Page 43 of Sunsets & Slow Dances

“What about your dad?” she asked.

“I never knew my dad.”

“Do you know who he is, though?”

I wasn’t sure if I should share this with her, but she asked, and I didn’t want to lie to her. “Growing up, all my mom told me was that I was the product of a one-night stand. After she passed away, I decided to try to find him. I submitted my DNA to Ancestry and 23andMe and was able to find a match for an aunt. It turned out she had one brother who was my dad. His name was Gabriel Thorpe. He was a roughneck who worked on oil rigs and drove a Harley. He died eight years after I was born.”

“How did he die?”

“He was in a convenience store when it was getting robbed, and he died trying to protect a mom and her child.”

“So, he was like a hero?”

“I like to think so, but some other people I talked to, didn’t have nice things to say about him.”

“Other people?”

I nodded. “After I spoke to my aunt, I asked if he had any friends I could talk to for stories about him. There were mixed reviews.”

It turned out he had a meth addiction and had stolen money from a lot of people in his life.

“Do you wish you didn’t ask?”

“No, I’m happy I know. People aren’t perfect, and parents are just people. I don’t know what his life was like, so I can’t judge him.”

She nodded. “I don’t really know anything about my dad. But you do, right?”

“Me?”

“You knew him, right? Because you were with Callum.”

“Oh, um, yeah.”

Everyone in Firefly Island knew Chuck Knight. He was the mayor, but even if he weren’t, he was a hard man to miss. He hada domineering presence both in physique and personality. When he walked into a room, the atmosphere shifted. All of the energy was automatically directed his way; he had an authority that was impossible to ignore.

“What was he like?”

It felt wrong to be discussing Mr. Knight with Chloe behind Callum’s back. But he was her dad, too.

“He was really tall. He did a lot of work in the community. People respected and admired him. He had a very commanding presence.”

I was trying to come up with other things to say about Chuck Knight. He always intimidated me and could be scary when he drank, but I didn’t want to tell her those things. There was no reason to. I’m sure her mom must have seen that side of him. Anyone who was close to him had to have. He was a social drinker, but he had a lot of social occasions.

“My mom never really talked about him. Whenever I asked her about him, she just got really sad, so I stopped even trying. And I was just…it was always…I don’t know; I guess I was just too embarrassed to ask anyone else about him because, you know…”

“Yeah, I know.”

I felt so bad that I’d never considered how it affected Chloe being the product of the scandalous affair. I’d thought about Callum, of course. And Nora and even Danielle. But never Chloe. Maybe it was because she’d been so young when he died. She was only three. I guess I just sort of thought she’d have the same experience as I did growing up not having a dad. But it wasn’t the same. Shedidhave a dad. She had a dad that the entire town respected and admired, and she was the walking reminder of his indiscretions that were only discovered after he was six feet under.

That must be a really tough identity to carry around. At least she’d had her mom, though. Firefly was a small town, and I’d observed the two of them together over the years. They were clearly close. In fact, for the last few years of Danielle’s life, they seemed inseparable. I rarely saw the two of them apart. But, with hindsight being twenty/twenty, that could have been because Danielle was so ill, which was something else I hadn’t known about at the time but could relate to.

Just like I could relate to feeling alone in the world. After my grandpa passed, I had no close blood relations left. From what Reagan told me, Chloe was in the same boat. She only had Callum, and they didn’t seem to be bonding. Maybe staying out of this would be the right thing to do, but I was never really good at doing the right thing.

“You know, you can always talk to Callum about him or even Nora.”

“Do you think it’s weird that I’m living in Nora’s house?”

“Has she been?—?”

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