by Claire Adams
“In the bathroom. Graham’s still in there, though. I think I just heard the shower go off.”
“Well, you need to see how hot you look. And those shoes just make the outfit. What should we do with your hair?”
“I don’t know, I think I was just going to put it up? It doesn’t need to be anything crazy; we’re just going to lunch.”
“Your mom is going to freak when she sees how you good you look.”
“Damn.” I turned and saw Graham standing there, bare-chested, towel wrapped around his waist. “Look at you. That’s quite the outfit.” He smiled at Tara. “Hey, what’s up,” he said. “I’m guessing you brought the dress over? I know she didn’t find it in my closet.”
“Doesn’t she look amazing?” Tara asked.
Graham kept his gaze on me for a few seconds, taking it all in. I felt myself blush. “Yeah,” he said. “She sure does.”
I went into the bathroom so I could see exactly how I looked. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw my reflection; in part, I think, because I wasn’t used to seeing myself wearing something like this, but also just because the dress fit me just right and the shoes accentuated my legs and the whole outfit had just come together perfectly.
“I guess I better go get dressed, too,” Graham said.
Tara messed around with my hair a little bit, though it was so short there weren’t many options. “A headband might look cute,” she said. “I really do like it short.”
“Thanks. I do, too.”
Graham emerged from his room looking a little skeptical.
“Yeow!” Tara yelled. “Lookin’ good!”
And he was. He was wearing a pair of jeans, cuffed, with a black, short-sleeve button-down that he’d paired with low-cut Doc Martens. Few people wore jeans to the yacht club, but he was somehow able to make it look like a fancy outfit.
“You look great!” I said.
“I figured the rockabilly look would go along with your dress.”
“Let me take a picture of you two,” Tara said.
We stood next to each other and she took a couple pictures, and I looked at myself in the mirror once more before we left. The dress fit perfectly. I didn’t know if I’d ever be used to seeing myself wearing something like this, but even I knew that it looked good.
*****
We met my mother at the lounge and her eyes lit up when she saw us walk in.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was excited to see us,” Graham whispered as we walked over.
“Wow!” she exclaimed. She threw her arms around me as though we hadn’t seen each other in years, not days. “Look at the two of you!” She turned to Graham with the same enthusiasm but refrained from hugging him. She hesitated, as though she wasn’t quite sure what to do, and then finally held out her hand for him to shake. “I’m so glad the two of you could make it. You both look great. Where did you get that dress, Chloe? And those shoes!”
My mother kept up a steady stream of chatter as we moved from the lounge to the restaurant, which was overlooking the ocean. There was a gentle breeze rolling in and the air smelled like salt.
“Why don’t we sit here,” my mother said, gesturing to one of the empty, white linen-covered tables. “I’m going to go use the ladies’ room, but you two can start looking over the menu.”
“Sounds good,” Graham said. My mom gave us another big smile and then walked to the bathroom. We were about to sit down when something over my shoulder caught Graham’s eye.
“Hey, there’s Parker,” he said.
I groaned. “Are you serious?”
“Now, that wouldn’t be a very funny joke if it wasn’t him, would it?”
“Is he looking? Can we just pretend that we don’t see him—”
“He sees us. Here he comes.” Graham nudged me. “Just smile and tell him how good he looks in that pink polo shirt.”
I turned, taking a deep breath. I hadn’t seen Parker since the beach party, and I could only imagine how awkward this conversation was going to be. His shirt was very pink. But as he got closer, I saw how shitty he looked. Pale, tired, and nothing like I remembered him.
“Parker,” I said, unable to keep the surprised note out of my voice.
“Hey there, guys.” His tone was subdued, though I could tell he was trying to play it off like everything was normal, when it so clearly wasn’t.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He was okay enough to look highly annoyed that I was even asking him that question in the first place. “I’m fine,” he said coolly. “How are you two?”
“Yeah, man,” Graham said, a concerned expression on his face. “You’re not looking so good. You been training too hard? Why don’t you give yourself a little break—I’m done with racing for the season, anyway.”
“Just met my dad down here for some lunch,” he said. “Then I’ll probably head home and take a little nap or something. I haven’t been sleeping well, is all.”
“A nap would be good then.” I glanced in the direction of the ladies’ room, hoping that Parker would leave before my mother returned. It was awkward enough having to stand here and talk with him, but I could only imagine how much more awkward it would be if she were here, especially if she mentioned the whole thing with my father.
“I’m gonna go sit down,” Parker said.
“All right, see ya, man.” Graham and I both had concerned looks on our faces as he walked off, but then I turned away because my mother was approaching.
“Is that Parker?” she asked.
“Yeah. He said he was meeting his father here.”
“Oh, yes, I see his father here quite often. I haven’t seen him today, though; he must not be here yet. Did you two have a chance to look at the menu?”
“Not yet.”
We sat down and I picked up one of the menus.
