22

As they drove slowly out of town, Mickey could hardly believe she was with her father. It was like all of her dreams coming true at the same time, all the stars coming out at once. The nights she’d worried about him, the messages she’d left, the calls unreturned, the sight of court documents on the dining room table: all disappeared in this wonderful moment.

“Dad,” she said, “I thought you were in Arizona.”

“I was, sweetheart,” he said. “But I had to come back for…” He paused, swallowing. She watched, waiting for him to finish his sentence. “For a closing here in Rhode Island.”

“On a real estate deal?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Did you…” she began, not even knowing how to ask this. “Did you know that the, well, the police, were looking for you?”

“Honey, that’s just a misunderstanding,” her father said. “There was a big mix-up at court, a glitch—you know? I had the dates wrong. That’s what happens when you’re trying to juggle too many deals.”

“Especially the one in Arizona, right?” Mickey asked, wanting to believe him.

“Mmm, yes,” he said. “Exactly.”

His teeth seemed to be chattering, but it wasn’t cold. She smelled an old familiar odor of cigarettes and drinks. She’d grown up with that smell; it made her nostalgic for something she didn’t even know how to define. It reminded her of him coming home late, of her parents fighting, of the hope she always had that they’d make up, that he would “get it” and stop going out at night. She glanced at him now—he looked so thin, hollows in his cheeks, the color of his skin too pale, sort of sallow.

“Are you okay, Dad?” she asked.

He chuckled, but the sound didn’t accompany a smile. “Your friend Shane asked me that.”

Her mouth dropped open. How did he know that was Shane? “I didn’t introduce you,” she said. “So how…”

“You left me that message,” he said. “Told me about the wonderful boy you liked. I figured that if he’s really wonderful, it had to mean he really liked you and respected you. And that boy I saw back at the high school did—Shane, right?”

“Right,” she said.

Her father took a right off the school road, onto Route 1; from there he headed down the beach road, heading toward Refuge Beach. Mickey felt a little surprised; this was more a place she would expect to come with her mother. Her father usually took her to the mall, or to a restaurant—places where, as he put it, “the action is.” Really places where he could get a drink.

“We’re going to the beach?” she asked, a little confused.

“Yes,” he said. “You like it here, right? Birds and nature and all? What was that you told me about a snowy owl?”

“We found one here!” she said, remembering the excitement of seeing it—first with Jenna, then her mother, then Shane.

“Can you show me?”

Her heart tumbled, sort of fell; she glanced over at him. Hadn’t he listened to her messages? “It’s hurt, Dad. We took it to a rehab up in Kingston.”

“Oh,” he said. But as if it didn’t really matter to him anyway; he just fished a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and kept driving. Mickey watched the way his hand shook. The cigarette trembled in his lips. He couldn’t hold the lighter steady enough to light it, so he just gave up trying.

They passed the ranger house; Mickey turned her head, saw Mr. O’Casey’s green truck parked there. She wondered what had happened between him and her mother; he hadn’t called the house in days. And her mother just seemed preoccupied. It seemed strange for Mickey to be riding with her father, wishing about her mother and Mr. O’Casey. It seemed disloyal.

When they got to the thicket, Mickey motioned for him to stop.

“I can show you where the snowy owl was,” she said. “If you want to see.”

“Sure,” he said.

They got out of the car. Leaning against the door, he managed to light his cigarette. Mickey hated to see him smoke, worried that he’d get lung cancer and die. But it had been almost worse to see him shaking too hard to use his lighter. Everything seemed like a huge conflict, even such a simple, awful thing as her father smoking.

Walking through the brush, Mickey heard birdsong. The migration was under way! She thought back a month ago, when she and Jenna had come through here. The thicket had seemed absolutely dead—almost as if the brambles and branches were lifeless, instead of just dormant. Right now, walking through, she heard the unmistakable song of the white-throated sparrow: peabody, peabody… And there were green shoots coming out of the marshy ground, and tiny white buds on the branches of shadbush, and spring was here, or at least on its way.

