“Really? Do tell,” Dix said.
Colden relayed the story that Jack had told her.
“That’s all very interesting,” Dix said. “I feel bad for the guy. Quite a lot of trouble for one person to manage.”
“Yeah. Makes me relieved at least that the truth came out before I added to his woes.”
“What do you mean? What does any of his professional and personal struggles have to do with all the e-mails he sent to you?”
Colden dropped her face into her hands.
“This is so embarrassing.”
“Honey, what is it?” Dix asked. “It can’t be that bad.”
“He didn’t send the e-mails. I had it all wrong,” Colden wailed.
“What?” Dix asked, leaning forward, trying to comprehend.
“He didn’t send the e-mails or books,” she repeated loudly, forcefully. “It wasn’t him. I totally screwed up.”
Dix raised his eyebrows and sat back, taking in this fresh and strange information. Colden knew he was going to wait her out. He’d let her talk when she was ready. His patience was maddening and also just what she needed. She sat in the thickening silence for a few moments, then plunged forward again, diving straight into the deep end. The first thing she had to tell him was about Liam. She’d never discussed this part of the story with him, only Sally. She kept the details to a minimum, but she had to tell him they’d been intimate. Not information she wanted to share with her father.
As she talked, stumbling over her words, she got the feeling that this was not news to him. Of course—Sally would have told him. It’s not like Colden asked her to keep it a secret. Still, she was both relieved and irritated that they’d discussed her private life. Couples. The things that passed between them. She didn’t understand the bond, all the things that were shared offstage, in private, at night, as they lay in a darkened bedroom. They were her parents and a long-married couple. Telling one something was as good as telling the other.
The specter of being an outsider rose up again, this time shadowed with a sense of betrayal. They’d been a trio. She always believed this. Now, she realized she was really just an appendage to a duo. They were the grown-ups. She was a child. Still and forever. Colden wondered if Dix and Sally had laughed, or rolled their eyes, or tsk-tsked about the romantic mishaps of their naïve daughter.
Dix was trying to not let on that he already knew. Colden knew he wasn’t going to betray his wife, and he also didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable by telling her that what she was sharing was not news. He was going to let her work through this the messy way. She could barely see her father’s face in the twilight. She was glad this meant he couldn’t see hers, either. She kept talking. She said that Larry seemed so bitter, so suddenly, toward her after her night with Liam that there seemed to be a connection between his attitude toward her and her hooking up with the helicopter pilot.
“OK, and now you’re thinking this isn’t the case?” Dix asked.
“I know it’s not.”
“How?”
“Liam and I had a few e-mails afterward,” Colden continued. “He told me that Larry was a jerk and to watch out for him. This made me even more suspicious, of course. One day at my desk, as I was looking through some pictures of the trip, a colleague made a reference to ‘Sasquatch,’ saying that’s what Larry called Liam. That seemed like evidence. I jumped to a conclusion. Not good science.”
“And then?”
“I didn’t want to bug Liam. I didn’t want to seem like I was, I don’t know, after him or something. It all was feeling so weird. So, middle school. I should have asked him about the nickname, but instead, I wrote and asked him what he knew about Larry. What was he talking about when he said to “watch out” for him? He told me basically the same story Jack had, but he had a lot less sympathy for Larry. Made it seem he’d been such an arrogant ass that he almost deserved what he got. Sort of.”
Dix chewed a piece of chocolate. Colden took a deep breath and plowed forward.
