I bit my lip, wondering what to reveal and what to keep secret. There had already been too many secrets.
The boat pushed into the light as I spoke. “Your father first loved Caro. From Caro’s letters to Margaret, it’s clear he wanted to marry her. He waited a long time after she disappeared, maybe hoping she’d come back. I sense he married Grandmother to protect them—only she and her mom were left—but it soured because . . . because . . . your mom had always loved him. She had loved him best, and he had loved Caro best.”
“They lived with a ghost between them.” Dad sighed. “That’s worse than an affair. Ghosts never age and they never die.”
Memories overtook us again. They had to, as I expect we were both parsing through the ghosts and the losses between us.
“True.” I shrugged. “Their worlds revolved around Caro and, from what I’m reading, I suspect that never changed.” I dragged the tines of my fork through the bits of sauce from a light pasta course still dotting my plate. “There were some pretty passionate scenes Caro wrote about to Grandmother. She’d have had a hard time ever forgetting them.”
The heartache of the torn page settled over me. Years of diary entries and letters now sat between me and that first letter and I knew, with a deep certainty, Margo tore the page from despair, perhaps even envy, yet she returned to it again and again so as to never feel comfortable and let herself fully fall in love again. An odd and painful form of self-protection to which I could fully relate.
Yes, Dad was right: a ghost lived between them.
Dad kept his eyes trained out the window. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed, disillusioned, or even listening anymore. The boat had already passed back through the London Zoo and was chugging through the outer circle of Regent’s Park. We ate our next course in silence, Cornish hake with Jerusalem artichokes, as we traveled the straightaway toward the landing.
Dad poked at his last bite of fish. “This was my father’s favorite fish. He liked it prepared just like this. He used to take me fishing when I was young. He loved to fish. He said Mother had once loved to go fishing, but she never joined us. I certainly can’t imagine my mother ever fishing. She was so dour and serious . . . I haven’t thought about that in years. I haven’t thought much good about either of them in years.”
“You should get to know her, Dad. She was feisty and bold. She fished, climbed trees, fought squirrels . . . You should read her stories.”
Dad’s eyes rounded in surprise. He looked again like a small boy before he banked his wonder. I could almost see the walls grow within his mind. He was stepping away once more. “I’ve buried her, Caroline. Both of them, and I can’t keep going back there. Please. No more.”
I tucked in my lips so as not to retort, plead, or even speak, as one waiter removed our plates and another set dessert before us.
Staring down at a Yorkshire rhubarb fool, and feeling like one myself, I risked a next step. “You spoke of ghosts, Dad. There are so many in our lives.” His eyes flickered with alarm. I continued, “We have to go back. We have to go back or we’ll never move forward. Maybe this is where it all began.”
“What began?”
“This holding on so tight that no one can breathe, no one can live.”
Dad laid his fork onto his plate and sat back. “You’re being dramatic.”
“Do you know why I went to law school?” A slight widening of his eyes told me he didn’t. Even though I’d told him again and again, he’d never heard me. “When Mom left, you once commented how we’d all gone. I came back after college, bounced around jobs, but we never connected. I thought if we had law school in common, maybe we’d find a way to talk, to be together . . . And maybe it would have worked because I loved it. I didn’t drop out because I’m ‘flighty,’ Dad.” I gave the word the emphasis he always did during our life talks.
“I quit because I wanted to be with you. I wanted to help you . . . because we’re family. Despite everything. And unless you do something, unless you meet with the doctors Jason keeps finding, or you take your cancer more seriously, we’re running out of time. I don’t want us to end like we are now”—I scanned the restaurant—“sitting at a table on a boat because that’s the only way we’d willingly sit and talk to each other. Maybe even listen.”
I looked out the window, letting the quiet stretch between us. I expected him to step into it, to say something, anything.
He didn’t.
I finally turned back to find him staring at his plate. “And what if I’m right? I’ve already found extensive holes in Mat’s assumptions. If Caro loved Grandfather, then she probably didn’t have an affair with a German. And if she didn’t have an affair with a German—if that’s not true, the very premise behind her supposed defection—then what else isn’t true? Possibly all of it. That means you lived under a lie. Your mom, your grandmother, your father . . . all believed a lie. And that blackness you talked about can be lifted, and maybe mine as well. Maybe I’ll do something good, and we won’t be paralyzed by the bad.”
“This is nonsense. None of it matters anymore.”
“That’s not true.” I thumped the table so hard silverware rattled against china. Heads turned.
I lowered my voice. “It may be the only thing that does matter.”
Dad watched me, and for a second I thought he was going to relent. Scenes, scenarios, emotions, and memories played through his eyes. As he brought himself out, and back to me, a hard glint met my gaze.
He dabbed the corners of his mouth with the crisp white napkin, his eyes never leaving mine. “I came because you are my daughter. I came because . . .” He narrowed his eyes, not at me, but at something behind me, that past he claimed no longer mattered. “Because no one came for me and I wanted to offer you that—and your brother goads well. But perhaps this was inevitable with both of you. One generation never truly understands the perspective and needs of another.”
The boat bounced against the side of the canal as they moored it.
Dad folded his napkin and laid it perfectly aligned with the edge of the table to the left of his plate. “Goodbye, Caroline.”
I shot up to stand as he did, twisting my napkin in my hands. “You don’t mean that. Come back to the house with me. Read some of the letters. You’ll see. You’ll love her—both of them.”
Dad surveyed the table before returning his attention to me. “You say you like your job, Caroline. I hope you don’t lose it over this fruitless and destructive chase. That would be a shame. Please thank your mother for the lunch and tell her I’m heading straight for Heathrow.” He glanced at his watch. “If I hurry, I can still catch the five o’clock to New York.”
He walked to the back of the boat and climbed the four steps to the landing.
I dropped back into the wooden chair and didn’t realize I was crying until the woman at the table next to me handed me a tissue.
What was I going to text Jason now?
Twenty