The idea to search for his daughter after so many years had come to Lin after he’d watched a video online with some kind of food expert, a white woman who looked so much like his daughter that he nearly slid right off the couch. Then Lin sat down with the investigator and told him everything he could think of about Covey, including Gibbs and his own departure from the island.
Lin hadn’t tried to contact his daughter. If she’d wanted to get in touch, he was certain she could have found a way. It wouldn’t have been hard to find him. As it was, half the island was now living up in Miami. But Covey has never sent word. Whenever it has hurt Lin to think about such things, he’s reasoned that Covey had little choice. It was likely best for Coventina Lyncook to remain dead to everyone who once knew her, even fifty years after her disappearance. True, any young woman in her situation might have fled the day of Little Man’s murder, guilty or not. But, still.
So much time has passed since then and Lin is getting up there in years. Not long ago, he was thinking he should just go ahead and get in touch with Covey after all, forget his pride, when an email arrived from Bunny Pringle. Bunny was writing to say that she had important news and would be calling him. On the telephone, she told Lin that she was calling about their mutual acquaintance, Miss C. Bunny confirmed that Covey had been alive all these years but that now she really was gone, she’d gotten sick.
Coventina. That fool-headed child.
Bunny says Covey was survived by three children. Three children? The investigator only mentioned two. At any rate, Bunny tells Lin they want to meet him, which surprises Lin, considering what happened to their mother. But here he is, now, sitting in his sunroom, waiting for them to arrive.
Lin hasn’t seen Bunny in years, except in the news. She’s famous now, for all that swimming of hers. She was always different, that Pringle girl, but she was a good child at heart and she was a loyal friend to his daughter. Bunny always defended Covey’s name. She never, ever cast doubt on his daughter’s innocence, not even when Lin himself did.
Perhaps it is this last thought that finally does it, that lifts the fog in his mind surrounding the day of Covey’s disappearance. The thought of Bunny and Covey, as close as twins, cheek-to-cheek in their shiny dresses. Lin was already fairly drunk when it happened, when Little Man dropped dead in front of him. Still, he was close enough to have seen something, that’s what he realizes now. Had he really forgotten, boozed up as he was that day? Or had he, like most men at critical moments in their lives, merely refused to accept something because he did not want to?
The doorbell rings. When Covey’s children finally walk into Lin’s house, the shock of seeing that woman in person, the one who looks just like his daughter, eclipses all other thoughts. Only later, when Bunny stumbles over a coffee table, Still clumsy, that girl, will Lin take a good, long look at his daughter’s best friend and think back, once again, to that day in 1965.
Meeting Lin
They are rounding the corner past a house with a burst of yellow-and-orange crotons and a lanai enclosed with mosquito screening. As they park the car in the driveway and walk to the nearest door, Byron sees a small swimming pool under the lanai. The border of the pool is tiled with a dolphin motif. The door to the house has a dolphin-shaped wind chime and a dolphin-shaped Welcome sign. Very Florida, Byron thinks, as he wipes the sweat from his temples, as he pulls his shirt away from his damp torso, as he longs for the cool morning air of the Pacific coast.
A small, fleshy woman answers the door. She has toothpaste-ad teeth and a Cuban accent.
“Come in, Mister Lin is in the back,” she says, leading them across a broad room with cream-colored flooring.
Byron shakes his head as he walks. Why are they even here? Do they really have to meet this man? The nervousness he’s been feeling on the ride over from the hotel is morphing into a kind of irritation, compounded by Marble’s presence. Sure, Johnny Lyncook is her grandfather, too, but it’s different for her. Her whole relationship with their mother and this family is different.
By the time he gets to the next room he’s decided he’s going to have it out with this man. This man, who is supposed to be his grandfather. This man, whose irresponsible behavior and betrayal drove Byron’s mother away, nearly killed her, caused her to lose everything and everyone she knew. And sent her, ultimately, into circumstances that no young woman should have to face.
Byron sees an old Chinese guy with hair as black as coal, sitting on a wicker sofa. Next to him is a cane and a glass-topped table packed with photo frames. He bows his head as he uses the cane to push himself up from the seat. He’s a tall man, this Johnny Lyncook. But he’s a wispy-looking character, except for the hair, monochromatic and thick as a wig. The side table has photos of children. This man probably has other grandchildren. This man, who does not deserve to be called grandfather.