Page 40 of Meet Me in the Blue

“I will.” She gave me another hug on her way out of the kitchen.

A couple of minutes later I could hear her in the den talking to Natalie on the phone while I finished getting lunch ready and headed out to the living room. I set the tray of food on the table next to my dad’s bed and switched on the television to his favorite show. He loved all things DIY and my mom had hours ofThis Old Houserecorded for him. The sound woke him up and he gave me a groggy smile.

“I have strict orders to make you eat,” I said. “You have to eat at least half or Mom will never leave me in charge again.”

“Where is the Warden?”

“I’m right here,” she said, and I laughed as she walked into the living room. “I’m going to have lunch with Nat.”

The shadows around my father’s eyes parted, another smile breaking through. “That’s good, Eliza.”

“Please eat,” she whispered and kissed his forehead. “For me.”

He touched her cheek, the skin on his fingers like vellum. “I’ll try. Have fun, okay.”

A few seconds passed between them. “I’ll be back soon.”

Mom left and my dad did as he’d promised. He’d eaten at least half of his slice of bread and the entire bowl of soup while we watched the renovation of some Civil War-era colonial on the big screen. We both balked at the wallpaper choices, critiquing every design choice down to the grout the owners had chosen for the bathroom tile. It was like we’d fallen back in time twenty years. All those Saturday mornings when we’d sit on the couch bundled in blankets, and instead of soup it was Frosted Flakes for me and coffee for my dad. We’d watch the TLC channel and every fix-it-up show we could find until my mom and Nora complained, and we’d give in and watch something else. I remember thinking I’d wanted to be an interior designer until I’d stumbled across a photography show on one of those Saturday mornings, and my life had been altered forever. My dad had seen the light in my eyes and had gotten a camera for me that next birthday. I looked at him now, buried under quilts, his big, full moon eyes, more like crescents as he fought to stay awake.

“Want me to let you sleep?” I asked and he shook his head.

“Stay a while. Unless you need to work.”

“I can work out here.”

“I’d love…” he stuttered and sighed a trembled breath. “I’d love to see the photos you’ve chosen for the article.”

“Yeah? Give me a second, I’ll grab my MacBook.”

After I cleaned up the lunch dishes and gathered my MacBook and bag from my room, I settled in next to my dad in his bed. Dad had always been an affectionate father and having him snuggled in next to me was nothing out of the ordinary, even though our roles had switched. Here was this human, smaller than he should be, sitting next to me, eager like I’d been when Dad had shared something with me.

“Show me what you got,” he said, less sleepy than he had been twenty minutes ago.

“I loved the shots from Sunday dinner, and these…” I scrolled down to the pictures I’d taken at the office. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

He stared at the pictures I’d taken of Rook and his dad, of his own office, his desk with papers sprawled across it, untouched like they were waiting for his return.

“It feels… empty.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged, scrolling away from the office pictures back up to the smiling faces at the dinner table. “Use these. I’m alive in these, the ones at the office… it’s like I’m gone already.”

“Dad… that’s your practice. That’s you and Roger. I want to show that.”

He tapped the screen, tapped the faces around the table. “This is me and Roger.”

“Okay.” I nodded as he slid the computer onto his lap. “I’ll nix the office shots.”

He zoomed in on Nora, then me, then Mom, his eyes misting enough I noticed. “Remember that winter we all went to Vermont. Smugglers’ Notch,” he said the resort name with reverence and laughed. “You kept begging Rook to go snowboarding with you. He was terrified, but he did it anyway.”

“He fell so many times. I thought for sure he was going to break something and that Natalie would bury me alive in the snow.” Amused, I reached over and scrolled down to the picture of Rook at the office again.

That smile, the freedom in it.

“He would do anything for you.” Dad looked at me then, his eyes shiny and strong. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I do… But Dad, it’s complicated.”

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