We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(11)

We stare at the ocean for a minute. “And was it?” I ask eventually. “Good for your imagination?”

“I drew pictures of you when I was little. I don’t mean to sound creepy. It wasn’t an obsession or anything. It was more the way a kid might draw a grandparent he doesn’t see that often, or an imaginary friend or whatever. I have this sketchbook, where I put ideas and stuff—I’ve always had one. And I’d draw a sister, standing next to me in front of the castle. Or on the beach. Especially before Tatum came to live with us, because once he did I wasn’t such a loner. Sorry, that sounds creepy, too.”

“No, it’s fine,” I say. And then: “I have a sketchbook.”

“Really?”

“For like, imaginary maps and game ideas and stuff I want to make. Some people think it’s weird.”

“Mine is mostly tattoo ideas. And doodles. I’m not an artist like Kingsley,” says Meer. “I started a sketchbook because he always has one. Most places he goes, or whenever he’s sitting around, he likes to keep his hands moving. It helps him understand the world. I wanted to be like my dad when I was little, but also—I always was like him anyway. I like to keep my hands moving and kind of process things by drawing stuff.”

“Me too.”

“I’m talking a lot right now. I think I’m nervous, probably? We don’t have a lot of visitors.”

“Me too, again,” I tell him. “I don’t meet new family members every day.”

Meer grins at me, sunny. I scan his face for similarities to my own—traits we both get from Kingsley. The mouth, and the shape of the chin, I think. But the way we look isn’t the important thing. Meer and I are connected. We have always been connected. Our whole lives, we’ve been knit together by our biology, and by Meer’s fantasies of me being part of his family, without my knowing it.

And now I know.

“When is our father due back?” I ask. The words our father feel unfamiliar in my mouth.

Meer doesn’t answer. He steps deeper into the water. The waves are pretty big here, and they splash against his knees.

“I came a long way,” I add, talking to his back. “From California. Specifically to meet him.”

“He’s giving you this,” says Meer, pointing at the ocean. “Inviting you here. He wants you to see it, I think. And be here, now that your mom is away. He wants you to stay in our house. To get to know us.”

“How does he know my mom left?”

Meer shrugs. “Instagram, maybe.”

“He told you that?”

“Maybe he talks to your mother. I don’t know.”

“He doesn’t.” I look out at the infinite stretch of the sea. “What time is his flight?”

“I dunno. He went to see a client about a painting. These collectors, they like to meet the artist, but Kingsley doesn’t like studio visits. He shows them photographs of the art and lets them buy him expensive meals while they decide what they want. I think he’s in Boston? Or maybe New York.”

“But he said tomorrow?” I persist.

“He doesn’t like schedules and commitments and timetables. He’s very unconstrained.”

I understand now. “You don’t know when he’s coming back,” I say.

“He did say tomorrow. But it might not be.”

“He invited me here, and promised me a painting, and then he just went on a trip?”

“It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like, then?”

“Kingsley isn’t a regular person. He’s an artist.”

“So?”

“He makes his own schedule. And that’s essential to him being what he is, for the genius to be channeled through him.” Meer begins walking along the beach, still in the water.

I stop and roll my jeans to my knees, then catch up. “You think he’s a genius?”

“Sure. He keeps separate from the world. We keep separate from the world, too, mostly, here at Hidden Beach. The idea is that if you eat when you feel hungry and sleep when you’re tired, and you listen to what’s inside you, then you’re giving the muse a chance to show up. Kingsley lives like that. He leaves himself open for the muse.”

I could answer Meer by saying that Kingsley is the kind of man who abandons a woman he got pregnant.

I could say: “He sold Persephone for millions and never paid my mother.”

I could say: “In his forties he slept with a nineteen-year-old.”

I have thought these things about Kingsley Cello, when I read all those articles and while my mother was telling me what happened, but the truth is that for all his faults and even crimes, I want my father to see me.

To redeem me.

To help me find my place in the world, when I have always been on the move.

To help me understand my own mind,

how I go so deep into games that the rest of the world falls away, how I am so full of rage and want

and righteousness and loss,

standing on the brink of my own future.

I want him to give me

the weapons I need

to conquer the levels ahead.

I want him to have

the answer to Matilda Avalon Klein.

But I say nothing to Meer except “I’d like to meet him.”