“Dad!” Colleen called as she entered the kitchen. Morning light slipped into the room through the slats of the wooden blinds, casting yellow stripes onto the hardwood floor. Across the room Colleen spied the red-hot eye of the stove burner. “Dad?” she called again as she turned it off.
The house was empty; she could feel it. Where was he? Had she spent too long on her work? God, no. If something had happened to him because she’d focused on . . . She wouldn’t think about it.
The back screen door popped against the wooden frame as she exited to the backyard. At the end of the dock, Gavin’s silhouette was set against the blue morning sky. He squatted as he untied the johnboat from its moorings. It was a small boat with a center console and a bench seat, the once-bright green paint now faded to an almost mint-colored hue. When she and her siblings were small, all five in the family had fit neatly in the boat, but now only two or three at a time could sit comfortably. Colleen burst into a run, calling out, “Dad!”
He turned quickly, coming off balance and falling to the splintered decking. He landed on his left side and let out a grand stream of curses. Colleen stopped, as shocked as if he’d hit her. That couldn’t be her dad. She’d never heard him curse, not once. As a teenager, she’d thought he’d said “shit” one time but he’d laughed it off and denied it. “Cursing,” he’d said, “is lazy. It’s better to find the right word.”
She’d never been able to follow that example, believing that sometimes a curse word was the right word.
Colleen quickly reached his side and bent to him. “Are you okay?”
He glanced at his daughter with a blank stare and then maneuvered his body to sit and shake his head. “Silly me.”
“Does anything hurt?”
He tented his legs, rose to a squat and then held out his hand so she could help him stand. “Lena, my little lark. What are you doing here?”
“Remember, Dad. We’re taking a day trip today. You, Hallie and me.”
“Oh, yes!” His eyes lit up. “I was just headed out in the boat for a quick net of shrimp before I went to the pub. I totally forgot.”
They both glanced at the water then, as the johnboat, loosed from its mooring, bobbed away from the dock. Colleen caught the rope, a slithering snake, just in time. She pulled the boat back and retied it using the bowline nautical knot she’d known ever since she could walk onto the dock alone.
“Ready?” She turned to him and smiled.
“Where we headed?” he asked and rubbed his hip where he’d fallen.
“Jacksonville, Dad. I am taking you to see a specialist so we can figure out what’s going on.”
“Oh, yes.” His face brightened. “Thank God for you, my sweet Colleen. You’ll know what to do. They can’t be right. I feel . . . too . . . normal for something so catastrophic to be happening.”
He’d called her Colleen. This never happened. Little lark. Lena. But not Colleen. She placed her hand on his arm, reassuring him. “Dad, it seems that someone losing their memory wouldn’t use the word ‘catastrophic.’ Let’s go see this doctor.”
His smile fell and he closed his eyes. A soft sound of something near to sorrow escaped his lips and then he smiled as if he’d gone off into a dream.
“Dad?” she asked.
His eyes popped open. “Just a nice memory that rolls in on your name,” he said.
“What was it?” Colleen wanted to know. Anything that could evoke such a nostalgic smile would be something to put in the memory book.
Gavin shook his head. “Not now. Let’s head to Jacksonville.”
“We have to wait for Hallie; she’s coming, too.”
His grin reached all the way to his eyes, and she knew what it was: hope.
* * *
• • •
Colleen’s hands were tight on the steering wheel of Hallie’s minivan; she wasn’t accustomed to making long drives, but Hallie had insisted so she could work on her satchel full of papers while they traveled. Dad was in the passenger seat, fiddling with the knobs, trying to find a radio station. The floorboards were strewn with crushed crackers and empty juice boxes, discarded doll clothes and one empty Toy Story thermos rolling around.
“I don’t know why we’re doing this when we could be spending a perfectly lovely day together out on the river,” Gavin said. He flicked another button on the radio and the Beauty and the Beast sound track burst forth: “Be our guest, be our guest.”
Colleen pushed the off button. “Dad, we need to know what’s really going on.”
“I can tell you what’s really going on.” He paused. “Nothing.”
“Good, then let’s find out.”
“It sure is nice having you here,” Gavin said as he stared out the window, his hands folded in his lap. “I always believed you’d come home, like the time you ran away as a little girl and returned hours later.”
“Dad.” Colleen’s chest tightened. “I didn’t run away when I was little.”
Hallie leaned forward from the backseat. “Oh, yes, you did. When Mother bought me a new pair of pink sneakers. You were so mad she didn’t get you a pair, although you didn’t need them, you packed up and left.”
“I never . . .” Colleen paused. Hell, she had, hadn’t she? She’d forgotten about how she’d filled her Barbie suitcase with all her sundresses and a bag of Goldfish crackers. “My sneakers were blue. I wanted pink ones.” She shook her head at the absurdity.
Hallie laughed with satisfaction, nudging the back of the driver’s seat with her knee. “I remember you stomping down the hallway dragging your little suitcase. I was screaming at you, crazy with fear that you would really leave but too scared to go with you. I’ll never forget it.”
“I came back once I ate all the Goldfish and my shoulders were so sunburned I thought I’d been lit on fire. I came home and you were huddled on the stairs exactly where I’d left you. I tripped over you in the dark.”
