MAY
Thursday afternoon Constance’s spine rests against the storm door of my house, her freckled shoulders pink from waiting in the sun. Tank points at the pastor like she’s a rare bird lighting on our front stoop. Constance waves. I wave back.
“Were you expecting this?” he wants to know.
“Sort of.” Constance and I didn’t discuss a plan, but when we got off the phone this morning, she said she’d see me soon.
Tank checks his watch. He had promised his mom he’d finish thank-you cards before baccalaureate tonight, but he still asks, “Want me to stay?”
I place his hand on the gearshift. “Go home. Get stuff done. I’ll call you after Dad’s home.”
Dana warned me last night that red tape would likely stretch Dad’s release from morning to evening and not to expect them until dinner. That gives me time with Constance before we both handle the Welcome Wagon. Ready or not, I think and leave Tank flipping his cigarette round and round.
Tank leans through the window, chest pressing the door. “You’re sure?”
I tap the truck’s hood with my palm. Two media trucks and three cars linger on our curb like weeds that have pushed through concrete cracks. They film Tank’s exit.
“Follow me,” I say to Constance and trudge across the ankle-high clover toward the kitchen door.
After resting her purse on the pollen-soaked deck railing, she jams both hands into the pockets of her jeans and says, “I checked into a motel and then came over to wait. I’m here to work.”
I swing the kitchen door open. “Check out and stay here.”
She laughs until she realizes my invitation is sincere. Inside, we gasp in tandem. The air’s tepid and the kitchen reeks of something rancid, making the invitation seem like something I should retract. I spot the remains of pizza rolls on paper plates and chuck them and the glass bowl of molded ranch directly into the trash.
“I haven’t been here since they arrested him,” I say as an apology.
When I return from lowering the thermostat, Constance squats by the sink, fishing for cleaner. She sprays orange-scented mist onto the countertops and repeats, “I came to work.”
We clean for two hours, then collapse on the couch in a sweaty heap. Our music blares so loud we don’t hear Dad before he appears in the doorjamb between the dining and living rooms. His head’s bowed, his shoulders curved; he’s aged since I sat across from him at the jail. Cocking his head in quiet surprise at the sight of Constance sprawled next to me, he closes his eyes, opens them, and tries again as if he expects different results.
“I can explain,” I say, overlapping Constance’s explanation.
“Don, I came to help with the castle.”
“Totally unnecessary,” he says. Looking from her to me—the half inch between our thighs speaking more than words—he announces, “I’m taking a shower. Please don’t leave. Either of you.”
Constance mouths, So far so good, and we take ourselves to the kitchen to wait. She makes a pot of decaf that obscures the smell of bleach.
“Will you tell him your suspicions about Warren?” she asks, settling at the bar with her mug.
The shower stops running and I put a finger to my lips. Nick spent the day following Warren, and I’m not saying a word until I hear from him.
“Or will you tell Dana?”
“Nick’s making that call.” He took the decision from me this morning. “This shouldn’t be on you,” he said after a discussion on the train memory. “Let me be the one to make accusations if it comes to it.” I agreed like the grateful coward I am.
Dad emerges, hair wet, shirt damp across the shoulders. He addresses Constance instead of me. “I’m not sure how you ended up here, but I owe you apologies, and you’ll get them, but first—”
“I didn’t come for apologies.”
“I didn’t take those boys.” He’s resolute. A statue.
Constance hands him a mug of steaming tea and some grace. “I know.”
Tremors start in his shoulder. Liquid vibrates over the edge of his mug and onto the floor. The mug falls. Without consideration or permission, Constance steps through the puddle and ceramic splinters and wraps her sunburned arms around Dad. Somewhat magically she dwarfs him. The two of them—him shaking childlike, her rubbing figure eights on his back, and repeating, “It’s okay”—are the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time. I can’t hug my father like that. I don’t have hugs that say this will be okay. Mine ask far too many questions.
