by Meg Donohue
I thought about this, my mind working quickly. My father, for all his conservative fiscal practices, was at heart a very generous person. If he hadn’t loaned Curtis money, there must have been good reason.
“I’m sure my dad had your best interests in mind,” I said evenly. It was important not to provoke him, and realizing this only served to make me more anxious. What had I expected to happen when I confronted Curtis? A tearful confession? A promise to be a better person? A renewed allegiance to our family? I was embarrassed by how juvenile my little fantasy seemed now as I sat across from a man who was beginning to show a side I’d never seen in all the years I’d known him.
He snorted. “My best interests? Julia, he’s your father, not mine. I didn’t need his best interests, I needed his money. He refused. So I got creative.” In one long gulp, Curtis drained his beer and set it down hard on the floor.
Something about the sight of his large, now empty hands made a lump form in my throat. “Well,” I said. “Everyone will understand.” I stood slowly from the couch, itching to be out of that house and back in my car, speeding home. “We’ll figure this out. We all care so much about you.”
“Sit down,” Curtis said quietly.
I froze. “What?”
He didn’t repeat himself, just glared at me until I sank back down to the couch. I stared at my lap blindly and worked to think straight. Beside me, my purse held my cell phone. Even as I realized this, Curtis was crossing the room toward me. He grabbed my bag, then turned and settled back in his chair.
“Curtis,” I whispered. “What are you doing?”
He set my bag at his feet and didn’t answer.
Chapter 29
Annie
When we arrived at the hospital, I gathered I was to be admitted and that Our Guy was deemed well enough to accompany me. No one seemed to question his presence at my side, and, out of curiosity, I suppose—This guy pulled me from the fire? And he’s claiming to be my father?!?—I didn’t draw attention to fact that he was, in fact, a stranger. I eyed him as he walked beside my stretcher down one long hall after another. With the hood of his sweatshirt hanging limply down his back, the man looked older and shorter than he ever had before, as though the bright, unforgiving hospital lights deflated him. Finally, I was deposited in a room, checked over briefly by a doctor, and told that I needed to be monitored while I rested for a bit. As long as I felt okay, I would be released in an hour. Then I was left alone with the man.
I pulled the mask off my face.
“I think it’s better,” the man said in a thick Spanish accent, gesturing toward the mask, “to keep this on.”
For some reason, I obeyed. The mask made me feel slightly cross-eyed, but the oxygen was silky and cool in my nostrils. I pressed my head into the bed and tried to breathe deeply. My body craved rest, but my mind charged forward, relentlessly compiling and sorting and interpreting information.
“I did not want to scare you,” the man said sadly. His light brown eyes searched the ceiling as though the words he needed might be there. “I’m sorry. I wanted to find you finally. I wanted to see that you are okay. But you were not. I see there is a bad man, so I stay to help you. I want you to be safe.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. Something in the set of the man’s face as he leaned toward me seemed oddly familiar. The EMT’s words echoed through me. My heart began to race.
“Do you speak Spanish?” he asked.
I lifted my hand and made a so-so motion. It didn’t seem wise to trust something as potentially life-altering as a conversation with a man who claimed to be my father to my dodgy college-level Spanish.
And then, in halting Spanglish and elaborate hand gestures, the man told me his name was Miguel Patilla. He said he was my father. After that, he seemed stumped. He stared at his hands. “I was married many years,” he said finally. “My wife died last year. I have thought of you many times. I have so many . . .” He struggled, paused, and began again. “I feel very bad. I was so young when I was with Lucia. I should have done something when her mother made her leave the house, but I was . . . a stupid boy. She left Ecuador and I never met you. I try to forget about you. I was not good.”
I stared at him as he spoke, spiky ropes of anger and disbelief and confusion and, what? hope? knotting together in my chest. I was listening to him intently but somehow, at the same time, I realized I was counting my own breaths. In, out. One. In, out. Two. . .
