Rowan found her voice. “I don’t have a lot of room in the refrigerator. We get free bottled water on deck. I keep soda and iced tea here.” Her voice sounded dull, as if she was trapped in another world and couldn’t cross over to this one.
“Okay.” Paul licked his lips before heading into the bedroom and filling one of the plastic cups by the sink with water from the tap. When he returned, he handed the water to Rowan and prodded her to drink.
Instead, she pushed the water to the side of the table and focused on her father — there was no doubt it was him despite the change in his appearance — and tried to tamp down her fury. “Where have you been?” she repeated, her throat clogging. “How could you just leave me? I thought you were dead. I ... mourned you.”
“Oh, Rowan.” Paul fought back his own tears as he reached for her. When she shrank away from him, he frowned. Her obvious disgust was like a sharp blow to the heart. “Baby, I’m so sorry.” He found his voice despite the pain coursing through him. “I didn’t want to leave you. I had no choice.”
“You always have a choice. That’s something you taught me.”
Rather than being angry, Paul merely sighed as he sank into the second chair. “I did always teach you that.” He dragged a restless hand through his hair. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come to you. I wanted to wait until it was safe. It became evident pretty quickly that you may never be safe.”
“Safe from what?”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
Rowan’s temper fired. “So ... basically you’re saying that you came back to make sure I didn’t fall down from surprise and then leave before telling me anything. That’s it, right?”
Paul sighed. “No, that’s not it. I just ... need a minute. You have no idea the things I’ve been thinking leading up to this trip. I just ... you grew up to be beautiful, Rowan.”
Tears pricked the back of her eyes as she struggled to hold on to her fury. She would not let him charm her into forgiving him, no matter how long she’d pined for the father she loved above all else.
Paul took a moment to look around the room, his gaze falling on a framed photograph. It was of Rowan and Quinn. They sat together on their favorite beach, one of Rowan’s sandcastles in the background, and the way Quinn looked at Rowan spoke of enough love to last a lifetime.
“Is that your boyfriend?”
Rowan followed his gaze and nodded. “Quinn.”
“Nick told me about him.” Paul rubbed his sweaty palms over his knees. “Nick says he’s a good guy, ex-military.”
“Why does that matter?” Rowan asked, annoyance creeping into her voice. “Why does it matter what he’s done for a living?”
“It doesn’t, necessarily.” He licked his lips. “Do you love him?”
Rowan wasn’t expecting the question. In fact, she assumed she would be the one asking the questions. She absolutely hated that she couldn’t gain control of the conversation. Still, she had no intention of lying.
“I do,” she confirmed, bobbing her head. “He’s ... a wonderful man.”
“Good. You deserve a wonderful man. How long have you been together?”
“Hasn’t Nick told you all this?”
“Yes, but ... it’s different coming from you.”
“We’ve been together a few months.” To Rowan, it felt ridiculous to concentrate on her relationship with Quinn when so many other things needed to be discussed. Still, she played along. “I met him when I came to the ship to start my new position. We were drawn to each other from the start.”
“That’s good. That means there’s a strong chemical connection. That’s how it was with your mother and me.”
Rowan scowled. “Are you really going to bring her up now?”
“She’s part of the story.”
“No, see, she died. She was forced to leave me. She didn’t do it willingly.”
Paul didn’t immediately respond, instead sitting in his chair and blinking several times in rapid succession. That only served to cause Rowan’s frustration to churn more aggressively.
“Are you trying to kill me? I mean ... seriously. Why did you leave me? Do you have any idea what it was like for me to wait for you to come home? I sat there for hours ... and called the police. They couldn’t help. Then I sat there for days ... and then weeks. They said you must have accidentally driven into the lake on your way home. It was the only thing that made sense.”
“I wanted them to believe that,” Paul admitted, his voice clear as he steeled himself for the interrogation to come. “I wanted to be declared dead. That way you would get the life insurance payout.”
“I didn’t, though.”
Paul nodded, morose. “I know. I didn’t hear about that part until Nick talked to you in person. Digging into your financials was dangerous, so I had to hold back. I had my suspicions, but I could never get close enough to find out the details. I’m sorry for all of it.”
“You’re sorry?” Rowan’s voice ratcheted up a notch. “You’re sorry? I sat in the dark waiting for you for hours. There was a storm that night. I was terrified. I kept telling myself that you would come home ... but you didn’t. Finally, I had no choice but to accept you were dead.
“I mean, I had no choice, right?” she continued, her tone accusatory. “My father loved me. He would never purposely leave me. I couldn’t allow myself to even think that because it would’ve destroyed me. It was easier for me to believe you were dead.”
“I wanted you to believe it, too.” Misery etched its way across Paul’s face. “You don’t understand what was happening at the time. People were getting close, asking questions. I had to protect you.”
“Protect me? You left me on my own. I was a kid. Sure. I was technically an adult a few weeks later, but I was still a kid ... and I was completely on my own.”
