Sincerity, Eventually, Finds an Answer

Chapter 2: The Road Back

I drove to Grayhaven the next morning with a thermos of coffee on the passenger seat and my old suitcase in the trunk. I had taken a coat, two sweaters, and the framed photograph of my mother I'd kept on my bedroom shelf since I was twenty. I wasn't sure why I'd packed it. I wasn't sure I would let myself take it into the inn.

The town appeared after three hours of winter highway: low brick shops, narrow side streets, and a harbor that looked made of hammered steel under the gray sky. I passed the bakery where my mother used to buy cinnamon rolls for the breakfast guests. Its sign had changed, but the blue awning was the same.

The Tideglass Inn stood at the end of the bluff road. White paint peeled from the porch rail. The roses were cut back to thorny stems, and a plywood sign near the drive announced that the property was under contract.

I parked and sat with both hands on the steering wheel.

I had not come back when I graduated. I hadn't come back when my father sent a card after my mother's birthday. I hadn't gone to the hospital when he'd had his appendix out, because Miles was too young to understand why his sister wasn't there and I couldn't think of a way to explain it that didn't make everything worse.

For eleven years, I had treated distance as a door I could keep closed.

The front door opened. Miles came down the steps in a dark green sweater, one hand shoved in a pocket. He was taller than I remembered from the last summer we'd spent together. His hair fell into his eyes, and he had my mother's narrow chin.

I got out of the car.

He stopped a few feet away. For one second, neither of us moved.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey."

I wanted to hug him. I wasn't sure if he'd want that. He solved the problem by stepping forward and wrapping his arms around my shoulders. I held him carefully at first, then more tightly when his face pressed against my coat.

"You came," he said.

"I said I would."

We broke apart. He looked past me at my car. "You brought a suitcase."

"I didn't know how long I'd be here."

"I can find you a room."

"I'm not staying in the inn."

He nodded as if he'd expected that, then led me inside.

The lobby smelled like lemon polish and the faint dampness of old carpet. A wreath hung above the reception desk, its red ribbon slightly crooked. The front windows looked toward the harbor. I used to sit on the radiator beneath them with my schoolbooks while my mother checked guests in. After she died, I sat there alone until Ruth told me guests found it unsettling.

Miles took me through the back hall to the office. The old oak desk still stood against the wall, although its drawers had been pulled out and stacked on the floor. A brown ledger lay open on top of a cardboard box.

"I didn't touch the pages after I saw the note," he said.

I moved closer. The handwriting was my father's, narrow and slanted. I knew it from the birthday cards he'd sent before he stopped sending them.

The ledger showed deposits and withdrawals for the winter of the year I turned eighteen. Near the bottom of a page, an entry had been made in blue ink: $8,600 withdrawn from payroll reserve. The next line bore my father's initials.

Beside it, in Ruth's handwriting, someone had written: "Emergency wages. Repaid from spring bookings."

I touched the page without turning it.

"This doesn't say you took the money," Miles said.

"No."

"There's another page." He pointed to a sheet folded beneath the ledger cover.

I didn't open it. My pulse had started to beat hard in my throat.

"Why didn't you read it?"

"Because I saw Ruth coming. I thought if she knew I knew, she'd throw the whole thing out before you got here."

"She could still do that."

"I can put it in my room."

"No." I pulled my hand back. "Don't steal it. If you do, they'll say it means whatever they want it to mean."

He glanced at me. "Then what do we do?"

"We read it here, with someone else in the room."

"Like Dad?"

"Like a person who can't pretend the page never existed."

His expression tightened. "You don't want to talk to him."

"I didn't say that."

Before he could answer, the door opened behind us.

My father stood in the hall with one hand braced on the doorframe. His hair had gone almost completely gray. He wore the navy cardigan I'd given him for Father's Day when I was sixteen.

His eyes stopped on me.

"June," he said.

"Hello, Dad."

He looked at the open ledger, then at Miles. "What is this?"

"Something we should have talked about a long time ago," I said.

He stayed in the doorway. I couldn't tell whether he was going to come in or turn away.

"Ruth's looking for you," he told Miles.

"I'm right here," Miles said.

Dad's gaze flicked to the folded page. "Put that away."

I didn't move.

"That's what I came to see," I said.

He looked at me for a long moment, then let go of the doorframe. "We can talk after dinner."

"I'm not promising I'll be here for dinner."

"Then we can talk now."