“We just can’t stay out of each other’s way, can we?” Hallie said. The sisters were quiet for a long moment, and inside that moment was childhood, and love.
Dad clapped his hand on the console. “We’re a family and families by nature cannot stay out of each other’s way.”
The truth filled the car and the remainder of the drive was easy and quiet as they listened to country music radio stations come and go along I-95. Dad talked about the local high school winning states in baseball and a long-gone Braves game from before Colleen was born. Hallie worked on her never-ending checklists—the RSVP list; the caterer’s food offerings; the outdoor furniture vendor who didn’t have enough chairs but would find some. She didn’t talk out loud about any of it, telling their dad it was school forms for her daughters. Meanwhile Colleen drove carefully, staring through the windshield, and heard her dad’s words over and over, caught and echoing in Hallie’s minivan.
Families by nature cannot stay out of each other’s way.
* * *
• • •
It had been a two-and-a-half-hour drive to MD Anderson in Jacksonville, Florida, and the offices inside gleamed like a new kitchen and smelled like disinfectant and Band-Aids, that particular aroma of childhood skinned knees.
As the doctors tested their dad, imaged his brain with the spanking new technology and drew his blood, Colleen and Hallie were left in a private waiting room where old magazines and acidic coffee kept their silence company. Time dragged, trying to pull itself through dread.
Dad had once told Colleen that time was different for the Celtic people—that they didn’t worry about not having enough of it or how to use it or if they wasted it. The quality of the experience, he’d said, determined the sense of time. She wanted to tell him that she understood what he meant now—because here, time stretched and warped. The past was compressed and became an amalgam of everything they’d ever done together; the present stretched past its lim
it, and the unknown future felt dark.
When Colleen had left Watersend on the afternoon of her wedding day, time had been her friend—she’d known that as the clock ticked forward, her pain would ease. She’d needed time to rush on, to swiftly turn into the future days when she wouldn’t hurt so badly. And it had happened. The last ten years hadn’t so much flown by as moved along in a frenetic need to get somewhere else. She’d gone from angry to ashamed to despondent and all the emotions in between. Where had she landed now? At avoidance? It had taken years for her heart to stop reaching for what she had lost but could not help loving still.
Now, God, now she wanted time to stand still, to stop stealing her dad’s memories, to allow them to be quiet in its paused breath.
But time was not her servant.
Colleen peeked over at the papers Hallie worked on diligently—this time a set list for the band. “I can’t believe we’re going to get away with this—with throwing him a party and he doesn’t know?”
“I think he knows.” Hallie smiled. “More than a few patrons have slipped up and made a vague mention, but he ignores them.”
“Maybe it’s too much. Maybe we should cancel the party and just focus on helping him.”
“Are you kidding?” Hallie pointed at all the papers. “This is going to be the highlight of his year. Of many years. What he does and doesn’t remember and know won’t take away from the party at all. It’s a celebration of his life.”
“Yes.” Colleen nodded, not wanting to argue. “Have you figured out the timeline?” She tried to keep her tone light and breezy.
“No. We’re going to have to ask him. Lena, it concerns the year before you were born, after Ireland. The dates on the photos don’t match the date of your birth or when they bought the pub.”
“So, this is about me?” Colleen’s eyebrows rose with her voice.
Hallie exhaled through pursed lips as if she’d just run a race. “Isn’t it always?” She waved her hand through the air. “Okay, just joking.” She grimaced. “A bad joke.”
“Very bad,” Colleen said and rolled her eyes. “Okay, how are we going to ask him?”
“I was thinking we’d go out on the boat—me, you and Dad.” Hallie’s eyes shimmied away from Colleen’s, a quick movement. “I know you’ll say no, but I think it will get him to relax and remember, be receptive. It’s been a long, long time and he asks for you so often . . .”
“He asks to go out on the river with us?” Colleen straightened up, feeling a tug on her chest as if Hallie had just caught her with a fishhook and reeled her in.
“Yes.”
“Okay, then we will.”
Hallie shut a notebook and brought her gaze back to Colleen, or at least near her. “I know I haven’t said anything yet, but that article you wrote about ten tips for travel is really good. I didn’t know any of those stories about you.”
Colleen spoke carefully. “Thank you. That’s nice of you to say.” For the moment she kept to herself the e-mail about possibly writing a memoir; she wanted to savor the idea and even when she did speak of it, Hallie would not be the first one she would tell.
“You know,” Hallie said, pulling out a large binder labeled “60th Birthday,” “I’ve read all your articles, or all of them that I know about. Not sure if I’ve kept up, but I’ve tried.”
“Really?”
Hallie nodded. “It’s quite the life you live now.”
She always seemed to be having two conversations with Hallie. Colleen took a deep breath, decided not to delve into the hidden meanings. While she was weighing her words, her phone beeped—a text from Philippe: I believe you now, Colleen. It’s been a pleasure being your friend. Take care of yourself. Good-bye.
Colleen let out a long puff of air and deleted it. She could try and talk to him about it. She could appease him with a few words of adoration, but none of it seemed worth it at the moment. And what good would it do to keep him near? She didn’t feel the same as he did. She was done.