“I am a father. I have a son and a daughter.” His eyes shone. “And you, of course,” he said, hurrying. “Two daughters. I am a good father to them, my children in Ecuador. And I am a bad father to you. I did not know that Lucia died and you were alone. You have been alone so long and I am so sad for that.”
I suddenly realized why he looked familiar: he looked like me. As he spoke, I could sort of see my own face floating up behind his. In the arch of his eyebrows, I saw the arch of mine. In the little point of his chin, I saw my own. While my mother had been darker than me with coffee-hued eyes and milk-chocolate skin, this man had my coloring: eyes the hue of caramel, skin the color of honey. I stared at him in shock, grateful that the mask on my face gave me an excuse to not speak.
“I come to see you, but I don’t know if you want to meet me. You seem good. You are very successful. I am very proud, and I think maybe I should leave. Maybe I should not bother you. Maybe,” he said sadly, “maybe you hate me. I can understand. I am no father to you. I am a stranger.
“But I watch you and I see this man who is doing bad things to your store. I decide I cannot leave you. So I stay and get work in a restaurant. I live near you. I call my children and they understand—they want you to be safe, too. So I watch, and some nights I scare away this man who is trying to hurt your store. Other nights, I want to warn you, but I end up scaring you and your friend. So I keep my distance again. And tonight, there is a fire. When you need me most, I am not there. I walk by on my way home from work and I see the smoke and I hear the alarm and the door is open and I find you.” He slumped in his chair. “I should be there before. I was so late. All this time, I want you to be safe, and then . . .” His voice choked.
I stared at him. I had spent so much of my life not thinking about my father, and now, apparently, here he was. I have a father. My thoughts darted and buzzed and stung as quickly as bees swarming out of a hive that has been hit by a stone. If I had spent some amount of time imagining, fantasizing, about our meeting, I might have been better prepared. As it was, I felt baffled. I had never really thought about my father, long ago dismissing the idea of him just as it seemed my mother had. I had no script to follow. I didn’t know what to say. My mother had never given me any clues to help me determine how I should feel about him. Had she loved him? Had he treated her poorly? What would she have thought about him showing up in my life like this? Without her guidance, I was left to make up my mind entirely on my own.
I looked at this man. I didn’t feel coldly toward him. To the contrary, I realized I was glad he was there, even if attempting to wrap my mind around the fact that Our Guy was in fact my father was as dizzying as trying to see every image in an Escher drawing at once. I took a deep breath. My lungs felt clearer. I pulled the mask from my face.
“You saved me,” I said. “Thank you.”
He blushed and looked at his hands. “I wish I had done more. Your store—it’s not good.”
My kitchen! I bit my lip. “Is it gone?”
Miguel—it would take some time for me to call him my father—shook his head. “No, it’s there. But the kitchen is very bad. There will be a lot of problem from so much smoke and the water from the firemen.” He reached out toward me, but then seemed to reconsider and dropped his hand. “But I think it will be okay.”
My thoughts raced back to what he had said earlier. It was easier to think about Treat than to think too deeply about the fact that I was speaking to my
father for the first time in my life. “So you saw who set the fire?” I asked. “You know who did it?”
Miguel frowned. “No,” he said. “I did not see. But I think it is the same man who did all of the other things I seen him do. He wrote those words in the shop. He broke the glass. I see this. He is big. Tall. White. Ah!” He released a frustrated bark—half snort, half cough. “I point him out in a picture. I know him if I see him again.” He slumped in his chair. “I don’t know. I don’t think this helps.”
I pushed myself up in bed, thinking. “It’s okay. The shop has a security camera now so we should have a video.”
Miguel brightened. “Yes? Oh good.”
We smiled at each other. This man is my father. How bizarre. Our little moment was cut short by a knock on the open door.
“Ogden!” I said, startled. “What are you doing here?”
Ogden quickly crossed the room to my bedside and surprised me by taking my hand. “Thank God you’re okay! I was on my way home from the opening party for a friend’s restaurant and I saw the fire trucks outside of Treat. I headed right to the hospital when they said you were here.” He glanced at Miguel and then back at me. “I’m sorry—am I interrupting?”