The look on her face broke Paul. “I know, Rowan, and I’m so sorry.” Tears spilled down his cheeks. “I had to do it. They would’ve taken you otherwise. I lied to them, you see, and told them you were normal. At first they believed me. As you got older, though, they wanted to test you themselves. I had to make sure that didn’t happen.”
Rowan was baffled. “Who wanted me?”
“It’s called The Phoenix Society.”
The answer did nothing to fill in the gaps for Rowan. “I don’t know what that is. I’ve never heard of it. Unless ... you mean The Phoenix Foundation, like on MacGyver?”
Paul snickered, considerably lightening the mood. “No, I don’t mean The Phoenix Foundation. You did love your MacGyver reruns, though. I almost forgot about that. We would sit for hours and watch the old DVDs.”
“I had to sell them in a garage sale ... along with The X-Files DVDs that were my absolute favorite. I needed money to get through college.”
“Nick said he helped you with that.”
“He did, but I didn’t know it at the time. I just knew that these scholarships kept coming out of the woodwork at the exact right time to keep me in school. I didn’t know they were from him ... or that they were coming at all.”
“That actually makes sense.” He scrubbed his cheek, lost in thought for a long beat. “I know it’s no consolation given everything that’s happened, but I’m proud of you. What you managed to accomplish on your own ... well, it’s nothing short of fantastic. I always knew you were strong. What you’ve done, however, has blown away every expectation I’ve ever had. You are ... unbelievable.”
“That’s great,” she said drily. “I love being unbelievable ... and awesome ... and fantastical. I would still like to know where you’ve been ... why you abandoned me ... and why you’re back now, though. That’s what I want to hear. You left me. Tell me why.”
“Because I had to save you,” Paul replied simply. “You’re my daughter, my flesh and blood. I love you more than anything. And, before you ask how I could love you and still leave, I didn’t believe I had a choice. I didn’t want you to struggle the way you did, but the alternative was some
thing worse.”
“And what alternative are you talking about?”
Paul let loose an exaggerated sigh. It was time to tell her the whole truth. “Did I ever tell you how your mother and I met?”
The conversational shift threw Rowan for a loop. “I ... you met at college. You saw her across a classroom and fell in love at first sight.”
Paul smiled. “That was mostly true. I did look across a room and see her. I did fall in love almost instantly. It wasn’t a classroom, though. I fudged on that part of the story.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We met because we both signed up for the same experiment,” Paul said, rubbing his forehead as he put his thoughts in order. “It was for people with psychic abilities.”
Now Rowan was doubly confused. “I don’t understand.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I was careful never to tell you any of it. I don’t know if it was a mistake, but we were worried when you were little that you might spill the beans and that would make matters worse.”
“Spill what beans?”
“Your mother and I both had abilities,” he explained, choosing his words carefully. “I could occasionally pick up surface thoughts from people if they were feeling particularly upset or amorous, and your mother was a master at counting cards.”
Rowan wrinkled her nose. “What?”
“I don’t know that the specifics of that are important right now. We don’t have a lot of time. We can get into it later. Suffice it to say, your mother and I both had minor psychic abilities. There was an experiment at the school and they were paying a lot of money for participants ... and that’s where we both met.”
“You were both psychics.” The words felt alien coming out of Rowan’s mouth. “Is that why I can see the omens in my camera?”
Paul held out his hands and shrugged, helpless. “I can’t say with any degree of certainty that’s true, but if you play the odds ... .”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rowan’s tone was accusatory. “You knew how upset I was when I was a kid, how I needed answers for what was happening. You didn’t tell me. You ordered me not to say something to Mom. She would’ve been able to help me.”
“She wouldn’t have been able to do anything but feel guilty.” Paul was solemn. “Don’t you ever doubt that I loved your mother. I mean ... absolutely loved her with every fiber of my being. Her death killed me. I did my best to take care of you, though. I tried to be the best father I could be.”
“You left me!”
“Because they would’ve come for you, too,” Paul barked. “They were making noises. When you were a kid, they asked about you. They wanted to know if you could do anything. I lied. I thought they believed me but then that incident happened at the school where you essentially predicted your chemistry teacher’s death and somehow they found out about it. They took notice.”
Rowan thought back to the time in question and her stomach twisted. “You’re talking about the time I went to the police and told them Mr. Soderquist was going to die. Then he really did die and they were suspicious I had something to do with it.”
“Yes.” Paul bobbed his head, refusing to lie. “The Phoenix Society tested your mother and me when we were in school. They were mildly interested in our abilities, but we didn’t have the power to hold their attention for long. They placated us, paid us, and then sent us on our way.
“We didn’t care because the tests weren’t too invasive and we met through them so, to us, that seemed like the best gift we could ever receive,” he continued. “We finished college, got married, and had you. Our lives were perfect.”
“Nobody’s life is perfect,” Rowan muttered.
