Thankfully, Elgin wasn’t in his chair that night. Greta curled up in hers, shaded by fern leaves, and cried.
TWENTY
She woke to Ash standing over her with a look of concern. “Does everyone take turns falling asleep in these chairs? Got tired of the air mattress?”
Greta smiled at him and tugged his arm toward Elgin’s empty chair. “Sit down. I have something to tell you.” Then she explained about Roger’s text and their brief conversation—his leaving Patty, his house plan and her losing her mind.
Ash sat on the edge of the cushion the whole time, gripping the plushy arms like someone might press Eject at any moment. “Unbelievable!” he spat as she finished. Then he jumped from the chair and tried to pace without running into plants. For the level of anxiety in this house, Greta thought, Elgin really needed a bigger living room.
He turned on Greta. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“So you could do this”—she waved her hand in his direction—“while we tried to have a conversation?”
“It doesn’t sound like you were exactly a paragon of patience yourself.”
“Shut up,” Greta said, but it was halfhearted. Guilt. She had seen Roger wilt under her words. But he deserved it, didn’t he? Yes. He’d hurt them and was wrong. So wrong. Then why did she feel a pang thinking about her brutality? She knew the answer even as she asked herself the question. She loved him. On some primal level, it hurt seeing him hurt. All of his wrongs aside, it crushed her to see him old, tired, small, devastated. “He didn’t look good, Ash.”
“Boo-hoo,” Ash said. “How did we look the day we woke up to an empty house?”
She didn’t know what to say, how to explain the full-on war waging inside of her.
“Wait.” Ash stopped short. “Is he still downstairs?” He didn’t wait for her answer before bounding across the kitchen and thumping down the stairs to the basement. Greta trained her ears on the open basement door but didn’t get up and follow. Ash’s turn. He walked back upstairs with less energy. “No one home.”
What did this mean now? Roger still had a key to the basement suite. He could come and go anytime. Was he moving back in? Did Elgin know? And would Elgin still offer to let them stay if Roger came back? Greta suddenly felt unsettled in her seat, like the floor might give way at any moment and drop her back downstairs.
All morning Greta eyed her phone constantly. That was the worst thing about Roger—the coming and going. Here now. Gone again. Maybe her reaction had driven him back to his truck and all the way up to Whitecourt. Her heart dropped at the thought at the same time her head said, Good. Ash fidgeted, baking a cake and then scraping it into the garbage because he’d forgotten to add sugar. Elgin slept on.
Greta finally gave up and wandered over to the picture window. She looked out at the yard, smug, like she’d single-handedly orchestrated the beginning of spring. Just above freezing, snow wilting in soft mounds, the sun through the window warm on her arms. It wouldn’t last—they all knew it. But until the next snow dump, she could pretend, and maybe see snatches of dead, waterlogged grass—the most beautiful sight in the world.
She and Ash went to Nate’s porch around the time school would be finishing and waited until he pulled up in Rebus. Nate stepped out of the car, a line in his forehead. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re bored,” Ash said. “Wanna play Scrabble?”
Nate smiled, like his brainwashing might be paying off after all. On the way inside Greta told him about Roger’s midnight visit. A couple of hours later Ash and Greta walked back to Elgin’s, thinking of supper and wondering how to broach the subject of Roger with Elgin.
In the entryway, Ash stopped abruptly. Greta plowed into his back. Roger. At the kitchen table with Elgin. Both wearing pants. Elgin smiled like they were guests stepping through his door for the first time. Roger smiled, too, although Greta saw the unease in his eyes. He had to know he was about to tiptoe through a minefield. He’d shaved and changed his shirt, but dark pouches marked his eyes.
Ash bristled. Greta was sure even his arm hair prickled, his arms in gunslinger position. Greta peered around his shoulder. She’d sent Roger away in fury, and he’d come back to fight for them. Relief, a streak of tenderness, then boom. Up went the wall, the one that reminded her of everything that smiling face had done. Or hadn’t.
Ash spoke first. “What’s he doing here?” His lips barely moved, drawn tight. He directed the question at Elgin, bypassing Roger.
