Page 107 of Never Forever

“My boy,” Dad said. His eyes bright, his smile wide. He pulled me in for a hug and even though I was taller and bigger, it made me feel like I was a boy again and I let the emotion of the last few days roll over me.

“I have to ask you a question.”

“Uh oh,” Dad said. “Sounds serious.”

We sat back down, and looking at my Dad, I realized he had taught me so much. I was the man I was because of him. In a million incredible ways. But one of the bad things he’d taughtme was how to not have important conversations. How to not ask the questions that needed to be asked. It was pride and pure stubbornness. It was also a pain so deep I didn’t know how to deal with it.

This wasn’t a legacy I wanted for my kid. This wasn’t the foundation I wanted for my relationship with Carrie.

“You’re not going to like this,” I said. “But I need you to sit here and talk to me.”

Realization dawned across his face, loosened the muscles around his eyes. His mouth. He nodded.

“Mom,” I said.

Dad traced the seam on the old table, a tiny crack he’d repaired after one of my junior high science experiments didn’t go as planned.

“She wasn’t happy. Here. Or with me. She was not…” He stopped. This was information I already knew. This was the point where my father’s obvious heartbreak and discomfort would make my heart break and I’d change the subject, because I hated to see him hurt.

I knew my mother was one of the hundreds of families who came to Calico Cove over the summer. She was from Quebec. The daughter of a single mom who worked hard to get them this beach vacation every year. Mom and Dad met one June and had eloped by August. I was born the following year.

He took a deep breath and pulled off the band aid. “Let’s just say it didn’t come easy to her. As I look back at it, I don’t think love came easily to her either. After the rush of our affair was over and we settled in together, I learned, really, she was happiest alone. I felt like I was intruding when I came home at the end of the day. Then, when you were born it just seemed to get worse. Like she knew she couldn’t escape you and it gave her these panic attacks.”

“Did she ask you to give up your job? Move to Canada?”

“No,” he said. “I offered. A million times. Some place sunny. Some place warmer. Florida. Some place in the mountains. Back to Ireland. Back to Quebec. But it wasn’t a place she was searching for. It was some kind of peace.”

“But if she had asked you to, would you have left?” I pressed.

It was impossible to imagine my father someplace else. What was this guy going to do in Florida besides get a terrible sunburn? Although in some ways, it was a comfort to know he would have. Like Roy who’d give up the occupation he loved, for the family he loved more.

“Of course, I would have,” Dad said like I was insulting him, and I realized I was. “I would have done anything to keep us together. In the end, your mother made the decision she needed to make for herself. She went back to Quebec and I wasn’t given the chance to support that. Support her.”

Support her.

I knew this part too. She’d left in the middle of the night. A note saying she was sorry, on the kitchen table waiting for my dad the next morning.

I finished my whiskey.

If Carrie had her way, I wouldn’t be given that chance either. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but I had to make it clear that I supported her. I chose her.

“Thanks Dad,” I said.

“What are you going to do, son?”

“Everything I can.”

24

Carrie

Iwoke up the first morning on the island to a bright blue sky. A sun that looked like a scoop of butter. The familiar caw of birds and the unfamiliar smashing of a window.

As quickly as I could – which was not quick at all - I rolled off the air mattress my Gran had been using the last week. The finest air mattress I could get my hands on, and it still deflated in the course of the night and climbing out of it was a cardio workout.

There was another thumping sound.

“Stop!” I yelled, flinging myself to the floor. I grabbed Gran’s old gun and raced down the curved wooden stairs imagining some teenagers breaking in so they could party in the empty dining room.

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