Upstairs, she called home. So many nines, the rotary phone took forever to spin back to its place. Bailey hadn’t talked to him since she’d gone into rehab, and hadn’t told him about it either. No need to worry him.
He picked up on the second ring.
“Dad. It’s me.”
“Hello there.”
“I called to say ‘happy birthday.’ Do you have any fun plans?” Better to not give him time to ask her about what she was up to. Keep the focus on him.
“Haven’t heard from you in quite a while. What’s going on up there in New York?”
No luck. “Right. It’s been crazy. I’m decorating Melinda’s apartment now, in the Dakota.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“What’s on your social calendar today? Going out with Scotty?” His oldest friend and employee, who annoyed her father to no end, but she was certain he secretly enjoyed it.
“Nope. Scotty’s married now. He’s got his own thing going on.”
“I see.”
She waited, hoping he’d change the subject to the latest plumbing disaster at the house that he’d fixed without having to call a plumber, using bubble gum and tape. Or how he’d finally stopped the screen door from banging shut. The summer before she died, her mother had admitted that every so often she’d intentionally break things around the house so her father had something to do on weekends. He was never one to sit and read a book. Or chat.
The silence stretched on. “Hey, Dad. I have an idea. Why don’t I come on down on the train and we’ll go out to the Lobster Shanty?”
“No, you don’t have to do that. I’m perfectly happy.”
The thought of him alone on his birthday was too much for her to bear. No matter how little they had in common these days. “I’ll be on the next train. You’ll pick me up?”
“All right. If that’s what you want.” His voice offered no hint of pleasure. But then, hers probably didn’t either.
She threw some clothes into an overnight bag and navigated the subway to the train, which then sat at the Newark station for more than forty-five minutes. By the time she disembarked at Point Pleasant Station, the sun was fading in the sky and her stomach growled with hunger.
Her father, Jack, was leaning against the hood of his ancient Volkswagen bug. She’d hated that car through high school, a jalopy that constantly broke down. He gave her an awkward hug. “Thought you’d got lost.”
The last time they’d seen each other was in the spring, when she was bursting with news of her many clients through Tristan. She’d walked around their house, pointing out small changes he could make to bump up the decor, knowing he wouldn’t do a thing but desperately wanting to impress.
Jack couldn’t care less about Moorish tiles or Laura Ashley linens. He ran an auto repair shop, for goodness’ sake, as his father had. He must have seen through her posturing as she dropped names of fashion and art world icons, then laughed at his ignorance. Her stomach curdled with shame and she wished she hadn’t offered to visit. They were so different from each other.
“Since you’re so late, I figured we’d just pick up a sub.”
Did he want her to insist on the restaurant, or was he just too hungry to wait for a table, like her?
“Sure. Sounds like a good plan.”
They drove along the main road, and she tried not to stare too hard at the spot where one of her classmates sophomore year had launched his car into a tree, killing himself and his passenger. Her first taste of the capriciousness of life. Jack’s hands gripped the wheel a little tighter until they were past, probably thinking of another car accident and her mother’s last moments. One that they would not discuss, not even on the anniversary of her death. She checked her watch. Twelve years ago today, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Peggy had been driving back from the mall, where she’d bought some last-minute gift for Jack, and had never come home.
Twelve years ago, at this very moment, Bailey had been sulking in her room because they wouldn’t let her skip the birthday dinner to go out with her friends.
How badly she still wanted to try to reverse time, to change the outcome. Because this outcome was unacceptable.
Jack turned down their street, at the corner of which stood Bob’s Beetle Shop. No one in the family was named Bob, but her grandfather had liked the alliteration, apparently. Or he didn’t want people to know who really owned it. It must’ve been a shock, growing up in a luxurious city apartment and winding up fixing cars in a New Jersey beach town.
“How’s business?”
“Same as always.”
“The shop looks good. Did you paint it?”
“Nope. Same as last time you saw it.”
This was going to be a titillating evening, she could tell.
He pulled up to their house, two stories clad with cedar shakes sporting powder-blue shutters on the upper-story windows, the color chosen by her mother. Squat summer beach houses with low-maintenance yards of round, white stones peppered the neighborhood. Old ladies down from Newark for the summer would sit and yell from their screened-in porches if the kids got too noisy in the after-dinner hours. No sidewalks lined their roads; instead, the asphalt crumbled into the sandy shoulder and the roots of stunted pine trees.
The stairs creaked as she headed up to her room. The upstairs hallway was lined with family photos and framed artwork from her high school days. She paused a moment, examining each one with a fresh perspective, looking for signs of Sara Smythe in their faces. At the very end, near the top of the stairs, was a sketch she’d seen a million times in passing but never really studied. Not one of her own. A pen drawing of a pretty cottage, like the kind you’d find in a fairy tale, with some kind of vine growing along the side. Even though the drawing was small, the details drew her in.
In the corner was scrawled Theo. Camden.
She lifted it off its hook and held it up to the light, examining every inch. Her grandfather must have taken it with him when he left, one memento to remember his family by. The leaves of the vine were exquisite, each leaf outlined and shaded in. Along the trunk, she noticed an irregularity and turned the drawing sideways.
For Sara.
The words were clearly scrawled inside the trunk, but only readable from an angle.
Theodore Camden had drawn this for Sara Smythe.
Bailey settled in at the kitchen table, her mind whirling with questions. Jack offered up local town gossip between bites of an overstuffed sub. She filled him in on the Dakota job, and together they muddled through another meal, painfully aware of the lack of her mother, who’d acted as the connective tissue between the two of them.
“Do you have cake mix? I’ll make you a cake,” she offered.
“No need. I bought a pack of Snickers bars. You can put a candle in it if you like.”
“Really?”
“No. I don’t have any candles. Just kidding.”
She went to the pantry and pulled out two Snickers bars. “Do you want me to sing to you? Because you know I will.”
He laughed as he unwrapped the candy. “Only if you want to encourage the feral cats that live behind the D’Agostinos’ house.”
When they used to go out in the family car, Jack would turn up the radio as loud as it could go to drown out Bailey’s voice, and she’d hit the wrong notes on purpose, egging him on as her mother screeched for him to turn it down.
His teasing softened her anxiety, lowered her guard. “You know, Dad, I’m sorry I haven’t been around.”
“You’re doing your own thing these days, as you should.” He shrugged.
“Actually, I’ve been digging around some of the old family trunks in the Dakota, ones that belonged to Melinda’s great-grandparents, Theodore and Minnie Camden. They’re the ones who raised Granddad, right?”
“I guess you could call it that. Theodore Camden died when he was a baby, so your grandfather was really raised by the wife.”
“Right. When did Minnie die?”