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“Your mother was caring for you. She wasn’t a bad mother, and she loved you. She’d moved in with the man she was seeing—he was a stable, rational man. He seemed to care about you. They argued that they could take good care of you, send you to the best schools.”
“You didn’t want shared custody?”
“Your mother convinced me it would be bad for you, to be shuttled back and forth.”
“You could have sued,” I tried.
The sad smile flashed again. “I should have done so many things I didn’t do. But I didn’t. I let you stay with them. I thought your mom was finally happy, that it would be stable for you, that it’d be good.”
“We didn’t stay there long,” I said, a vague memory of packing up the car late at night flashing through my mind. “We left.”
“Over and over again. She would move from one relationship to another, one city to another. And she never told me where she was… where you were. Years would go by in between contacts. I spent a fortune on private investigators, trying to keep track of you. When I found you again at sixteen and I called you, she’d already convinced you I didn’t want you. Do you remember talking to me on the phone? You were in Florida then.”
I did. I’d been evil to him. Mom had told me he didn’t visit because he didn’t care. She’d fed me lies about my father, and kept me moving for years so he couldn’t find me… all the things I’d believed growing up started to dissolve and shatter. “Oh my God.” I couldn’t look at him, and I stared out the window, not seeing anything passing the car. I could only see the memories flashing through my mind, reassembling into something I’d never recognized before, finally seeing the truth.
“Why didn’t you tell me when I went to college? Or started work in New York?” I finally asked, wanting to continue being angry at him, but now feeling a creeping anger at myself for not asking more questions, and at my mother for lying to me for so long.
“Would you have talked to me?”
“Probably not.”
“I did try, Harper. I came to see you once. But you were with a man—you looked happy.”
“You came? You saw me?” I scanned my mind, looking for my dad standing on a street watching me with Andrew, maybe someone I’d noticed in the periphery of my busy life in New York, but nothing was there.
“You looked happy,” he said again.
“Oh my God, Dad.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Harper. I made so many mistakes.”
He had. And so had my mother. I honestly couldn’t piece it all together, couldn’t figure out how I felt about everything he’d just said. I’d need some time to think about it, to understand. But I did feel the anger I’d held for him begin to slip away.
We rode in a silence for a long time then, letting the trees grow and the hills turn green on the sides of the road as the valley floor dropped away and the mountains rose around us. We wound around the foothills toward the mountains that held Kings Grove protected like a jewel between their soaring peaks, and I had the distinct sense of coming home.
Everything my father had said, everything I was understanding now about my life…it made me wonder how much I really wanted to leave this place. It had been taken away from me once. And maybe I never would have stayed—maybe my instinct would always have been to find something bigger, something that was my own. But now, after the things I’d done and seen, the idea of Kings Grove wrapped around me like a warm afghan knitted by someone’s grandmother, and I was reluctant to give that away.
“I might go to Austin sooner than I’d planned,” I said, trying out the words as much to feel my own reaction as to see my dad’s.
He looked over at me. “Oh yeah?”
“Maybe.” I swallowed, finding a new respect for the man who’d brought me back here, the father who’d finally found a way to bring me home. “Would that be okay?”
His lips pressed into a line and he didn’t answer for a long minute. “Harper,” he finally said. “Your life is your own. And if you choose to leave again, it’s fine. This time it will be your choice.”
My choice. My life had been controlled in ways I’d never even realized. But now, I really did have to make a choice. Maybe for the first time ever.
* * *
When Dad droppedme off at the big house, the first thing I did was take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the clean crisp mountain air and closing my eyes as I let it work through me. It was a little like drinking water first thing in the morning when you can feel it sliding through you, slicking over parched dry spots as it swirls down your throat. I felt the air work through my lungs and all the way out to my fingertips. I was glad to be back.
There was a light on in Cam’s house, but that had been true since the dogs had come to live with him. He could play tough all he wanted, but he wouldn’t leave them in the dark if he was going to be out at night. I’d even stepped up on to the porch during the day to hear the television on low. I’d peered through the windows to see a couple of the curious pups sitting and staring up at the big screen, heads cocked to the side as they’d watched.
My own house was dark, and since it wasn’t nearly late enough for Tuck to have turned in, I guessed he was out somewhere. I wished he were home. I didn’t really want to be alone. There was too much confusion flipping around inside me, and while I didn’t necessarily want to talk about it, I also didn’t want to be alone to think about it.
I was just finishing up getting my stuff put away and trying to organize myself for work the next day when Tuck and Cam came in, laughing and loud.
I leaned over the railing from the landing upstairs. “Hey guys.”
