Chapter 7: What Remains
I called my daughter that evening.
Her name is Carol.
She's 51, lives in Portland, and has her father's practical mind and my stubbornness in equal measure.
She answered on the second ring.
"Mom.
I've been waiting to hear from you.
How is he?"
"He's home," I said.
"From the hospital.
He's — he's not well, Carol.
Long term."
A pause.
"How long term?"
"Three to six months.
Maybe more."
Another pause, longer this time.
"Mom."
"I know."
"Are you coming home?"
I looked out the window of the bed and breakfast.
The street was quiet.
A man was walking a dog.
Two houses down, someone had a light on in an upstairs room.
"No," I said.
"Not yet."
Silence.
"Carol," I said.
"I know how this sounds."
"It sounds like you're staying with a man you haven't seen in fifty years who is — "
"Yes," I said.
"That's what I'm doing."
"Mom."
"I drove a thousand miles," I said.
"I walked into his house alone.
I found a photograph with my face circled in red ink.
I sat in a hospital room and listened to him tell me he has three to six months." I paused.
"I'm not leaving."
I heard her exhale.
"Is he — was he worth it?
The fifty years of wondering?"
I thought about the letter.
About the garden.
About his hand in mine.
"He made a choice fifty years ago that cost both of us something," I said.
"And he made it for the right reasons.
And he carried it every day since." I paused.
"Yes.
He was worth wondering about."
Carol was quiet for a moment.
Then: "What's his daughter like?"
"Difficult," I said.
"Determined.
Loves him fiercely." I paused.
"Reminds me of someone."
A small sound on the line that might have been a laugh.
"I want to come out," Carol said.
"Not to bring you home.
Just — I want to meet him."
Something moved in my chest.
"I'd like that."
"Next week?"
"Yes," I said.
"Next week."
I hung up and sat for a while in the quiet room.
Then I went back to Diane's house.
Thomas was in the sitting room with a book open in his lap that he wasn't reading.
He looked up when I came in.
"How's Carol?" he asked.
I stopped.
"I didn't tell you her name."
"You mentioned her at the bar," he said.
"The night we walked through the city.
You said your daughter Carol had your mother's laugh."
I had forgotten saying that.
"She's coming next week," I said.
"To meet you."
He looked at me carefully.
"Is that — does she know — "
"She knows everything," I said.
"She wants to come anyway."
He looked back at his book.
His jaw moved slightly.
"All right," he said.
"Good."
Diane appeared in the doorway with two cups of tea.
She looked between us.
"Good news?" she said.
"My daughter is coming next week," I said.
Diane handed me a cup.
"I'll make up the second spare room."
"You don't have to — "
"I have three spare rooms," she said.
"This house is too big for one person.
I've always thought so." She said it plainly, without sentiment, but she held my gaze for a moment longer than necessary.
It was an invitation.
Not just for Carol.
I looked around the sitting room — at the books on the shelves, the dahlias in a vase on the windowsill, the monitor on the side table that Thomas pretended not to notice.
"I'll move my things from the bed and breakfast tomorrow," I said.
Thomas looked up from his book.
"You don't have to do that," he said.
"I know," I said.
"I want to."
Diane sat down in the armchair across from him and picked up her own book, and the three of us sat in the quiet sitting room as the evening came in through the windows.
It felt, strangely, like something that had been waiting a long time to happen.
May you like
Not a beginning, exactly.
Something more like a return.