“I am so happy that the two of you were able to make it today,” my mother said. “And Graham, I feel I need to apologize for the way things were when you were at our house. And also apologize for the way my husband has been dealing with this. He’s a good man; this is just hard for him, is all.”
“It’s all right,” Graham said. “I just hope the both of you know that I’m not trying to cause any conflict or anything.”
“We know. At least, I know that; I’m hoping John will come around, too. It’s just—”
My mother was cut off by a sudden commotion near the bar; someone let out a shout. I turned in my chair and looked and saw the realtor guy that I had talked to that night of my parents’ party, hunched on the ground. Parker had collapsed, I realized, and his father was leaning over him, shaking his shoulder.
“Oh, shit, something happened to Parker,” I said, grabbing Graham by the arm. “I knew he didn’t look good when we saw him earlier ...”
“Call an ambulance!” Parker’s father shouted. “I don’t have my phone on me; someone needs to call an ambulance for my son!” Several people around us fumbled for their phones. I had left my own phone in the glove box in the car.
“I hope Parker’s okay,” I said, glancing at Graham.
But Graham didn’t say anything. He just stood there, with the strangest expression on his face.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Graham
“Did someone call an ambulance? My son has just collapsed!”
That was Craig Oliver shouting that, as he leaned over Parker.
“An ambulance is on its way!” someone shouted. Parker had already come to, and was trying to sit up, clearly disoriented.
“Stay down,” Craig said.
Craig. Of Ocean View Realty. My father, who was kneeling next to Parker, calling him his son.
Which would mean Parker was my brother.
Well, half-brother.
Either way, it meant Parker and I were related.
Everyone in the restaurant had stopped eating and was watching. I just stood there while the flurry of activity happened around me. The ambulance arrived less tha
n five minutes after the call had been placed. Parker was able to get onto the stretcher himself, but he looked awful, and I thought it was probably a good idea they were taking him to the hospital. As the EMTs wheeled Parker out, everyone went back to their meals. Craig followed the stretcher, but as he walked by me, our eyes met. I wasn’t sure why he looked at me right then, but then he was walking past and he disappeared from sight.
“Are you all right?” Chloe asked.
I nodded because I didn’t trust myself to actually speak yet.
“Oh, dear,” her mother was saying. “Poor Parker! I hope he’s going to be all right.”
I swallowed several times, then coughed. I looked at Chloe. “I’m going to go over to the hospital,” I said. “I should make sure he’s all right.”
“Okay. I’ll come with you.”
“I think it might be better if I just went by myself. I just ... I’ll talk to you about it when I get back, okay?”
She gave me a worried look. “Sure, that’s fine, but are you sure everything is okay?”
“It is,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if it was. My brain still couldn’t quite seem to process anything.
*****
When I got to the hospital, I wasn’t sure if I’d even be allowed past the front desk, but no one blinked an eye and I just sort of fell in step with the people in front of me. Nurses wheeled patients past in wheelchairs, a family carried a big bouquet of flowers and a bunch of brightly-colored balloons emblazoned with CONGRATULATIONS. The place was huge, so I knew there was a good chance that I wouldn’t ever run into Craig, but I had to at least try.
I came to the end of the hallway that I was walking down and turned into another hallway. This one was wider, and there was a row of chairs lining one of the walls. Craig had just sat down in one of them. I walked over.
He turned and looked at me as I approached. If he was at all surprised to see me, he didn’t show it.
“Hi,” I said. “I was at the yacht club and—”
He patted the chair next to him. “Have a seat.”
I sat. “Is Parker okay?”
“The doctors are running some tests right now. I saw him for a little bit, and he’s awake. Confused about where he is and what’s going on, but I suppose that’s to be expected. His mother’s on her way back from Boston; with the traffic, though, I don’t expect her to get back here for at least two hours. I’m hoping I’ll have good news to tell her when she gets here.”
“I hope so, too.” There was a pause that stretched from a few seconds to a few minutes. I kept waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t, so I started to talk again. “You might be wondering why I’m here. I’ve been thinking about talking to you for some time now, and I just never have. I thought it might be better if I didn’t ....” My voice trailed off because I wasn’t really making much sense. “You’re my father,” I finally said, expecting him to look shocked or to deny it. But to my surprise, he only nodded.
“I am.”
“You knew about me?”
“I did.”
“I mean, beyond just my mother having a child? You knew it was me?”
He nodded again.
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. The whole ride over I’d been thinking of what I’d say, how I’d say it when he tried to deny that he was my father. I had a lot of good lines at the ready. But it had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t try to deny it, that he would act like he had known all along.
“I don’t know how much your mother told you,” he said. “It was a long time ago. That’s no excuse, I realize, but I was a lot younger then and not as responsible as I am now. At least I’d like to think so.” He coughed, a pained expression on his face. “We all do things in life that we wished we had handled differently. Some more than others. But I kept up with you over the years. From a distance, of course. I wanted to make sure that you were all right. I wasn’t actually in the country when you were born; I was over in Europe for a few years. Things never would have worked out between your mother and me. It would’ve been a disaster. We hardly even knew each other.”