“No, it’s fine. Thanks for coming.” I looked over at Miguel. “Miguel,” I said, “this is my friend Ogden Gertzwell. Ogden, this is Miguel Patilla.” I hesitated a moment and then just went for it. “Miguel is my father.”
Ogden’s thick blond brows rose in his forehead. He turned and took a long step toward Miguel, who had risen from his chair, and shook his hand heartily. “Mr. Patilla! What a pleasure. I’m sorry to meet like this, though, when our girl is in the hospital.”
“Our girl?” I said. Ogden glanced toward me, embarrassed.
Miguel smiled at him. “I’m happy you are here,” he said. “It’s good for Annie to have someone with her.”
I shook my head, not knowing what to make of this alternative universe I suddenly found myself in.
“I should go now,” Miguel said. He handed me a slip of paper on which he’d written his phone number. “Will you call me?” his eyes flicked between mine nervously. “I’d like to speak with you more, if it’s okay.”
“I’d like that,” I said. I looked at him, memorizing his face. “Thank you.”
After Miguel left, I sank my head back into the pillow. Before I knew what I was doing, I was laughing in disbelief at the turns the night had taken. My laughter quickly dissipated into a chain of dry coughs.
Ogden looked at me with worry in his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want me to get a doctor?”
“No, I’m fine.” As soon as I said it, I realized it was true. My headache seemed to have lifted and my throat no longer ached. “They’re going to discharge me soon. It’s nice of you to come by, but you don’t have to stay.”
Ogden pulled the chair Miguel had sat in up close to my bed. “But I want to.”
For a moment, a wave of prickliness ticked over my skin. I’d been on my own for years, and suddenly men were coming out of the woodwork to protect and care for me. They can disappear just as easily as they arrive, I warned myself. “I don’t need you to,” I told Ogden, straightening. “I can get home on my own.”
“Oh, I know,” he said hurriedly. “But I’d like to stay anyway, if you don’t mind.”
Even as he said the words, I understood just how much I wanted to hear them.
“Besides,” he continued, a serious set to his eyes. “I think I just promised your father I’d keep you company.”
I laughed. If only he knew how odd that sentence was. Julia would have appreciated the strangeness of this whole situation. Where was she anyway? I was surprised she hadn’t shown up at the hospital yet. “Did you see Julia at Treat?” I asked.
Ogden paled. “No—she wasn’t in there with you, was she?”
“Oh no. But I’m sure the security company called her when the smoke alarm went off.” I reached into my pocket, relieved to find my phone still there. I had several messages from the security company and one from Inspector Ramirez, but none from Julia. That was odd. I called her cell phone but it went to voice mail. Maybe Wes had whisked her off somewhere romantic for the evening and she wasn’t answering her phone. I remembered suddenly that she had mentioned—somewhat cryptically, now that I thought about it—that she had plans for the night when she dropped me off at my apartment after we’d closed the shop. Oh well. Good for her. There wasn’t anything to be done now anyway but worry about the damage to Treat.
“So how bad is it?” I asked. “Did you get a good look at the shop?”
Ogden grimaced. He laid his hand on mine again. What was with him tonight? I looked down and realized I didn’t actually mind the feeling of his big old paw covering mine. “It seemed pretty bad,” he said. “I was really worried about you.”
“You were?”
He nodded, then hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” he said.
“Really?” I asked slowly. I was enjoying watching him struggle.
“Yes, really,” he said. “I’ve been thinking that maybe we have more in common than you think.”
“Is that so?”
“We both like feeding people. Good food is our best gift.”
“You might be wrong there,” I said, shifting in the bed. “I also have sparkling wit to offer.”
Ogden smiled. “Well, that’s true.” He paused for a beat, then cleared his throat. “But I think the place you feel most at home is in your kitchen, when you’re not trying particularly hard to be . . . sparkly. I’m the same way. With my farm.”