“Then, at the end of this note, where he’s telling me what a loser Larry is and making me think that maybe Jack had it wrong, maybe Larry is at fault, Liam asks me, like a total afterthought, if I got his e-mails. If I got the books he sent. Didn’t I think it was so funny, he asked, all the connections? Said he’d sent them from another e-mail address to keep me guessing. I had no idea what he was referring to. Like what connections. Then it hit me—the e-mails had come from him; the books had come from him. He was Sasquatch. He was teasing me about himself and about us. He told me that he’d come back into town a few weeks later, after our moose-collaring job was done, for some reason or another, and was sitting at a bar, talking to some woman, just making friendly conversation, and she tells him that she and her husband were in town doing research on ‘Sasquatch erotica.’ She wrote books in this genre. Apparently, it’s a thing. I had no idea. Neither did he. He thought it was a riot. You know, with him being nicknamed Sasquatch and all. He thought I knew that was his nickname—didn’t everyone? Sure. Everyone but me! He thought I was in on the joke and that everything would be obvious. Then, when I didn’t respond, he decided to up the ante by sending me a few of the woman’s erotica books. Didn’t I get the card in the box, explaining it all? Of course not, because I was too busy being delicate and paranoid and blaming the wrong person and didn’t look for a card. Which I eventually did find because, in my whole Perry Mason mode, I had actually saved the packaging to use as some kind of gotcha evidence against a totally innocent if completely annoying colleague. It was all just a joke. Ha, ha. Didn’t I think it was hilarious? Sasquatch erotica. His nickname. Our night of passion. The author’s husband was apparently short and bald. Which made it all that much more comical.”
Dix chuckled.
“It’s not funny, Dad.”
“Well, it kinda is, honey. I mean, I’m sorry it got so convoluted and that you got caught up in it in the way you did. But you gotta admit. It is funny. Now. I mean, if it happened to someone else, you’d think it was very entertaining.”
“It could have been very ugly.”
“Well, let’s just be thankful it didn’t turn out that way.”
Colden squirmed and sighed.
“It’s just a misunderstanding, Colden,” Dix insisted. “You made some mistakes and some assumptions. Lesson learned, I’m sure.”
“Yeah, but it’s a misunderstanding that was blown up, out of proportion, in the wrong way, because of me. I got you guys involved, and I almost accused someone of sexual harassment just because I got weird. I feel so stupid. Like a complete idiot. Worse than an idiot.”
“You’ll have to tell Drew. Get him off the case, as it were.”
“That’s the most embarrassing.”
“Oh, I bet he’ll get a chuckle out of it. No harm done.”
“Yeah, all you dudes think it’s so entertaining. Totally awesome. Like a frat-club prank.”
“Colden, what are you really mad about?” Dix asked, his voice softening. “You could simply be relieved that no one was actually harassing you and that you got the real story before it was too late. Why not look at it that way? There’s something more going on here. Maybe it’s not funny to you, but why are you so miffed about everything?”
Colden picked at a thorn that had gotten lodged in her pants.
“I just feel like I’m getting things wrong these days,” she said, pouting. “A lot of things.”
Dix waited for her to continue. She paused and then rushed on.
“I’m annoyed with the moose and beaver project. It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I’m just collecting data anyone could get. There’s no news there. No discovery. Beavers are coming back, they’re creating habitat that moose like, so moose seem to be starting to do a bit better, too. Whatever. This is not a project that’s going to do anything for my career. I’m not getting anywhere on the coywolf thing. That’s some fantasy project that’s starting to seem like a complete waste of time. I almost accused s
omeone of sexual harassment who was not only totally innocent but was basically a victim of it himself. I screwed up with Daisy big time. I suck as a trainer and handler, I have no patience, and she got badly injured because of me. I feel like, well, Dad, I feel like what Larry accused me of being. A dilettante. Some spoiled brat trying to turn what’s a luxury for most people into a real career and failing at it. I wanted to do something more, something that’s meaningful. That actually changes things.”
Dix sighed.
“You sound a lot like someone I used to know,” he eventually said, his voice quiet with memory.
Miranda. Colden was stung with the comparison. But of course. This uncomfortable striving she felt was not in Dix or in Sally. It was in her mother. That’s where it came from. Miranda, the searcher for meaning who hurt people in her self-indulgent quest. Who hurt herself most of all.
“Yep. My mother. The ultimate poor little rich girl,” Colden said.