“Your father and I have been talking for the past hour. Come in, please. This is a family matter.”
“I have no father,” Ash said, not moving.
Both men blinked at that, Roger sucking in a breath.
“I’ve asked Alice to come pick me up,” Elgin said (which explained the pants), “so you three can have your own heuristic. Remember, it’s about finding a functional solution in a less-than-ideal situation.”
Greta wasn’t sure why he didn’t just banish them all back to the basement pit. At that moment, Alice squeezed through the doorway behind them, jamming three people into two square feet. “Um, excuse me,” she said, her voice muffled by Greta’s shoulder.
“Elgin and Alice stay,” Ash said. “Or I go.”
Greta wasn’t sure if Elgin and Alice wanted to be part of their family’s heuristic, especially given the way the first one had gone. Elgin looked to Roger for his thoughts, while Alice brightened the same way she had at the prospect of spray paint. “I’ll stay. Who’s this?” She wormed her way past Greta and Ash to size up Roger.
“Our father,” Greta said, to spare Ash from having to say the word.
“Oh.” Her face fell. “You guys are really draining the swamp lately, aren’t you?”
“Alice!” This from Elgin.
“What? You know what this guy—”
“Come sit down, all of you.” Elgin motioned them to the table and pulled out chairs for them.
Once they all were sitting, everyone went silent. In family councils with Patty, Ash would pull out things like “I bet you’re all wondering why I’ve called this meeting,” until Patty lost it. Now he didn’t look in Roger’s direction at all.
“So. Your father’s back and would like to assume responsibility for you,” Elgin began.
“He still owes you money! A month’s rent,” Ash sputtered. “Not to mention groceries, utilities…” Alice nodded like they were just getting started.
Elgin interjected before Ash could continue. “We’ve worked out a plan to pay that back. This is about your family now.”
“I’ve signed a lease on a house,” Roger said cautiously. Greta had started to wonder if he’d speak at all. “It’s available at the end of the month. I’ll be ready to put in an offer to buy it by September.”
“Give us one good reason we should trust you,” Ash said.
Greta leaned forward to hear the answer too. She wanted to believe him—the house, the white picket fence, the happy family—but it felt like another trail of crumbs. Hope, then trauma, then nothing.
“I promise you—”
“Not good enough!” Ash’s voice grew stronger, like his words alone could knock Roger flat.
Elgin cleared his throat and stepped in. “Ash. Greta. If I may.” Ash clamped his mouth shut. “Maybe I seem like a kind person to you. I try to be. I took you in when you needed it, and I enjoy having you here. Truth be told”—he drew a breath, wilting a little—“I’ll miss you when you’re gone, but you’re not mine to keep.”
They waited for him to continue, all digesting his admission.
He continued: “But my Alice here can tell you how many times I’ve failed as a father, as a human being.” Alice focused on the table, her face instantly red. “I can remember at least five times that I completely forgot to pick her up from school, and they had to call me to come get her.”
She nodded. “There were seven in the space of two months. Every single time, I stood on the side of the road for an hour, waiting for yo
u.”
“Seven. Right. And I forgot her birthday the year Eleanor died. The day came and went, and she sat in her room waiting for party guests to arrive.” He swallowed hard at that memory.
“Every year, Dad,” Alice said, her voice thick. “You’ve forgotten my birthday every year since Mom died.”
“Yes. Every year.” He shrank smaller in his skin, both he and Roger almost husks now.
“And that one time you picked me up from school in your boxers, and I got teased so bad that I tried to get expelled so I wouldn’t have to go back. After that I begged you to let me take the bus.”
“You never told me that.” He swiveled to look at her.
She nodded, blinking back tears. “Or the time I woke up in the night and found you’d wandered out in the snow, and I had to ask the neighbors to help get you back inside. Ringing doorbells at two in the morning.”
Elgin’s eyebrows knit together, and Greta knew they had stumbled onto failings he didn’t even remember.
“But at least he never left you,” Ash said, like this tipped the scale the other way.