Once they got to the other side, they stood at the top of the dunes—stretching up and down the beach like an endless moonscape—and felt the sea wind in their faces. Mickey glanced over at the jetty; her heart skipped, because she knew Shane would be here soon, and that’s where she always stood to watch him surf.

“That’s where the owl was,” she said, pointing toward the gargantuan driftwood log.

“Where’d you say it is now?” he asked.

“At Joseph O’Casey’s raptor rehabilitation center,” she said. “Up near the University of Rhode Island.”

“Funny,” he said, as if he hadn’t been listening, staring over at the big silvery log, just this side of the jetty. “That looks just like the spot where Cole Landry was standing when he cut the ribbon.”

“What ribbon?”

“Oh, it’s just an expression,” her father said. “You know, when someone cuts the ribbon on a new project—it means an announcement, but one you need extra press and attention for. It’s a loudmouth gesture.”

“Well, he’s a loudmouth,” Mickey said.

Her father gave her an odd look.

“You think so?” he asked.

“Um, yeah,” she said. The way he was staring at her made her blush. Had she said the wrong thing? Probably her father loved Cole Landry—he was a huge success in her father’s field; he’d started off in real estate and turned into one of the most famous businessmen in the world. She felt herself panic, wanting to backpedal, to not hurt her father’s feelings. “Why, do you know him?”

“I’ve met him,” her dad said. He stood a little taller, puffed his chest out a little bit more; Mickey was almost glad to see his pride coming back, even over something as sad as having met Cole Landry. “I went to a convention down at the Landry Tower in New York, remember?”

Mickey shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

Her father’s face fell. “I guess your mother didn’t tell you about it,” he said. “Maybe it was after we got separated. I forget, exactly.”

Or maybe Mickey’s mother hadn’t believed him when he’d told her he was in New York. Mickey knew that her father used to lie about things like that; he’d say he was playing golf with the governor, but then they’d be on their way to the grocery store and see his car at the Hitching Post.

He’d say he was having lunch with Ted Turner at the New York Yacht Club in Newport, and someone would tell Mickey’s mother that they’d just seen him in Providence, sitting on a barstool at Buddy’s.

But right now, standing on Refuge Beach, watching the wind blow the white tops off waves breaking so beautifully and elegantly over the conning tower of U-823, Mickey had to know the truth.

“Did you really meet Cole Landry?” she asked.

“Of course I did, sweetheart,” he said. “When I tell you something, you can take it to the bank….”

The riverbank, she thought. The piggy bank.

“Dad,” she said. “Were you really in Arizona?”

“Sweetheart! How can you…” he started. But then, as if the wind were coming at him at sixty knots, hurricane strength, instead of wafting over in cool early-spring gusts, he seemed unable to withstand the force. He sat down hard on the sand, and Mickey sat beside him.

“You weren’t, were you?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Why did you say you were?”

He stared out at the sea as if it were his mortal, avowed enemy. He looked as if he wanted to slaughter the sea. His chin trembled, as if the sea were about to make him cry. Mickey couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t look at her father, but she couldn’t look away.

“Dad?” she asked.

“Because I’m a failure,” he said in a very quiet, very still way.

“No,” she whispered.

He nodded. “You asked if I’d really met Cole Landry.”

“You don’t have to explain,” she said. “So you didn’t go to New York that time—it doesn’t make you…”

“I have met him. I’ve heard him speak. I’ve talked to him personally.”

Was it true? Mickey wondered. And if it was, would her father now defend him, try to explain how progress sometimes bore an emotional price, that in this case the cost of raising the U-boat would be the pain it might cause the locals, but that it’d be worth it in the long run? She’d heard Josh saying all that, and if her father was a Cole Landry fan, he’d probably say it, too.

“I know his son Josh,” Mickey said.

