“She’s doing well,” Frankie said.
“It’s good you’re here. Your mother missed you.”
“And you?”
He looked up, surprising her with the directness of his gaze, as if maybe he’d been waiting for this question. “You were a different girl when you came home,” he said.
“I … struggled for a while after Vietnam,” she said.
“We all did. After Finley … I wasn’t myself. I didn’t know how to…” He shrugged, as unable to find the words as he’d been to process the grief.
“I’m sorry about that last night, before I went to Virginia … the things I said to you,” Frankie said. In the silence that followed her apology, she got up, walked down the hall to her bedroom, and dug through her travel bag. Finding the photograph of Finley that she’d taken down in anger, she walked back to the living room and offered it to her father. “He belongs on the heroes’ wall,” she said quietly, putting the framed picture down on the table. “I’m so sorry, Dad.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then stood. He was a little unsteady. Either he’d drunk too much or eaten too little or worry had upended him again. “Come with me.” He went to the kitchen, grabbed some keys off the hook by the wall phone, and headed out to the patio.
Frankie followed him onto Ocean Boulevard. They walked down the wide cement sidewalk, side by side, not speaking.
“We fought about you after you left,” he said at last.
Frankie didn’t know what to say to that.
“She blamed me. Said I’d been unpleasant to you.”
“I was kind of a bitch, too.”
“I told her that.”
Frankie surprised herself by smiling.
“She knew you’d be back,” he said.
“Did she? I wonder how?”
“Life. Motherhood. She said something about spawning salmon.”
After another half block, Dad stopped in front of a small gray one-story beach bungalow with a white-painted brick wishing well positioned out front on a patch of grass. An absurd bit of whimsy in this messy world. Larger, two-story houses bracketed the bungalow, made it look like a toy. A dark blue convertible Mustang was parked in the driveway.
“I was going to tear this cottage down and build something bigger. And then … when you went to Virginia, your mom wanted you to have a place to come home to. Someday. Told me in no uncertain terms that this cottage was to be your safe place. She put her foot down. I don’t think she’d ever said such a thing to me before. Or to anyone. Anyway, she had this cottage painted inside and furnished it with the bare essentials. Well, bare essentials as defined by your mother. The car is my contribution.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out two sets of keys, handed them to her.
Frankie was too stunned to speak for a moment; she stared up at her father, seeing him in a way she never had before, seeing a ghost of the man who’d left Ireland as a kid and crossed an ocean alone, who’d been unable to go to war with the men of his generation, who’d fallen in love with a woman who was used to having it all. The man who’d lost a son to war and almost lost his wife, who’d sent his only daughter running off into the night because he didn’t know how to welcome her home. She wondered if they would ever speak of these things, the two of them.
“Thank you, Dad,” she said quietly. He looked uncomfortable with her gratitude, or maybe just with the history that came with it. He glanced down the street. “I should go. I don’t like leaving your mom alone for long.”
Frankie nodded, watched him head for home. When he turned the corner, she walked past the gray bungalow’s white-painted brick wishing well.
She unlocked the door, opened it, and flipped the light switch. Inside, she found a quaint pine-paneled living room with a soot-stained river-rock fireplace and big windows with gingham curtains. Hardwood floors, an oval rag rug, a kitchen newly painted in a pale aqua, a floral overstuffed sofa, and a single chair. A vase full of silk flowers on the mantel.
She moved through the place, turning on lights as she went. There were two small bedrooms, the larger of which overlooked a fenced backyard with a live oak tree at its center. Mom had furnished the room with a queen bed, a fluffy white comforter, and a small bedside table with a shell-decorated lamp.
Frankie exhaled a long-held breath. Maybe this was what she’d needed all along. A place to call her own.
Twenty-Five
That night, Frankie slept well.