Sixteen

F

inn waved good-bye to me from the driveway. As I was poised to slide my key into the lock, the door opened and Janelle greeted me with an overly dramatic face. “He’s been waiting for you, honey. Better get in there and face the music.”

“Well, he’d better brace himself. I’ve got some music of my own to make.”

I walked into the living room and looked for Dad in his leather club chair but found it empty. The sound of ice clinked in a glass from the couch. Dad never sat on the couch, let alone reclined on it with a highball of amber liquid. Not on a weekday. His tie coiled on the floor like a waiting snake.

We stared at each other a moment, waiting to see who would strike the first drum.

“I can’t believe you—”

“I am very disappointed that—”

Our opening statements overlapped. The room reverberated with quiet again.

“What’s with the drink?”

“I’m an adult, Cora. I don’t need to justify my actions. You, however—”

“I’m seventeen, Dad. I’d be on my way to adulthood if you’d let me.”

“Where. Were. You? I had no idea where you were! You didn’t answer your phone. Something could have happened to you. You just—just disappeared.” He sounded more like a scared boy than my father.

Looking for the truth. Reading hidden letters. Crying over my mother. Digging in the forest for a possessed key. Freaking out. Falling in love. “What difference does it make where I went?”

“You cannot disappear like that!”

“Why? Because she did?”

Just tell me the truth. Tell me or I’ll never have faith in you again.

“Yes! Dammit!”

I flinched. He actually admitted it. I was too stunned to reply. I wanted to yell at him, to accuse and force-feed him the poison of his secrets, but he looked so devastated. I could see it etched in the lines of his face. He’d carried it for so long. He’d lied to me, but he’d lost her, too.

Dad swirled the cubes in his glass. The melting ice left trails of crystalline liquid in the heavy alcohol. Despite my sympathy, I was about to light into him with all my questions. Tell him everything I knew, show him the key he’d buried under the ghost, when he said softly, a lone tear streaming down his unshaven cheek, “You remind me so much of her, Cora.”

“How?” I whispered. I felt like I did as a little girl when a butterfly landed on my arm, and I held my breath so it wouldn’t fly away.

“There’s something different about you that draws people to you. Grace was like that.” He glanced up at me, then quickly back down at his glass. “It’s always been this way. When you were little, it was animals. Any stray thing would follow you home. No sooner would I take you to a park than a bunch of kids would be trailing after you. Even adults, they’d stare. It always made me—”

“Proud?” There was too much hope in my chest. It hurt.

“Uncomfortable.”

I swallowed hard. He couldn’t be proud of who or what I was or trust me because I was too different, too much like her. “What you said before was wrong,” I told him. “I think you do need to justify your actions.”

He shook his head but didn’t reply, except to take a large gulp of his drink. Finally he spoke in a choked voice. “I loved her very much. That doesn’t go away even though…even though she did. I love you, too, sweetheart. I don’t want to lose you.”

“Then talk to me, Dad. This is your chance.” I ventured out a little on the ledge, unsure of what to reveal. How much tighter would the chains get if he knew what I knew? I had to find a way to get to Ireland. “I—I know you’re keeping things from me. If we can’t trust each other—”

“There is no one you can trust more. If there are things I’ve kept from you, it’s only been for your own good.” The hairs stood up on my arms. He let me believe my own mother didn’t want me. That was for my own good? He kept the truth of her from me. There was something strange and different about me, and he’d known it my whole life.

He kept me from me!

My anger flared anew. I clenched my jaw and spoke through gritted teeth. “I’ll go to Ireland, and I will find her. Maybe she’ll tell me what you won’t.”

Dad’s eyes flared, wild and bullish. “You will not step foot on that island as long as I live.”

“Someday what I do won’t be up to you!”

“Someday is bullshit! It’s a wish your heart makes when you want things to be different than they are!” Dad’s red anger muted, and his voice softened. “I believed in someday for a long time, too. Hate me if you want, Cora, but Ireland is forever out of the question.”