“I saw you talking to him.”

“He…he’s just like his father,” Mickey said.

“Then he’s a fool,” her father said harshly, taking Mickey’s hand.

“Dad,” she said.

“You and your mother have always loved this beach,” he said. “She used to ask me to come down here. I did a few times—but I always had something better to do. A deal I was trying to make, a house I was trying to sell. Your mother loved the peace of this place; I wanted everything but peace.”

“You like excitement,” she said, repeating the phrase he used to say to her when trying to explain why he needed to be out and about so many nights every week.

“Maybe,” he admitted.

She glanced up at him, saw him taking in the beauty: the clouds scudding across the sky, the birds flitting through the thicket, sandpipers running along the hard sand at the water’s edge, the waves breaking, breaking, breaking.

“Why do you say Josh Landry is a fool?” she asked.

“Because I saw him on television with his father,” he said. “They want to haul the U-boat out of here as if it were nothing. And to them, it is nothing.”

“I know,” she said, staring out at the waves. “I hate them for it.”

“You do?” he asked. “They why did I see you walk away from Shane, over to Landry? It looked as if you were friends—as if you were looking up to him.”

She gazed up at him. He was her father, but he barely knew her. Did he really think that could be possible?

“Dad, that’s ridiculous,” she said. “I just want him to introduce me to Senator Sheridan on our class trip to Washington.”

“Really?” her father asked, getting a funny gleam in his eyes. He had seemed weak, almost sick, and she’d been so worried about him since getting in the car. But suddenly, with that one look, he seemed like her old dad—shrewd, smart, a little devilish.

“What, Dad?” she asked.

“I think I can help you with that,” he said. “Or at least put in a good word. Your dad knows a few people, Mickey. You want to see Senator Sheridan, leave it to me.”

Mickey gazed back at the waves. She felt heat rising in her face; her father sounded so sure of himself, but could she believe him? Or was this another of his stories? He had a way of trying to make her feel better—but then, when he couldn’t follow through, she always seemed to feel worse.

“I’ll make a call or two,” he said. “Get someone from his staff on the line. Once he hears that Richard Halloran’s daughter wants to see him—consider it a done deal! We’re old golf buddies—he’s loyal to his old friends and supporters, especially ones who’ve played a few eighteens with him, know what I mean?”

She swallowed.

“What do you want to see him for, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know,” she said, because she couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. It was too important, and his lies made it seem trivial. “I guess just because it seems like a good thing to do on a class trip to Washington.”

“Well, you can count on it, okay? You’re meeting Sam Sheridan.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she said smiling, giving him a kiss on his cheek. She knew the promise would wash away, just like the tide. It would have been nice to think she could stop being nice to Josh, but she knew that he was a better bet for what she needed to accomplish. Her father took her hand and held it tight, and she felt how badly his was shaking.

“I’m going away,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“Arizona,” he said. “This time for real. There’s opportunity, Mick. I have to get straight with your mother—Alyssa, too. I’m going to head down to the Sunbelt and sell up a storm. I’ll send you a ticket out to visit, as soon as I get settled.”

Mickey’s chest felt tight, and her throat ached as the wind blew off the sea. It blew her hair straight back, made her eyes tear up. He was going away; it didn’t matter whether it was to Arizona or the Hitching Post. They were together for this short time, and then he’d disappear again.

The wind was full of moisture from the waves, the steady, giant waves breaking over the conning tower of U-823. She thought of the men she had seen underwater; they’d died attacking Mickey’s beloved shore. Some of them had been fathers back in Germany; she wondered what their children and grandchildren thought about them. She stared at the sea and understood, just a little, of how it felt to have a father disappear, not know if he was ever coming home.

That made her put her head on her father’s shoulder, breathing in his smell of smoke and gin, and thinking he’s right here, he’s right here, he’s right here, as the tears welled in her eyes, because she knew that soon he’d be going away.

And just then, the police arrived.