“He left me in every other way except the physical. I could reach out and touch him—yes—but that doesn’t mean he was with me.”
Elgin looked like he’d been struck. “I’m sorry, Alice. I will always be sorry for that. I hope I can make it up to you.” He struggled to collect himself, not sure where to look now. “My point is, Ash and Greta, that even people who love you make mistakes—terrible mistakes—and disappoint and embarrass you. But if you can see some good in me, a flawed person, can you also see it in your father?”
Silence. Eyes traveled from face to face. Ash deflated to his normal size, his face drooping, followed by his shoulders. Greta looked back and forth between Roger and Ash. Yes. Part of her wanted to believe—the part that remembered every piggyback ride, every time she had wiggled in excitement while riding in the cab of his truck. Roger, so much a part of her that she heard his voice whenever she put on her warm jacket or saw a semi drive by.
“Dad.” Beside her, Ash spoke, his voice finally calm. “Dad, it killed us when you left. In a million years, I never thought you’d do that.”
Roger nodded, waiting. Greta recognized the look on his face. Shame.
“And I just don’t think I can trust you again.”
With that, Greta saw three balls lined up for the same hoop ricochet off each other and scatter.
TWENTY-ONE
The heuristic fell apart after Ash got up and left. Everyone stood, knowing a door had closed. Roger stepped out from his chair and leaned over to hug Greta. For one second she let herself lean into him and remember. One second. Then she followed Ash, leaving Elgin and Alice to the aftermath.
On the table the next morning, they found a note written in Sharpie on the back of a flyer: I will wait for you there, always, along with the new house address. Greta reached for it, but Ash crumpled it in his hands, his edges and prickles back again.
“Give it to me,” she said, taking it and smoothing it flat. “Maybe I want to see it.”
“What for?” Ash asked. “Elgin won’t be there to step in when Dad bails again.”
“What makes you think he’ll bail again?”
Ash shrugged. “I never thought he’d do it the first time. Maybe he’ll fall in love with Patty’s twin sister. Too much pressure on the job. A sudden gambling addiction. It could be anything.”
“I don’t know, Ash. What if he’s sincere?”
“Greta.” Ash stepped close, into her space. “Are you thinking of going with him? Would you go without me?”
She saw the hurt, the alarm, in his eyes.
“No, Ash.” She stepped back. “I don’t know.”
He watched her without moving, his eyebrows pinched together. After a full minute of silence, he said, “I won’t ask you not to live with Dad, but I don’t trust him. And I’ll…I’ll miss you.”
Greta kept her head turned to spare him the embarrassment of eye contact, knowing how much that last sentence had cost him to say. “Don’t worry about it, Ash. Okay?” She stuck the flyer on the fridge with a Dan’s Plumbing magnet. “Where do you think we should go then? We can’t stay with Elgin forever, especially now that Dad’s back.”
“I don’t know.” Ash shrugged. “I’m sure Elgin will let us stay a little longer, or Nate might let us crash there until Aunt Lori gets back. We wouldn’t end up under a bridge.”
“But think about it, Ash. We could be together again, the three of us. We haven’t had that chance in seven years.” She couldn’t stop picturing the house, sitting around a dinner table with Ash and Roger. A conversation without Patty’s dog-whistle-pitched voice. For one second, the anger in Ash’s face fell away, and she knew he saw it too. “Just…what if…” She let it hang.
Ash shook his head, the moment gone. “I’ll be around no matter what you decide, Greta, but I’m not ready to go with him. Not yet.”
The last weekend in March, they all pitched in to help move Roger’s stuff out of the basement. Greta shrank from it, the residue of Patty all over everything. She considered tacking a Free Stuff sign on it and dumping it at the end of the driveway. Ash offered to help load the moving van as long as Roger wasn’t there, so Roger waited inside the van with the radio on. Elgin stood on the front path to supervise, saying things like “lift from the knees” as Ash and Nate hoisted mattresses into the back of the van. Greta and Alice packed the contents of closets and drawers into boxes, starting with the bedrooms. Chased away spiders.