“Anything important?” Hallie asked lightly.
Colleen looked up. “Not really. A guy in New York.” She shrugged as her phone beeped again—this time a text from Beckett.
You busy tonight? Would love to see you.
Hallie laughed. “A guy who’s not giving up?”
“No, a different guy this time.”
“See?” Hallie leaned forward and spoke as if they were companions again in the tree house making a daisy chain together. “You can have any guy you want. That’s always been true.”
Colleen stood up, stashing her phone in her back pocket and swallowing her sudden fury. With effort, she pushed down the urge to vehemently deny her sister’s statement, to call her a liar, to declare that she’d only ever wanted one guy.
“Listen, I’m going outside for some fresh air. If the doc comes in, will you text me?”
“You were out of town.” Hallie folded her hands on her lap, her fingers inside her knotted fists like when they were kids and would play “here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the door . . .” and then they’d wiggle their fingers for the people.
“What?” Colleen was a few steps from the door.
“When Walter and I began talking.”
Colleen paused, wanting to run but suddenly unable to move, her feet glued to the faux-wood floor.
“He came over to drop off a bouquet of gardenias for Mother; he’d heard her say she loved them. We arranged them in a vase and then we started talking. That’s all I did, Lena. I wanted to get to know my future brother-in-law.”
“Oh.” Apparently nothing was going to stop Hallie from unloading her tale of love and marriage. Colleen’s ears buzzed. From somewhere far away Hallie’s voice continued.
“He asked me about the party I was organizing for the Shepherds’ anniversary, and gave me great ideas for a company picnic I was stuck on. We talked and talked. He had such good ideas and then he quoted a line from Shakespeare . . .”
Colleen startled and held up her hand. “I bet I know what it is.”
Hallie shook her head. “No. This was between us. I never told you.”
“‘Now, my fair’st friend, I would I had some flowers o’ the spring that might become your time of day; and yours, and yours.’”
Hallie’s lips parted, trying to pull in air. “How did you know?”
“Because he quoted the same line to me on our first date.” Colleen felt something elemental shifting. “I found out later it’s the only one he knows and whenever he’s around flowers . . . he uses it. So what happened then?”
“That can’t be true. Now you’re just trying to be cruel. We shared our stories and he loved the same poets I did; he loved to talk about the meaning behind things.”
Colleen interrupted. “Like how the universe expands, and how we’re made of stardust and how time means nothing without space and how we have a purpose in life and we are meant to be here carrying our own blueprint . . .” Colleen spouted the long-remembered conversations she’d had with Walter, the ones that had kept her a little bit in love with him even as she hated him.
“Yes.” Hallie’s voice faded. “He loved to talk about things that mean something. Really mean something.” Her voice sounded strangled. “Did he talk about those things with you?”
“Of course he did, Hallie. Do you think you were special and he saved all his best stuff just for you?” She was being harsh and she knew it. “He drew you pictures, too, right? Little drawings of your daily life? He sent articles and photos that would mean something to you, to only you, right? And only he knew you that well.”
“Yes.” Hallie’s mouth shaped the word, but Colleen didn’t hear her voice at all.
“Me, too, Hallie. Me. Too. And he was doing all of this with you while I was engaged to him? You never thought to tell me?”
“At first I believed
he was just trying to be a good brother-in-law. You know, get to know the little sister. Then I realized that I was waiting for his next e-mail or call or for him to stop by the house to see you. I realized I wanted to hear from him. I was falling in love with him. So I told him I couldn’t talk to him anymore. I told him.” Hallie stared over Colleen’s shoulder as if Walter was even now standing behind her sister.
“Really? You told him you didn’t want to talk anymore, but you could play tongue hockey with him on my wedding day?”
Hallie’s gaze snapped back to Colleen. “That’s so gross.”
Colleen bit her lip in an attempt to keep from laughing. “I have no idea where that came from. Sorry.”
“Lena, I’ve been carrying this around and although you don’t care anymore, and you don’t love me anymore, I need to tell you. I’ve been trying and trying to tell you. For years I’ve been trying to tell you, and you’ve been cruel and cold.”
“Just keep going.”
Hallie closed her eyes; she couldn’t look at Colleen while she finished her tale. “So I did tell him that we had to quit talking, that I could never betray you, but the truth is, I couldn’t stop. It was like a sickness. I fell in love with him so quickly and yet I loved you with all my heart. I was devastated. I couldn’t stand to break your heart. I would have rather broken my own.”
“Really?” Colleen’s tone was sarcastic, biting.
“Yes, really. Walter and I talked about it for hours.”
“While I was fretting over bridesmaids’ dresses and chocolate cake with buttercream icing, you were talking to my fiancé about how he needed to stay with me even though he loved you? My God, this story just gets worse.” The buried devastation began to rise like a tide. Her hands tingled; her stomach roiled. The truth didn’t always need to be told, did it?
“No. It wasn’t like that. He did love you—a lot. We just found this deep connection and we didn’t know what to do with it.”
“Seems to me you knew exactly what to do with it—or it looked like it in the church alcove that day.”
The Favorite Daughter Page 14