“It felt like it was perfect to us for a long time ... and then we had a visitor.” Paul’s smile slipped. “You were five years old. You were playing in the living room. You were spelling words with the Scrabble board that you had no right being able to spell.”
Rowan worked her jaw. “I was an only child. They say only children have more expansive vocabularies.”
Paul snorted. “Yeah. You were spelling the word ‘precocious’ at five, which was ironic, don’t you think? When the man showed up at the door, I knew who he was right away. I recognized him from the days of the experiments.
“He invited himself into our home, asked how we were doing, and then focused completely on you,” he continued. “He couldn’t stop staring. He was waiting for you to do something fantastical.
“Now, I don’t know how he knew about you, that you were going to grow into something rare and special the way you have, but he knew,” he said. “We lied, of course. We said we were playing Scrabble. You were distracted by that stuffed dog you loved so much. Rags was his name. You carried him around with you wherever you went.”
“I lost him somehow,” Rowan admitted. “I don’t know what happened to him. When I started packing after you left, he was suddenly gone.”
“I have him.”
“What?”
“I needed a piece of you to hold on to. I felt like a jerk for taking him but ... I couldn’t risk photographs of you in case someone saw them. I couldn’t take any of your school things, and I only have one photograph of your mother. I didn’t know what else to take, so I took the dog.”
Rowan merely shook her head. “I don’t understand any of this. Why would they want me? And even if they did, why would you care? You said the experiments didn’t hurt.”
“I said they didn’t hurt us,” he clarified. “They didn’t. We weren’t strong, though. We were very weak receivers. We heard about other people being taken for a different round of tests, and there was a rumor none of them ever came back.”
“It sounds like an urban legend to me.”
“Maybe, but we weren’t going to risk you. Not for anything. You’re my daughter and I love you. I’m not handing you over. That’s what I told the people who repeatedly came around. They wanted to test you. I knew they would eventually stop taking no for an answer.”
“And that’s why you left?”
He nodded. “I put together a declaration about The Phoenix Society and informed them the information would go public in the event of my death or your disappearance. I was firm in my language, and they weren’t happy when they received it. At least I gather that was true. Obviously I wasn’t there.
“After sending it, I faked my death and left you to your own devices because I figured they would never be stupid enough to go after you,” he continued. “You were a focus for the newspaper and television reporters after I disappeared. You were in the public eye. The police were watching you. They couldn’t touch you without making things worse for themselves, even if they didn’t believe the threat I dropped about information going public in the event of my death.
“Essentially, I made it so they had no choice but to abandon their pursuit of you,” he continued. “If they continued trying to claim you, the police would’ve eventually questioned them because you would’ve been suspicious that they had something to do with my disappearance. If they tried to take you, it would’ve made national news because of what happened to me. There was absolutely nothing they could do.”
“And that’s it?” Rowan deflated a bit. She expected something more intriguing from the revelation.
“There’s a great deal more of it to discuss,” Paul countered. “That’s the bare bones, though, yes.”
“Why are you here now? If you were so convinced you had to stay away, why risk seeing me now?”
“Because I couldn’t stop myself. I love you. I had to see you. Also, I was lonely. It’s a lonely existence pretending to be someone you’re not.”
“Is that why you contacted Uncle Nick?”
He nodded. “He knew the basics of what I was afraid of. When we finally saw each other, and I explained what happened, he thought I did the right thing. I mentioned that I was afraid for you and it killed me not to know what was going on with your life. That’s when he told me about the money he arran
ged for your education.”
“How often do you see him?”
“Not enough. I can’t spend time in public in case the wrong person sees me.”
“So why are you here?”
“Because some things are more important than death,” Paul answered simply. “I needed to see my daughter. Nick mentioned that you were involved with someone, that it was serious. He thought you would be married soon and I wanted to meet Quinn for myself.”
“Why? It’s not as if you’re going to have a say in the matter. You lost that right when you left me.”
“I know. I don’t want a say in the matter. I just ... I still love you, Rowan. That never changed.”
“I don’t know that I can get over this.” Rowan opted for honesty. “I don’t know that you had a good enough reason for leaving me.”
Paul bobbed his head, seemingly in agreement. “At the time, I thought I had no choice. Over the past decade, a lot of other ideas have filled my head. I don’t know what the correct answer was at the time, but as of right now, I simply want to spend all the time with you I can.”
“What if I’m being watched?”
“We don’t think you are. I mean ... perhaps from afar. No one can follow you all the time because of the nature of your job. That’s why I took a chance now.”
“But ... with authors? How did you even get on the ship?”
“It wasn’t difficult. I’m an author.”
“You are?”
He nodded and puffed out his chest. “P.J. Landis at your service.”
If Rowan thought she was surprised before, she was absolutely floored now. P.J. Landis was a big name in the literary world. “Get out of town!”
“It’s a fun story. Do you want to hear it?”
“I guess ... but I’m still mad at you.”
“You’ve earned it. Maybe I’ll be able to chip away at that anger over the course of the week.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
8
Eight
Farewell Seas Page 7