They moved on to the kitchen as Ash and Nate came in for a drink of water, breathless and sweaty. Tracking mud across the hardwood. Alice leaned against the oven door, then did a double take. “Aw, look at this itty-bitty…” She swung the door open and bent down, peering inside. “How the heck did you guys fit anything inside this?”
“Oh, it served its purpose.” Ash smiled at Greta. He passed by Alice to get a refill from the sink and nudged her hip, tipping her toward the open oven. “Careful now. Don’t fall in.”
Alice swatted his leg and straightened. “Very funny.”
Greta tapped on Roger’s window when they’d finished. “All done.” His work buddies were coming to help unload at the new house.
Roger smiled. “Want to come along, Greta? I’ll show you the house. You can get first dibs on your room…in case… you know.”
Greta paused, looking at Roger and then back at Ash, Elgin, Nate and Alice. They had already agreed to meet at Elgin’s house for dinner the first Sunday of every month, regardless of where everyone lived. The next day she and Ash would move in with Aunt Lori, and Elgin would look for renters for the basement suite. She stood on the threshold of something new, but she couldn’t picture the coming months. With Ash at Aunt Lori’s? A new home, a new life, with her dad? Could she choose that path if it meant leaving Ash behind? Would he eventually follow if she stepped away first?
“I’ll just look at it,” Greta told Roger. “You’ll drive me back after they unload?”
Roger nodded, turning the key in the ignition.
She walked back toward the house as Roger rolled up the window behind her. “I just want to see it, Ash. Nothing decided.”
Ash stepped forward—a conversation just for the two of them. “You can forgive him, just like that?” An accusation there, also edged in wonder.
“No, Ash. I don’t forgive him. Not yet.” With Roger, the wall came and went, sometimes falling at surprising times, allowing her to joke in a text or return his calls. Other times it sprang up fast, and she couldn’t even look at him or hear his voice. “But I guess the difference between us is”—she paused—“I want to forgive him.”
Ash watched her face, a heavy silence between them. Then he nodded, wiping his hands on his dusty T-shirt. “Okay. See you in a bit.” He looked away. She knew he’d never say “pick me” or plead or pressure, but she saw his hurt expression when he didn’t snap it to neutral fast enough. It was supposed to be her and h
im looking out for each other, the only sure thing out of 7.5 billion people. She hadn’t forgotten.
Riding in the van with Roger, Greta watched him sing along to country songs. Wall up. She didn’t sing with him—a guilty pleasure she wouldn’t admit to under torture. He tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel and missed every high note. Seeing him happy, Greta wondered what he’d said to Patty the last time they spoke. Maybe someday she’d be ready for— even find satisfaction in—that conversation. At this point, any thoughts of Patty just reinforced those hefty bricks between her and Roger.
Roger took Anthony Henday Drive to north Edmonton and weaved through a residential area. They drove down narrow streets, a mixture of older homes and new infill. He pulled up in front of a bungalow with light yellow siding, white trim and a flower bed full of dead, soggy plants by the front porch. The front lawn was a neat rectangle.
“Home sweet home,” Roger said, swinging his legs out of the driver’s seat.
Greta followed him onto the front porch and waited while he dug out the key. The house reminded her of Elgin’s, only newer and without ferns. In the living room, a large picture window overlooked the front lawn. She mentally positioned her and Elgin’s chairs, then felt a thin stab. Was it so impossible that Elgin—and Ash, Nate and Alice—might come to Roger’s house sometime? A new path, a new gathering place?
A wall separated the dining room and kitchen, although a small table would fit in the kitchen too. “No dishwasher yet,” Roger said, pointing to the gap in the cupboards. Greta noted the standard-sized oven, electric. Roger, as if reading her mind, added, “The furnace is new.”
Greta trailed behind Roger through three bedrooms, all with laminate flooring and small rectangular windows. “You or Ash can have this one,” he said, pointing to the largest of the three. “It’s just me now.”
“Let’s give it to Ash,” Greta answered, a little too easily. “If he…if we come,” she added, stepping out of the room.
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