I was on the verge of responding with some light retort but the earnest set of Ogden’s face stopped me. Looking at him then, really looking at him, I saw that what I’d once attributed to a lack of passion in his eyes was in fact exactly the opposite; he had the intense, intelligent gaze of a man who knew exactly what he loved in life, and why. I couldn’t believe what I’d missed seeing all that time I’d been so busy looking for something else.
And he was right, of course. I thought of Treat’s little kitchen charred by fire and swallowed deeply. When I stood in that kitchen, I felt my mother by my side. Her favorite place in the world had been standing in front of the stove not in the St. Clairs’ fancy kitchen, but in our little carriage house—our casita, as she called it. That was where she seemed to feel the most at peace with herself and the choices she had made in her life. Over the years, I’d learned that standing by her side at the carriage house stove was where I had the best chance of hearing some story about her childhood and family. As I thought of this, an idea occurred to me—both troubling and startling in its simplicity.
“Hey, do you have your truck here?” I asked Ogden, propping myself up on my elbows.
He nodded.
“There’s something I’d like to do, but I need your help. Can you help me?” I wondered if he had any idea what it took for me to say those words.
“Of course,” he answered immediately. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him look so pleased.
When we pulled up in front of the St. Clair mansion, all of the windows were dark. I punched the old code into the gate and held my breath until, after a pause, the gate unlocked and swung open.
“Annie,” Ogden whispered, keeping pace with me as I walked hurriedly through the arched porte cochere. “What are we doing here?”
It was the first time he’d questioned me since we’d left the hospital. He’d been remarkably quiet on the drive to the St. Clairs’, only nodding as I’d directed him through the series of turns that led us to Pacific Heights. I’d been grateful for his silence—I felt shaken by the events of the night and I was filled with conflicting feelings of hope and dread as we drove through the city. What was I suddenly afraid I might find at the St. Clairs’? The very thing I’d hoped to find for all those years?
/> “Don’t worry,” I whispered over my shoulder as we climbed the steps to the carriage house door. “They won’t mind that I’m here.” I bent down, lifted the small stone duck beside the doormat, and breathed out in relief when I saw the key glimmering there in the darkness. “See?” I said. Ogden’s expression told me that my knowledge of the key’s location did not do much to alleviate his concerns. Still, he followed me over the threshold and closed the door behind him.
I flicked on the light. The smell of the carriage house was exactly the same as it had always been, even after all those years: a woolly carpet smell, an undertone of muskiness that must have risen from the garage below, and, inexplicably, pine.
“In here,” I said, motioning for Ogden to follow me into the kitchen. The stove was a small white relic from the eighties, but it gleamed spotlessly below the kitchen’s track lighting. I looked at Ogden. I had the sense that he would do exactly what I asked, whatever it was, and I felt a rush of gratitude toward him. Despite his willingness, or perhaps because of it, I wanted him to understand.
“I’ve been looking for something of my mother’s for a long time,” I told him. My voice sounded croaky and small in the kitchen. “I’ve been looking since she died, actually. It’s a book with no value to anyone but me, and I know she would have wanted me to have it.” I lifted my chin then, daring Ogden to think I sounded silly as I said, “There’s a very small chance it’s behind that stove.”
Ogden looked at me and without hesitation said, “Well, let’s take a look.” He shook off his jacket and draped it across the kitchen counter. Then he stretched his arms out, took hold of the back of the stove, and began to pull it toward him. The stove was wedged snugly into place, but he rocked it back and forth so that it hobbled forward inch by inch. As he did, I grabbed an old flashlight from the cabinet below the sink. Once the stove was six inches or so from the wall I hoisted myself up on the counter, flicked on the flashlight, and peered down into the dark space that was now exposed. There, amid tumbleweeds of dust, various wires, a set of kitchen tongs, a wooden spoon, and a salt shaker, was my mother’s journal. I looked back at Ogden, my mouth open in surprise.