“It’s not that simple,” Dix warned.
“Isn’t it?”
“No. It isn’t.”
“Please tell me why not.”
Colden and Dix had rarely talked about Miranda. He’d never hidden anything from her, nor had he offered much to her. Other than that one visit to the log house, he answered questions as they arose in the context of their life together. Not many had. Colden hadn’t wanted to ask, hadn’t wanted to open his old wounds. As she sat by the still pond, getting stiff in the cooling air, waiting for her father to answer her question, she realized that this conversation had been hanging between them, unspoken, for years. Some children wait for the awkward parental chat about the birds and the bees; Colden had been waiting for this.
“Your mother was a beautiful, earnest, sweet woman, Colden,” Dix said. “She started out rich, yes, financially so, and you know what happened there. More important, more damaging, anyway, was that the family was poor in spirit. In soul. She was unlike the rest of them, there. She had an abundance of spirit and soul and no idea what to do with those qualities. She tried tutoring disadvantaged children, working at an organic farm, even learning to knit so she could make mittens to give away. She was attracted to the Source because she honestly, earnestly, thought they were going to help teenage runaways. She went out into the world, looking for something she had never experienced. She had no map to find what she was searching for, and she got lost. I’m sorry you didn’t know her.”
Colden hadn’t known her mother had tried these things, that she’d had such a large charitable impulse within her. But she still felt a deep disregard and dismissiveness toward this woman she’d never met. The feeling was strange, overpowering, and while she knew it to be unfair, it was totally irresistible.
“I don’t think I would have liked her,” she said, full of spite.
“That’s an unkind remark,” Dix stated. “I loved her. Sally loved her. You would have loved her, too.”
“She hurt you. She hurt Sally. She likely would have hurt me, too.”
Dix regarded her closely.
“She hurt people only because she was so hurt herself, Colden. She lost everything in a short time period. She suffered huge losses. She tried to rebuild herself. She tried to do something that had meaning for her and that would help others. She truly, and naively, believed that there was a larger goal and purpose at the Source. She was led astray by a charismatic person who preyed on her vulnerability and generosity.”
“Yeah, and in the process, she threw away the one good thing she had, which was you.”
Colden didn’t know why she was being so hard on Miranda. She didn’t know why she wanted her father to fight with her, even though she knew he wouldn’t.
“We were not a good match,” Dix said simply. “We loved each other, cared for each other, but were not right as partners. She saw that, and I didn’t. You know how I am. I think I can—more fatally, should—fix things. It’s a form of arrogance I didn’t always recognize. She didn’t want to be fixed. At least not by me.”
Even in the dim light, Colden could feel Dix’s unflinching gaze on her; she turned her head away in discomfort.
“I’m sorry, Colden,” Dix said. “I’m sorry you never got the chance to know her. If I’d done more . . . no, not more, but different, she might still be here today. Don’t be mad at her. Be mad at me.”
Colden was mad at him. For the first time in her life. The feeling was disorienting and vaguely nauseating, like being tumbled beneath a wave at the beach.
“What hurt you the most, Dad? What was the worst thing she did to you?” Colden insisted on knowing.
“She cut off all her hair,” he said quietly.
“What?” Colden was incredulous.
“The women who stayed out there at the Source were required to cut off all their hair. It was a way of repudiating the outside world and their own so-called vanity. Your mother hung out there for quite a while, still living with me, without taking that step. Then she did. Hacked it away. When I saw her with her hair all chopped off, her gorgeous mane gone, I knew I’d lost her for good.”
“Wow,” Colden said. “And I thought the worst thing she did was hide her pregnancy. Not take care of herself. Indulge in strange rituals in the middle of winter that cost her her life. Might have cost mine, as well. Kinda dumb luck I’m here at all. But it was really all about the hair.”
“Stop it, Colden.”
Dix almost never rebuked her. She knew she deserved it.
“She failed you by not being here as a mother for you,” Dix said. “But she’s the one who suffered the most.”