I seemed to be feeling too many things all at once to process any one emotion. I felt like a blank slate. It was like being caught in the middle of a hurricane; you’re in the eye where everything is eerily calm, yet all around you was tumult.
“I don’t think you guys should be together or anything,” I said. “I never thought that.”
“I met my wife over in Europe. She moved back here with me. Parker was born a year later. It’s funny; I figured the two of you would always travel in different social circles, but then one day he was showing me pictures from a race, and there you were. The Rogue, I think he called you. He said you pissed a lot of the other guys off because you weren’t affiliated with any clubs and didn’t have any sponsorships, but you still managed to beat a lot of them. But he’s not a bad guy. That’s how Parker finished it. He said you guys sometimes gave each other a hard time, but it was all in good fun.”
“Yeah,” I said. It seemed strange now, to think back on all those times with Parker, and the feeling that I sometimes got that I knew him, beyond just the interactions we had at races. I’d always dismissed the feeling, though, because it had never made sense. It did now.
“So, you really knew I was your son? You knew it was me?”
“I did. And don’t think that it didn’t cross my mind to get in contact with you. It did, probably more than you might realize. But I didn’t, and that’s just something that I have to live with. I tried to help you out how I could, though.”
“You did?”
“I’m good friends with Richard Hanson, the president at the bank you got your loan at. You were, what—19, 20—when you applied for your business loan to open your shop?”
I nodded slowly. It seemed like such a long time ago, and at the time, it had seemed like such a long shot, that I would ever get a loan to open my own shop. I had no credit, no real business experience, and no collateral. But I was young and probably a little full of myself and knew that I just had to take the chance because tattooing was what I was good at and I didn’t want to have to work for someone else. When they told me I’d been approved for the loan, I hadn’t questioned it at all; I’d just assumed that it had happened because it was what I was supposed to be doing.
“That was you?” I asked.
“Yeah. I vouched for you.”
“But you didn’t even know me.”
Craig shrugged. “You’re right, I didn’t, but I felt like it was the least I could do.”
I paused, thinking back to that most recent loan statement I’d received. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you also paid off the remaining balance of the loan? Because I recently got a statement informing me that it’s at zero. I haven’t really been paying much attention to it, other than making sure the payment is on time every month, which gets deducted automatically, so I guess it’d be more accurate to say I haven’t given it much attention at all.”
“Yes, I paid it off. There wasn’t that much of a balance left on there.”
“There was enough.”
“You’re right, but again, it’s something I wanted to do. You’d never made a single late payment, and even without ever having stepped foot in your shop, I could tell that you were doing well. I was happy to be able to do it for you, Graham.”
“Well ... thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. The past few hours had been almost a blur, yet also stunningly clear at the same time. I was sitting here next to my father. The father I had grown up my whole life not knowing, yet he’d been there anyway, watching out for me in his own way.
Chapter Forty
Chloe
After Graham left for the hospital, my mother and I ordered some food, but neither of us was very hungry. The mood had turned rather somber, so I asked her if she would give me a ride back to his place.
“Were he and Parker close?” she asked.
“
They knew each other, but I didn’t think they were really that close.” I kept my gaze on the trees as they rushed past the passenger side window. I wanted to call Graham, or text him, but I knew that right now, he needed his space. For whatever it was that he had to do.
“I hope everything is going to be all right.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry all this is happening.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Well, that isn’t, but, you know what I mean. Here I am driving you to his house, because you’re no longer staying with us.”
“There are a lot of kids my age who live on their own,” I said.
“I know, but that wasn’t the plan for this summer. I certainly wasn’t expecting that to happen. And I know our lunch date got cut short, but I can tell that Graham is actually a very nice young man and that you two are quite fond of each other. Is he who I’d pick for you? Maybe not, but you’re right; that shouldn’t matter. I’m not the one who’s dating him.”
Her voice shook a little as she spoke and I could see her eyes were welling up with tears. I squeezed her hand. “Oh, Mom. You don’t have to cry. Maybe it needed to happen this way. I’m sure I’ll come back to the house again. Dad will change his mind.” But even as I spoke those words, I could hear the note of uncertainty in my voice. There was a good chance that my father wouldn’t change his mind, even if it was about something like this. He definitely lived by the idea that once you said you were going to do something, you didn’t go back on your word. Would he really forbid me from ever going back to the house again if I didn’t break up with Graham? I could hope that wouldn’t be the case, but if it was, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised.
My mother seemed a little better when she pulled up in front of Graham’s. The tears were gone and she gave me a smile. “Here we are.” She looked at the front of the cottage. “This place is actually very cute.”
“It’s not bad.”
“So, you’re okay? You’ll call me if you need anything?”
“I will.”
I leaned over and we hugged and she kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll try to talk more with your father,” she said. “This silliness just needs to stop. Let me know if you hear anything about Parker.”