The house looked the same but smaller, closer to the sidewalk, dwarfed by the giant oak trees that now were way too big.
It was made of red brick and was almost cottage-size, with a single dormer above the roofline of the small front porch. The dormer held the window that had been in Dana’s bedroom.
How many times she’d sat there watching for her father to walk up the street on his way home from work, his navy uniform still neat and clean, his gold badge shining in the late afternoon.
How many times she’d come home from school and found her laundry neatly stacked on her bed, smelling like bleach and strong detergent, sprinkled and ironed and folded by her mother.
How many times she’d sat at her desk, working on her homework, the aromas of her mother’s cooking wafting up the stairs, though all Dana really wanted was for dinner to be over so she could go to the library with Becky or to Burger-town with Jane and Sue.
She sat in the passenger seat of the Chevrolet Impala rental car and studied the porch post where black metal numbers read 6–8–2–0. She remembered going with her father to the hardware store to buy them, then helping him screw them into the post. He’d always planned a Saturday project when she was young, something they would do together. It was years before Dana realized it had less to do with accomplishing a project and more to do with spending time with her, making memories, like the 6–8–2–0.
“Do you want to go in?” Steven asked. He sat behind the wheel, her patient, understanding husband, having skirted a business trip to Chicago to go with her to Indiana. “I’m sure if you rang the bell…”
But Dana shook her head. “I just wanted to see the house. I don’t want to bother anyone.” Turning back to the MapQuest printout on her lap, she said, “Okay, let’s go. According to Sam, he lives on the other side of downtown. I think I can remember how to get there from here.”
Like the house, the streets seemed smaller, the intersections narrower, the trip across town shorter. Before Dana was prepared, a sign in front of a two-story townhouse complex read Meadowe Crest. She pushed aside the MapQuest printout and got out of the car before she could change her mind.
He was old. His hair was white, his shoulders drooped, he stood a little shorter, his blue eyes seemed lighter. He was old, but it was he.
“Daddy,” she said, because that was what she’d still called him when she—when he—had been sent away.
His eyes came to life. His mouth turned up into a grin. He opened the screen door and took her into his arms.
“Your mother was sick,” he said to Dana while they sat, with Steven, in the small living room that had tweed-upholstered furniture and an old-fashioned ham radio set up in one corner. She’d forgotten he’d loved that, that he’d sit for hours and listen to the crackle waiting for voices to come from Russia or Europe or even Australia right into Indiana.
She hadn’t forgotten the picture of her mother with a baby—her!—that now stood on an end table. He’d taken it at the Ohio State Fair in front of the exhibit of the world’s biggest tomato.
She wondered what Bridget and Lauren and Caroline would think about that.
“You knew Mom was sick before…before you were arrested?” As they sat on the sofa, Steven lightly touched her leg, his hand a surge protector in case her emotions sparked. She was grateful that unlike Randall Haynes or Bob Halliday or Jack Meacham, Steven had always known about his wife’s not-so-perfect past.
“Laetrile treatments were thought to be a miracle cure,” George Kimball, once the head of the police union, said. “The treatments were illegal here, but not in Mexico. The trouble was, we had no money. The medical bills were already huge…”
She listened to the rest. How he’d embezzled all the money but then he’d been caught.
“When I went to jail, only five thousand dollars was left. It kept your mother going for a while.” He laughed a sad laugh. “It wasn’t as if I used the money to buy her diamonds, though I often wished I had. I mean, I lost my job, I lost you, and she died anyway.”
Dana’s throat was dry, tears leaked slowly from her eyes. “But you came back here. Why did you come back? Wasn’t it…hard? To face everyone?”
He smiled a half smile. “I was away ten years. I came back in case you ever tried to find me. Even though I lost the house, I figured if you came to town, you’d ask around and someone would know where old George Kimball was.”
They sat quietly together, after more than thirty years. Then Dana asked her father if he’d like to move to New York. “You have three terrific grandsons,” she said, “who would love to know you. And we live in a nice town, if you ignore some of the stuff.”