In a jolt, Dad seems to remember Constance is his ex-wife and he’s fresh out of prison. He removes himself to the far wall and leans against a set of framed photos. “And you?” he asks me, searching for any portent of accusation in my body language. “Do you know I didn’t take Aulus?”
What do I know?
His integrity and innocence have been pressed against a pile of coincidences. I put him under a microscope of blame. I let myself fully entertain his darkness.
But not anymore.
I had spent the day in the school library forming a new theory: I don’t know who set up Dad, but if Dad were a kidnapping murderer, his first wife probably wouldn’t be receiving personal visitations from higher powers requesting she help finish his castle in Wildwood, Kentucky. Constance nailed shut my coffin of guilt and uncertainty. I arrange my face so only love shows. “I know you, Dad.”
“I need to hear you say you trust me.”
Knowing he’s not a murderer and trusting him are two different things. “Tell me why you lied for so long.”
“Because I was an idiot,” he says without hesitation. “I paid attention to every nail, every board, every bag of concrete. Every conceivable detail. I followed the vision with precision.” He pauses to glance at Constance, and there’s something kindred in the expression they share. “I got lost in it, Thee. I got—”
“Addicted.” I set my mug on the counter. The lower edge chips.
When I look up, Dad says, “But no more. I’m selling the castle to the Markums.”
“What?” Constance and I say together.
She leaps from the barstool where she’s perched and it tumbles backward under the weight of her purse. Without righting the chair, she arrives in my father’s space again—not so friendly this time. “You can’t do that, Don.”
“I was silly to believe—”
“Belief is many things, silly never being one.”
“Stancy—” Two trenches run from the bridge of his nose toward his hairline.
I stand in protest with her. “Dad, listen. Constance, tell him. Tell him what happened.”
In several dozen words, my father’s ex-wife shares the fragile times after their divorce—her depression, the return of her faith, and ultimately, the building of a new community in Lexington. She is unflinchingly honest, and he listens without interrupting. There’s tenderness between them that’s as green and alive as a plant poking through soil.
“Can’t you see?” she says as she finishes. “You weren’t wrong about the castle, only in the obsessiveness of building it.”
“Stance, I don’t . . . I mean . . . We can’t keep building. Everyone’s watching. People think I . . .”
“You didn’t care what people thought before,” I say, and Constance echoes, “Let them watch. The truth will win out. Thea says you’re close to finishing.”
Dad stares toward the living room, toward the media trucks parked at the curb. “Do you know what it’s like to be falsely accused of something heinous? To have your community, your family, your best friends believe you would hurt—” His voice is reedy. His back bends forward until his hands land on his knees and he takes deep breaths. “And for what? A stupid building. A dream? Some weird vision from a God I’ve barely spoken to in years? I thought the castle would feel worth the sacrifice because it was above me or would reconnect me with who I used to be, but you know what? That’s insane. Normal people do not build castles. And while I realize you”—he attempts eye contact and fails—“showing up here feels like a sign, I—”
“Dad, the castle’s not stupid and normal’s overrated.” The words come directly from my gut. My spirit? If there’s anything I’m certain about: losing the castle now, after all this, can’t be the end of the story.
Constance squats and peels Dad’s hands from his knees; she gets under his lowered chin. “Don, we can’t pretend to know the utter hell you’ve been living in, but you don’t have to live in it alone. Thea’s here. And strangely enough, I’m here too. We believe you. For now, can that be enough?”
“Warren believes me. Griff and Ruby too,” he says.
“Nick and Dana,” I add. “And the FBI released you. Let that count for something.”
“Every single person who believes me counts, but the castle—” His eyes drift to the clock on the wall, out the window into the dusk. He’s off somewhere that must hurt him.
“Dad.” I draw him to the present. “Do you still believe God asked you to build a castle?”
His head whips in my direction. The last time he heard me say God, it was proceeded by Good and followed by Let’s eat.
Constance and I await his answer.
“Yes,” he says at last.
For the first time I trust that whatever this is, it’s bigger than we are.