“It’s time to get up, Dad.”
While my father splashes water on himself in the bathroom, I poke the toe of my boot through the debris of empty beer cans and fast-food delivery cartons covering the carpet. There are a lot more cans than cartons, but at least he’s been eating. I’m reminded by my percolating stomach that I haven’t, and none of the half-full boxes of rice or feebly rewrapped burgers look farm fresh. I sniff one—which has recently pulled double duty as an ashtray—then carefully pat the wrapper back in place.
He emerges in a dingy T-shirt and his old pinch-kneed sweatpants. He blinks in the lamplight, and I wonder where his glasses are. His black hair is wild and sopping. Droplets trickle through the dark scruff shadowing his cheeks and chin. As he stands there unshaven in sports-themed loungewear, reeking of clove cigarettes, it could almost be funny, except for how thin and grayish-pale and crumpled Dad looks, and how he eyes the covers like he’d love nothing more than to slip back under them and sleep.
To stop this from happening, I sit stiffly on the bed, fisting my hands in the papery brown sheets. I’ve been waiting for this moment, and now I don’t know how to start.
Surprisingly, Dad does. “What are you doing here, Imogene.” It’s not even a question. More like a line in a script he has to read, instead of a topic of actual curiosity.
“What do you mean, what am I doing here? I followed you. The clues you left me.”
He stares at me, almost-black eyes blank.
I dig through my bag, dumped at the foot of the bed, and pull out the heart. “You left this for me, didn’t you? To tell me where you’d gone? To tell me where I could find you?”
The longer the silence drags on, the more stupid my words sound echoing in my own ears.
“If you didn’t want me to look for you, then why did you give me the heart?”
His hand rasps against thick stubble as he drags it down his face. “I don’t know.”
“You have to! You’re the grown-up! Isn’t it, like, your job to know what you’re doing?”
Shrinking down onto the bed, he shuts his eyes. “Maybe—I just wanted you to have something from me.”
“Why?” I ask, cold and quiet. “How long were you planning on being gone?”
He doesn’t answer.
The blood is sort of fuzzing out of my brain and toes and fingers, so I can barely feel the roughness of the stone, or the sharpness of the crystals. Just a solid, unknowable weight. “I’m your daughter. Lindy is your wife. We were pretty much falling apart. And this is what you were gonna leave us with?” I hold it up for him to see.
Dad winces.
With all my strength I hurl the thing across the room, against the wall. It dings the plaster and tiny chips of rock fly, but the geode rebounds and thumps to the floor, intact. “This is nothing!” I shriek. “It’s a stupid fucking rock!”
“Imogene, stop!” he cries.
But I don’t. I stomp on it with my winter boot, and it only grinds into the thin carpet. “It’s a story! It isn’t Mom and it isn’t you and it doesn’t mean shit! So I don’t want it!” I don’t even look so much as feel around the room for something heavy. I land on the squat brass lamp on the bedside table and heft it, knocking off the shade and lightbulb in one swipe.
“You’ll hurt yourself,” Dad protests.
With shaking hands I raise the lamp to bring the base down on the stone as hard as I can. There’s a sound like splintering bone, and it caves. Furiously, I kick at the shards. Bits of crunched crystal and pulverized stone scatter across the carpet. I bring the lamp up again, but a sweaty band of strong fingers closes around my wrist.
“Stop, stop, stop,” he hushes, like he’s a father and I’m a newborn. Sitting back on the bed, Dad drops his head into his hands. “Uhssry,” he mumbles.
“Huh?”
He lifts his chin. “I said I’m sorry.”
“Good. So . . .” I set the lamp down and rub my palms on my pants legs. “Good.” Joining him on the bed, I sit still for a minute before tipping my head against his shoulder, my nose squashed against his chest. He hesitates, then slings his arm around me, which puts this scratchy feeling in my throat.
“What are you doing here, Dad?”
Slowly he reaches into the pocket of sweatpants I’m positive he’s been wearing for a longer stretch of time than is appropriate. He pulls out a piece of paper, one that’s clearly been folded and unfolded and refolded times infinity until the creases have become needle-sharp, and hands it to me.
On it is a printed photo of my mother, of Sidonie Malachai, outside her peach-colored condo on Pines Road. It doesn’t look like she knows her picture’s being taken. Below it, a pageful of information is typed out—phone number, address, the name of the law firm she works for. Her husband’s name.