eyes as our train began to leav
e?
And what about Mama? What about the way we stopped talking about her?
“You want something more to eat? You hardly ate.”
I blinked, returning to today.
“No,” I said.
“Then let’s go. I’ll walk you back to the Dew Drop Inn and then go get the computer. I’ll show you the basics before I leave you for work. Kids your age pick it up quickly. Karen had a computer when she was four. And I’ll get you a cell phone tomorrow, too, one of those great smartphones.”
“Whom am I going to call? Certainly no one back in Hurley.”
“Oh, you’ll have friends, lots of friends, and you’ll have my number when you want to talk or need something, and I’m sure Ava will want you to have her number, and Karen will want you to have hers. Kids your age practically live and breathe those things. Give it all a chance, Saffron. You’ll see. After a short while, it will be like you were always here.”
Was I always in your heart? Did you ever dream about me? Did you ever cry about me? I wanted to ask so many questions, but he rose. I put the notepad in my pocket and followed him out. We walked quickly back to the hotel. I felt like I was being smuggled into it. He kept his head down, avoiding greeting anyone. Before he left to buy my computer, he handed me an envelope.
“There are fourteen pictures of your mother when she was in college and three of you around age two with her. Put them in your bag,” he said, “with your new birth certificate. Okay?”
“So you’ll tell people my real father’s name was Dazy?”
“Nothing to worry about,” he said.
I took the envelope so gently someone would think it was hot.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
After he had left, I sat on the chair by the small desk, with the envelope in my hand, and just stared at the door. Despite all his assurances, I was more frightened than I had been when I stepped off the train and walked to the taxi. From the moment I had laid eyes on it, there was something about this world that had seemed unreal, a too-picture-perfect place. I was afraid that anyone who saw me would know immediately that I didn’t belong here. It was as if I had walked onto a stage and everyone around me was an actor. They would take one look at me and know I wasn’t one. How did I get on their stage? Why?
Out of the Rain Page 4
