“Gregor!” Mom protested as Grace’s cheeks flushed. She said, “Grace, I’m sorry.”
“Mollie, you’re not the one who should be apologizing,” Grace said as she thrust her arms into her raincoat. She left the casita without another word.
White-hot anger burned inside me. Where was my real father? What did Dad have to be bitter about, really—or any of us? There was no reason for my family to harden into lumps of black coal. As I shoved my feet into my hiking boots, Dad sniped about how selfish Grace was being by remaining here. It was as if he wanted to get rid of her.…
“No way,” I muttered, straightening before I tied the laces. Horror-stricken, I looked at my father, who had successfully purged the room of Grace, no different than if she were some troublesome bug. With a shock, I realized that Dad had deployed one of his tried-and-true pest control techniques: Create a hostile environment so pests couldn’t possibly want to stay. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror near the entry. Hadn’t I done the same exact thing with every boy since Dom? Purge them from my life? Get rid of them before they could get too close and hurt me?
I groaned and backed away from my reflection in the mirror. “Whoa…”
“What?” Mom’s eyebrows furrowed at my outburst.
I spun toward Dad. “Have you noticed that we use pest control techniques on people?”
“Your dad exterminates pests, not people,” Mom said.
“Well, didn’t you just do a hostile environment on Grace?” I asked him. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“What do you mean?” Mom asked, shaking her head.
“We froze her out,” I said. “Classic relationship ender.”
“Oh.” Mom’s mouth pursed as the truth hit her.
Dad said defensively, as he gestured to the daybed, “We gave her a bed last night. Your mom and I slept on the floor. We’re not freezing her out.”
These exact same denials could have spewed from my mouth whenever I justified my quick and efficient breakups with boys. Holding out the camera that I had borrowed from Quattro as if it were a divining rod, I searched for a vestige of my parents’ former selves. I wedged between them on the sofa and commanded, “Look at this.”
Dad squinted at the camera, moving it closer, then farther, which made me feel guilty, but not enough to back down.
“Perfect composition,” he said about the photo of a bromeliad, pale green and ghostly in the cloud forest. A semblance of pride animated his face, an expression so familiar, I ached with homesickness. The deep, warm, unflappable man I loved existed somewhere inside that bristly shell of bitterness. But even as he handed the camera back to me, I watched his expression harden once more into resignation.
“And another of you two.” I was rewarded with Mom’s approving coo when I forwarded to the photo of them holding each other right after the mudslide. Each image, each sentence was part of the trail of crumbs leading my parents back to themselves. Advancing to another shot, I said, “Here we are, just yesterday, trekking through the mountains and cloud forests. A trip of a lifetime, right? But who knew when we started the trip that water and dirt could be so destructive?”
“That’s life for you,” Dad said.
That was the opening I had been waiting for: the exact moment when I could charge ahead and, with the right aim, hit the impossible target: Dad, remember who you are.
“You know something?” I stood up from the couch to face my parents, my eyes on Dad. Please hear this. Please. “This is life. Anything can happen. So we’ve got to deal with it and move on. I mean, look at where we’re sitting right now after we almost died—died!”
The luxurious casita with its thousand-count bed linens and indigenous artwork and handcrafted textiles and plumbing and heating was perfectly quiet as my words rippled over them, but had they sunk in?
“That’s so…” Dad started to say, but he stopped as though his positive attitude had withered and died these last weeks. Neither Mom nor Dad closed the gap between themselves, choosing to remain separate peaks on the sofa.
“Hey!” Christopher called as he strode into the casita. The door banged shut behind him. His thick hair was damp from the rain. “What’re you guys still doing here?”
“The evacuation was called off,” Mom said, her eyes drilling in on Dad, who was staring down at his clasped hands.
“Maybe tomorrow then,” Christopher said hopefully.
“Do you know where Quattro is?” I asked, unable to help myself. Luckily, Mom was so tuned in to Dad, she didn’t pick up on my question.