Home Again

The thought came again, Give her a father. That was what Francis would have said.

She turned to Lina, stared at her so long and so hard that Lina finally turned.

“What, Mom?”

Madelaine wet her lips and tasted rainwater. She felt a fluttering in her chest and knew it was fear. The easy thing to do right now was to turn away, laugh, and say it was nothing. But since Francis’s death, she’d seen how fragile life was, how the wrong choices were sometimes permanent. How all you regretted was the words you didn’t say …

It was time for her to stop being the doormat her father had raised her to be. She needed to stand up for herself, for Lina, for all of them. Maybe Lina would run away with Angel, maybe Angel would break her daughter’s heart—The possibilities were endless and everything could go wrong.

But for years she’d done nothing, and things had gone wrong anyway.

She tried to think of how best to say it, but in the end there was no softness, no blurring, no lead-in for so

mething like this. There was only the truth, and she knew it would hit Lina like a blow. “I spoke with your father.”

“Yeah, right.”

Madelaine swallowed hard. “I did.”

Very slowly Lina lifted her head and looked dully at her mother.

Madelaine waited for Lina to say something, but the silence between them lengthened. Finally Madelaine said, “He’s very sick right now, and he can’t see you, but soon—”

“You mean he won’t see me.” Lina lurched backward and shot to her feet. “Yeah, I’ll bet he’s sick as a dog to find out he’s got a daughter. I can’t believe you,” she hissed, shaking her head.

Madelaine scrambled to get to her feet and reached for her daughter. “Lina—”

Lina smacked her hand away. “Don’t touch me. I can’t believe you, Mom. I’m sitting out here in the rain, after Francis’s funeral, and you tell me—finally—that you’ve talked to my father….” She laughed, and it was a shrill, hysterical sound. “So today—today—I get to find out that I have a father, but he doesn’t care about me and doesn’t want to see me. Perfect timing, Mom.”

“Baby, please—”

Lina’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t believe you thought this would make me feel better.”

“Lina, please …”

“Just do me a favor, Mom. Don’t try to cheer me up anymore, okay?” She gave Madelaine one last hurting look and spun away, running down the planked dock.

Madelaine stood there, watching helplessly. Defeated, she bent down and picked up her purse, then walked slowly down the dock, up the hillside, and to the car.

When she got inside, she looked at Lina, who sat pressed against the window, her arms crossed mutinously, her eyes slammed shut. She thought of a dozen things she could say right now, but they all sounded trite and stupid in light of her obvious error in judgment. Finally she said the only thing that made sense. “I’m sorry, Lina. I guess I shouldn’t have told you. I wasn’t thinking clearly….” Her words faded into the silence and went unanswered. She couldn’t think of anything to add, so she started the car’s engine.

In silence they drove home.

I’m sorry, she’d said.

She should have known after this weekend how meaningless those little words were, how they dropped into an ocean of pain and didn’t even leave a ripple behind.

Angel came awake slowly, listening to the sound of her voice. It took him a second to focus. She was reading to him—Anne Rice’s Tale of the Body Thief, if he wasn’t mistaken.

He forced his eyes open. “A rather macabre choice,” he said, grinning weakly. “I hope it’s not your way of telling me I need to drink blood from now on.”

He could tell that beneath the mask, she was smiling. “Sorry, it’s my personal reading. I thought you might like to hear…” She shrugged, gave a sharp little laugh. “I didn’t think about the subject. Fairly sick, you’re right. I just thought maybe you’d feel less alone if you heard someone’s voice.”

“You’re babbling, Mad.”

She laughed again and shut the book. “I am.”

“You don’t usually babble unless you’re nervous. What happened—did the amazing dead person’s heart quit while I was sleeping?”