THREE

"Let’s all go into the house,” Shay says.

I notice that Shay and Diego have come up on either side of me. I can feel Shay’s agitation, and I know she isn’t happy to see Nate.

That’s my father. A man called Nate.

“Do you want to go for a walk, Gracie?” Nate asks.

“No, Nate,” Shay says sharply. “Give her some room.”

“I’m giving her the whole outdoors, Shay,” my dad says pleasantly.

I’m so confused. I feel dizzy, as if I can feel the earth’s rotation.

“This is turning out to be quite a day,” Diego says.

I look at Shay. “Can we just go inside?”

“Of course, sweetie.” Shay puts her arm around me and keeps it there as we walk toward the house.

We sit in the living room. The house is small, but it has so many windows that it never feels dark or claustrophobic. To one side of the fireplace is a sofa with deep cushions, and facing it are two big, comfortable armchairs. In the middle is a table that we sometimes eat around on cold nights.

Nate picks the sofa and looks encouragingly at me, and I know he wants me to sit next to him. I sit in one of the armchairs. Shay sits in the other chair, and Diego leans against the wall.

“I apologize for not calling,” Nate says to me. “I was going to. And then I was just going to drive by first, just to see…and Shay was outside, and she saw me.”

“Why did you come?” I ask.

“I heard about your mother.”

I shake my head. “It’s been two years.”

“I know. There was no way for me to know, Gracie. I would have come right away if I’d known.”

“Let me get this straight,” I say. “You don’t come for my birthdays, you don’t come when I’m sick, you don’t come for thirteen years, but you would have shown up for a funeral?”

Nate shakes his head. “Okay, I deserved that.”

“You’re darn right you did,” Shay murmurs.

“Oh, please,” I say. “Listen, you didn’t have to show up. You could have called. Or sent me an e-mail.”

“There’s so much to tell you,” Nate says.

“Yeah, me, too,” I say. “I was three years old when you left. A few things have happened.”

I’m trying not to have it all come back to me, but it’s flooding in, and I’m holding myself together because I just might fall apart. I am thinking of the years. The years before I was able to just wipe the notion of “father” out of my life. Watching other kids with their dads. Imagining him knocking on the door. Closing my eyes and picturing it. And mostly, seeing a three-year-old girl with her dad, seeing how the father holds her hand, or picks her up, or leans down to talk to her…and thinking, How could he do it? How could he leave me?

Mom had always said that Dad was a “complicated man.” When I was little, she’d just say he loved me very much…and leave it at that. But later, she would tell me sometimes that she’d loved him despite the “better angels of my nature.” When she quoted Abraham Lincoln, you knew it was serious stuff.

Nate stands up. “I know this must be a shock to you. Maybe it’s better that the first visit be short, so you can process this.”

Shay stands up quickly. “That’s a good idea. What do you think, Gracie?”

I’m picking up so much turmoil from Shay. She hates having Nate in this house. I can feel it. Is she afraid of him? Afraid he’ll snatch me away? Afraid I’ll go with him?

“That might be best,” I say.

“Will you walk me to the car?” Nate asks me.

I look at him, really look at him, for the first time. He’s always been not quite a person to me. Now I see…myself. I always thought I looked like my mom. She always told me I did, too. But now I know she was lying. Lying to protect me. Because I wouldn’t have wanted to know how much I looked like him.

And that pulls me out the door with him, somehow.

The front door thuds behind us. It sends a shudder through me, as though it’s cut me off from Shay and Diego forever. Since we’ve been sitting inside, dusk has fallen, and the light is deep blue and smudgy with shadows.

“My own dad was manic-depressive,” Nate says. “Your grandfather. He died when I was in college. He killed himself. They didn’t diagnose him correctly, I guess. He lived in terror for a lot of the time, and he tried not to take it out on us, but he did.”

Well. Nate sure didn’t believe in small talk.

“I never felt I was loved, growing up,” Nate continues. “I mean, I don’t want to boo-hoo all over you. That could get messy.” He flashes an uneasy smile. “I’m just trying to explain a little bit of why it took me so long to get myself together. Only one person in my life really loved me as a child, and that was my aunt Jane. I was afraid I would grow up to be my father. After you were born, it all crashed down on me, all that fear. I was terrified I’d turn you into something you wouldn’t want to be, Gracie.”

I realize that I’m holding my breath so I won’t miss a word.

“I was afraid I’d turn you into me,” he says.

I don’t look at him. I look at my shoes. I look at every individual blade of grass, because if this is an apology, it just isn’t doing it for me.

“Some mornings I couldn’t get out of bed,” he says. “I thought—It’s happening to me. I’m going to ruin Carrie’s life, and Gracie’s life. They’ll be better off without me. I’ll tell you. If you get to the place where you think the people you love most in the world are better off without you…well, it’s a very bad place.”

He starts walking again, and I walk beside him, listening now.

“I went to New Mexico because I didn’t know anyone there and nobody knew me,” he says. “I found a therapist. After some treatment—well, eventually, I got better. I found out I’m not manic-depressive. Just screwed up. And I worked on my problems, and when I got clear, I realized…” He swallows, and his voice cracks. “I’d blown it. It was too late. I couldn’t just walk back into my own front door. It wasn’t my home any longer. I lost any right to think that. And I was a coward, and so I kept…putting it off. I’ll call on her birthday, I’d say. Or Christmas. Or summertime. And months went by, and years…and I remembered what a therapist had told me—If you can’t be there every day for her, don’t do it. She’ll be better off.”

He stops, his hand on the car door. “I think you were better off without me. That’s the honest truth.”

“So what’s different now?” I ask.

“I met someone. I got married. And she wants to have kids. And my track record…well, I just thought, I already have a kid. I don’t want to be one of those dads who has a second family and forgets he ever had a first. And my wife…she’s a good person. She’s the one who pointed out to me that I couldn’t be a father to a new child if I didn’t try again with the child I had.”

“So she told you to come here. You wouldn’t have come otherwise.” For some reason, that makes me furious.

He lets out a breath. “I’m not going to lie to you, Gracie. That’s true. But what you have to know is, Rachel makes me do a lot of things I didn’t think I was capable of doing. She makes me a better person. I want to live up to what she thinks I am.” He pauses and then he says, “I’d like you to meet her sometime.”

I hear in his voice a hopefulness that makes me angry…and sad, too. Does he really think that he can come here and make everything else go away?

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“Well.” He clears his throat. “I’m going to hang around for a few more days. I’ll call tomorrow and, if you want, I’d like to take you to lunch. Or anything.”

“I’ll see,” I say. It’s as much as I can give him, and it feels like too much.