“Sally is my mother,” Colden said, unwilling to relent.
“Sally has been an amazing mother to you, that’s true,” Dix said. “But Miranda would have been one, as well. Different, but wonderful. She very much wanted children. She very much wanted you.”
“Apparently not enough to take care of herself and stick around to be a mother.”
Dix sighed. He seemed unsurprised by Colden’s attitude, just saddened by it.
“I loved your mother very much. And I failed her,” he again insisted. “I should have protected her from herself. I should have stepped in sooner, faster, more. I was confused by her behavior, jealous, hurt. I didn’t see what was really going on.”
“You’re the one who says you can’t save people from themselves. You can’t fix someone who doesn’t want to be fixed.”
“Maybe that’s just an excuse for failing to help them enough,” Dix said, his voice a whisper. “I couldn’t fix her. But I could have done more to help her help herself.”
Colden felt the pain and regret that suffused Dix’s words. She’d never seen him defeated in this way. It made her wonder at the power of love to build up and also to destroy another. It made her realize she’d never actually felt it before. Not love like this. Not love that made someone full of desire and recrimination in equal measure.
“If Miranda had stuck around, you wouldn’t have Sally,” Colden said. “Clearly, you love Sally more.”
“I don’t love Sally more. I love her differently. If Miranda had lived, she and I would not be together, of that I’m sure. But she would be here. For you. And you’d see all the parts of her that you carry within you.”
“I see them,” Colden said. “And I don’t like them.”
“They are good things, Colden. I can’t convince you of that, but I hope you’ll see it one day. Your mother had great gifts that she didn’t know how to use. You have all of those gifts—a sense of wonder in the world, a drive to make things better, to make a difference—and you’ll use them better than she was able to. You already are.”
These words broke something open inside of Colden. A feeling that she had clenched inside squeezed out of her grip, only to ooze and slosh in her gut. Tears filled her eyes and spilled over her lids. She was thankful for the darkness. Mosquitos were arriving in drifts. A loon wailed in the distance. Dix slapped at his arm. Colden wiped at her cheek.
“Time to get und
er cover,” he said. “We have our work cut out for us tomorrow.”
They stood, brushed off their pants, and walked back to their tents, each silent and self-absorbed. Dix stooped to crawl under his flap, and Colden called out to him.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. I know that conversation wasn’t easy for you.”
“Few things worth doing are, Colden,” he said.
Then he disappeared into the darkness of his cocoon for the night.
24.
Colden had been wandering in purposeful circles for four hours. She saw nothing but messy, tangled, lovely nature. She was tired. She hadn’t slept well or much the night before. The conversation with her father had stirred her up, and she could not settle down. Thoughts of her mother kept divebombing her every time she fell asleep, jolting her back awake. Regret, which was getting to be an all-too-familiar feeling lately, filled her head. She wished she could roll back the hours and have been nicer, kinder to her father. That morning, when they’d emerged from their tents, it seemed Dix was more withdrawn than usual, as if he was wary of her. Maybe he was just tired, too. He could simply be weighed down by the painful memories of an unresolved past. It was as if she’d recently peeled back the skin on several people she thought she knew, only to discover their insides were jammed with all kinds of complex, Rube Goldberg–type machinery she had never imagined before.
She sat on a log and took an apple from her pack. She bit into the crisp fruit and took solace from the sweet, moist flesh on her tongue. She thought she heard something strange and harsh. She stopped chewing. Nothing. She took another bite. Then another squawk. She stopped chewing for longer this time. The sound came again. It took a moment for her sleep-deprived mind to realize it was her walkie-talkie. She fumbled it from her pack, turned it on, and heard her father whisper coordinates. They signed off. He was almost a half a mile away. She trudged as quickly and yet quietly as she could toward him and finally found him lying on his stomach in the dirt, tucked behind a small bush, a pair of small binoculars to his face. She lowered herself to the ground at his side.
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