Page 230 of One Wild Wish

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Gwen

I couldn’t get away from August fast enough. He didn’t understand how hard this was for me, how low I’d sunk after I’d thought I’d lost him for good. If I let him in fully, opened myself to the possibility that we were more than this blip of time and we didn’t work out, the fall wouldn’t be pretty. It would be a free-climbing disaster, a bungee jump without a cord.

You’d have to scrape me off the ground.

I kept my focus on the boisterous round table Finch had visited. Finch. I still hadn’t recovered from seeing him again, those two boys—no, men —side by side. I had never apologized to Finch after our night together, either. He’d gone backpacking. I’d disappeared inside myself. Our coffee hours and library studying had vanished the next year. We’d make eye contact across a room, and one of us would turn the other way. My avoidance skills had been top notch.

Here, all these years later, I wanted to say the things I’d never said. Explain to him how dejected I’d been, apologize for using him. But not with August around. That was a conversation for Finch and me alone.

All that concerned me now was finding my father. Funny how that had become the less stressful aspect of this night. The not-easy/easier problem.

Wigged out on zany adrenaline, I zeroed in on my target.

If a walrus took human form, it would be Uncle Rex. He was a round man with a bulbous nose, his gray eyebrows an entity of their own. His handlebar moustache was overgrown, his sparse hair pulled into a frizzy ponytail. He whispered in the man’s ear at his left. The tall man vacated his seat, smiling as he passed me.

Uncle Rex patted the chair. “Finch tells me you’re looking for someone.” His voice was gruff and rumbly, as though he’d smoked a pack of cigarettes and had shouted for an hour.

I accepted his invitation, grateful to sit. My limbs felt heavy. My heart felt heavier after bickering with August. The urge to turn and search him out was powerful, but I gripped my purse tighter, felt the journal tucked inside. “I’m sorry to interrupt your night, but yeah—I’m looking for a man who would have frequented this place in the late eighties. I don’t know his name or what he looked like.”

“Sounds like quite the puzzle.”

I huffed out a humorless laugh. “One I’ve been trying to solve for twenty years.”

“Okay.” He twisted one of the rings on his stubby fingers. “Lay it on me. What do ya know?”

“He came here with a woman, Mary Hamilton.”

He frowned. “The name don’t ring a bell, but most wouldn’t.”

I sifted through what else I’d learned, a clue that could trigger his memory. “She danced at the TASC center, was part of a group called the Sunshine Girls.”

He slapped the table, his eyes disappearing in a happy squint. “Yeah, sure. That babe lit up a room.”

Now my mother had been a babe . Would wonders never cease? “You knew her?”

“I wished I’d known her better, if you get my drift.” He winked.

Attempting to incinerate that visual, I debated what to ask next. How best to figure out who my father was. But the question that escaped surprised the heck out of me. “What was she like?”

“Sweet as pie. Funny. Always making the servers laugh. Said if she didn’t become a dancer, she wanted to be a comedian. Make the world smile. But, man, when she danced?” He whistled. “The whole room watched. Bet she wound up on Broadway, like she planned.”

A comedian. A Broadway star. A girl who’d dreamed of greatness. She’d had high hopes for an exciting future. Heat pricked my eyes.

I’d never forget the day I came home to find my CD collection gone. My mother had trashed them, claimed my music was the reason my grades were poor. She’d hidden my guitar, too. My gift from August. All because my eighth-grade teacher had shown up at our house to explain I had a learning disorder. That I needed visual cues and support at home and school.

My mother’s supportive reply: “She just needs to work harder.”

She’d excelled in demoralizing me back then, but surprisingly, amazingly , for the first time in my twenty-eight years, I wanted to know Mary Hamilton. Something bigger than giving birth to me must have destroyed her spirit. Something to do with my father.

The man I was determined to find.

Doubts silenced my further questions. Turning that stone could unearth a whole whack of spiders. The scary, jumping, hairy kind. I could leave that rock alone, forget this ridiculous quest, but that choice led to more unanswered questions, more wondering, more years feeling untethered. “Did you know the man?” I asked Uncle Rex. “The one she came here with?”

He motioned to a waitress and tapped his empty tumbler. “His name was Ted, I think. Or Tom? She never gave me the time of day, but with her fella?” He hummed a rough, gravely tune. “Those two were hot for each other, but I didn’t know him well.”

Another image I’d prefer to torch. “Is there anything else? Anything you can tell me about him? Where he lived? What kind of car he drove? Was he ever here with other women, or just her?”