Scripps Mercy Hospital called at midnight, and Nadia knew before answering the phone that her father was dead.
She had been half dreaming and she might have slept through the shrill ringing altogether if Zach hadn’t jabbed her in the back. As soon as she’d cracked open an eye and seen her phone screen light up with an unknown number, she knew that something terrible had happened to her father. A car wreck. A heart attack. He’d left the earth while she was sleeping, slipped away as silently as her mother had. But when she’d answered, a nurse told her that her father had dropped a barbell on his chest while lifting weights in the backyard. A crushed diaphragm, two broken ribs, and a punctured lung. He was in critical but stable condition.
She hung up. Beside her, Zach groaned into his pillow. She’d met him in Civil Procedure I when they were both 1Ls. He was the golden boy from Maine, skin tanned from summers spent boating, blond hair ruffled like a Kennedy. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been attorneys. She was the first-generation student who checked out textbooks from the library because she couldn’t afford to buy them, whose stress about her mounting student loans only offset her fear of flunking. When he’d first asked her out at a party after their first-semester finals, she told him she doubted they had anything in common.
“Why?” he said. “Because I’m white?”
He liked to refer to his whiteness the way all white liberals did: only acknowledging it when he felt oppressed by it, otherwise pretending it didn’t exist. She had been wrong after all—they did have a few things in common. They both wanted to practice civil rights law. They both knew what it was like to grow up in towns hugged by the ocean. And they both liked to text each other at the end of long nights studying, inevitably ending up together in bed. She didn’t expect much from him, which was liberating. He was a good time and she needed one. Breaking up with Shadi had drained her and law school had turned her into a stressed-out wreck. She drank so many pots of coffee while she studied that the smell of coffee made her feel anxious. Zach’s good humor, his easy looks, his expectation that life open itself to him were a comfort. She’d never asked him for emotional support before, but later, she felt grateful that she hadn’t been alone when she received the phone call about her father. Zach drove to her apartment and helped her pack a bag. She was moving numbly, grabbing handfuls of clothes out of drawers and stuffing them in a suitcase.
“You know I haven’t visited my dad in three years?” she said.
She hadn’t flown home since Aubrey and Luke’s wedding, since Mrs. Sheppard had cornered her in the lobby of the reception hall. In the years that followed, she’d reexamined everything about that summer before college: the pastor’s tentative visit, when he’d seemed unusually invested in her well-being, as if surveying damage he’d caused; Mrs. Sheppard’s coldness at work, how surprisingly kind she’d seemed right before Nadia left. Had she thought that Nadia might tell? Was that the real reason she gave Luke the money for the abortion? Not to help a girl in need but to make her go away? Nadia imagined the pastor’s wife in line at the bank sliding her withdrawal slip to the teller, how quickly she must have stuffed the cash in an envelope, paranoid that she might encounter a congregation member who would see the stack of money and somehow know what it would purchase. For years, Mrs. Sheppard had known her secret. For years, Nadia had thought she was hiding, when hiding had been impossible all along.
Her secret had unraveled, and Luke had never planned to tell her that his parents knew. He could’ve warned her when he’d brought her the money. She would’ve been upset with him for telling them, of course, but she had been too desperate to complain about where the money had come from. Now she only felt angry. She imagined her father settling in his pew each Sunday, sedate and unaware as the Sheppards eyed him. Poor Robert, too busy carting loads in his truck to know what had happened in his own household, blind to everything but his grief. And when was the last time she’d even spoken to her father? Really talked to him, not just called on Christmas or left a voice mail for his birthday. He didn’t like talking on the phone much and she’d been so wrapped up in her own life. She sat on the edge of her bed, suddenly exhausted. She hated hospitals and didn’t want to see her father in one.
Zach peeked out of her bathroom, where he was packing her toothbrush inside a ziplock bag. He looked strange in her apartment. She always slept over at his place.
“We should hurry if you wanna catch your flight,” he said.
“Three years,” she said. “Jesus, what did I think was gonna happen?”
“Look, I’m sorry about all this but we gotta get to the airport. And I have work in the morning.”
He fidgeted a little, her toothbrush still in his hand. Of course he wanted to leave. He was helping her pack in the middle of the night, which was already more kindness than she could expect from a man who wasn’t her boyfriend. Or even, really, her friend. She nodded, zipping her suitcase shut. Not until she glanced out the airplane window at the neon lights outlining O’Hare Airport did she realize that she had no idea when she would be back.
—
HER FATHER CRIED when she stepped inside his hospital room. Because of the pain or because he was glad to see her, or maybe even because he was ashamed for her to see him like this, in the hospital bed, his side bandaged, a tube sprouting out of his chest. She paused in the doorway, rocked by the sight of him. She hadn’t seen him cry since her mother’s funeral but that was different. Hunched over a church pew in his black suit, he had seemed dignified. Stately, even. But in a mint green hospital gown, plugged into beeping machines, he just looked fragile.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Got you flying all the way out here—”
“Daddy, it’s fine,” she said. “It’s fine. I wanted to see you.”
She hadn’t called him Daddy in years. She’d tried it out when he first came home from overseas, rolling the word around in her mouth, wondering how he might react to it. She’d been so desperate for him then, following him around the kitchen, climbing on his lap while he watched television, patting his face as soon as he’d shaved to feel his smooth cheeks. But then he’d settled back home and she’d grown up and found Dad fit him better—a curt word, a little removed. The nurse rolled in a cot but she stayed in her chair, holding his hand while he slept. His palm felt rough and worn. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done something as simple as hold her father’s hand and she was afraid to let go.
She fell into a fitful sleep, and when she awoke in the morning, she found Aubrey sleeping on the cot, covered in a thin hospital blanket. She suddenly remembered calling Aubrey from the airport—she was frantic and needed someone to talk to before the four-hour flight. Aubrey hadn’t answered. Even in California, it was late. But Nadia had left a long, rambling voice mail. She’d felt comforted hearing Aubrey’s voice, even if it was just her outgoing message.
She knelt by the cot and stroked Aubrey’s hair.
“What’re you doing here?” she whispered.
Aubrey’s eyes fluttered open. She always woke slowly, returning to the world in waves. How many mornings had her face been the first thing Nadia saw?