Chapter Ten

Sunday night, Nick drove to his father’s house. He killed the engine and stared at the house before getting out. Nick had just stepped onto the clean-swept porch when his old man came out. He had aged since last week. His shoulders sagged. The skin on his face hung slack.

“I’ve brought you something from Sierra Wright,” Nick said.

His father looked at the sketchbook without expression but put out his hands.

“May I come inside?” Nick kept the sketchbook against his side.

His father took his time to answer, as he so often did. “Of course,” he answered at last. “Come.”

There were only two chairs. The couch had given way years ago and had never been replaced. Nick didn’t like to come in here. The address might be the same, but it was a different house from the one he had grown up in. All of Mom’s feminine touches were gone now.

His father took a seat. Nick took the other chair.

Before he could tell the old man about Sierra’s book, his father stood and began pacing. He swung around to face Nick and let out a raspy breath. “They came to my house, Nicu. The police came inside and questioned me. Did you know of it?”

“They were being cautious, Dad. You see the crazy stories in the news. They were just trying to protect Sierra.”

“They came inside and questioned me,” his father repeated. “As if I were a criminal, they asked me what I did with her.” His voice cracked, and he stopped to calm himself. “I said I gave her a book to read and I read the poems she wrote for school. They laughed at me and told me that was not the sort of thing a man does with a pretty girl. They claimed I had done things to her.”

His father came close, way too close. He put his nose in Nick’s face and shoved a finger into Nick’s chest. “They threatened me with lies, your American police!”

Nick tried not to feel pushed into a corner, tried not to feel seventeen and castigated by his father yet again. He removed his father’s hand from his chest.

Dad turned away and made a noise that sounded too much like a sob. “They made me say I would not welcome her in my home. By using a packet of lies they made me do this. They are no better than the secret police. No better!”

Dad pounded a fist into the kitchen cabinet, and then did it again so hard Nick thought the Formica would splinter.

“No better, Nicu.”

He began shouting, striding back toward Nick. “Secret police! American police! What is the difference? Tell me! If the truth does not matter, they are all the same.”

Nick looked out the window, away from his old man’s tirade. The authorities would never have hurt his father. This was America, and however cold his father’s manner was, he was innocent. But he couldn’t push away the thought pinching his conscience. He should have known that the police, Child Services, or some authority might speak to his father. And he might have prevented it.

Nick looked at the scars on his father’s hands, a permanent record of what authorities meant to his father.

“I told them I would not see her again,” Dad said, breathless. “I told them what they wanted me to say to them. But it makes me ill. The girl believes I have turned her away?”

“She blames the school. Me.” Nick handed him the sketchbook. “I don’t think she blames you.”

His father held the book as if unsure he should open it. At last, he sat down, pulling the ribbon away. He turned page after page without stopping. He didn’t say anything, but his fingers slowed as he went on without finding anything. Nick himself felt a growing sense of alarm. What kind of message was a blank sketchbook?

But at last his old man turned to a portrait that was more eloquent than a journal full of writing. Dad studied it for a moment and closed the book, his face haunted. “Oh, Sierra,” he whispered. “My child.”

Nick looked up, startled. Never had his father said his name with such feeling. Sure, there were good reasons why he wasn’t a whole man. But just once, couldn’t he say, “Nicu, my son” with any degree of feeling, anything besides weariness or contempt?

 

Monday morning, Nick woke in the early quiet. The gray light of dawn tempted him to go back to sleep. The day would be merciless. Every hour in the classroom was a battle, one he’d come to look forward to, if he were honest. But the only way to make it through was to spend these few minutes not in bed, as his body craved, but sitting on the deep windowsill of his study, praying. He stumbled across the hall, leaving the covers behind.

Too tired to pull out words of his own, he leaned back against the window and began with the words he knew by rote. “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”

He rubbed his eyes several minutes later, realizing his mind was drifting. To Sierra and his old man. He glanced at the clock, at the bookshelves, at the bars of sunlight shining between the slats of the blinds onto the carpet.

“Our Father which art in heaven,” he began again.

His mother had taught him that prayer before he could read. He’d learned it by heart in both Romanian and English.

In the most brutal years of his life—when Mom died; during Desert Storm; when Caroline drove off, stone-drunk, to her death; during his first year of teaching—he’d lost the words to pray. His world became an empty void. Words became meaningless, and belief a shaky thing he couldn’t count on anymore.

But that prayer, the one he’d learned so early, stayed with him, and when he prayed it, he had the sense that at least God was present and listening, until at last, he found God filling the empty spaces again.

The fourth sentence always tripped him up though. “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” How could he pray that? He hoped God had more mercy than he did.

“Help me to forgive.” It was the only honest prayer he could say.

But no matter how often he prayed Help me to forgive, it didn’t get any easier to speak with his old man. What need did a forty-year-old man have for his father’s approval anyway? Prison had broken Luca Prodan and left Nick fatherless for all intents. He needed to accept that and move on. He forgave his old man. He always did. But sooner or later, Dad would say something offensive, and the anger washed back in, galling him.

Nick closed his eyes, tuning out his study, and went through the words of the prayer one more time, forcing his mind to focus on the words and to mean them.

After he said amen, he went downstairs to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and then stood on the deck in back. He leaned on the wood railing and drank down the hot, bitter stuff. A cool breeze rippled over him. The sun crested over the pine trees, lighting up the hill that sloped down toward the stream below.

Maybe his relationship with his father couldn’t be salvaged. But at least he could save Sierra Wright some heartache. Her mother had enough spirit to set the girl onto another track. Sierra would forget his old man soon enough.

He smiled, thinking of April Wright, with her artsy, short hair, standing up to tell off the school for interfering. She had enough spirit all right. He wondered how a capable, stylish woman like her ended up in his school’s neighborhood. And what had happened to give Sierra eyes that held her whole battered soul within them?

No mention of a father or husband had come up either time he’d spoken with Sierra’s mother. Somehow he suspected their problems were connected to the missing Mr. Wright. Surely there had once been a Mr. Wright.