Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Blake
Blake was awakened by a knock at his door. He rubbed his eyes and squinted at the dusty beam of sunlight streaming though his bedroom window. Ethan’s manuscript lay on the mattress by his head.
There was a second knock, louder than the first. “Blake,” Dustin said through the door. “Are you in there? You got a package.”
“Just a sec!” Extending his arms over his head to stretch his achy muscles, Blake padded to the door and opened it.
He almost ran face-first into Dustin, who was smiling like a kid on the first day of summer vacation.
“It’s from your mom,” Dustin singsonged.
A pleasant buzz of excitement fluttered in Blake’s chest. It must be one of Lena Larsen’s famous care packages, and the timing couldn’t have been better for a pick-me-up from his mama.
Blake followed Dustin into the living room and made a dramatic production out of searching for his keys. Finally, keys in hand, he sat with the package in his lap and slowly dragged a key along the taped seal, pretending to have trouble cutting through it.
“This is taped really well,” he said, biting back his smile.
“Oh my god, you’re such a dick. Open it!”
With a hearty chuckle, Blake yanked the box flaps open, the tape tearing with a satisfying snap. Right on top was a block of the fudge his mother made especially for Dustin, carefully wrapped in wax paper.
Blake lifted the dense confection – which was nearly the size of a dinner plate – and handed it to his roommate.
Dustin eagerly unwrapped the block and bit off the corner, groaning in delight as the rich chocolate fudge melted in his mouth. “Your mom is the best. I’ll be in my room making love to this fudge. Do not disturb me.”
Blake laughed and carried the box to his room, where he perched on the end of his bed.
He lifted out a Tupperware container and popped its sunny yellow lid. The sweet fragrance of molasses wafted out, reminding Blake of summer days as a child. Inside the container was a jumble of dark brown cookies with cracked tops. He bit into one, sighing with delight at its soft, chewy center.
While he savored his treat – his mother’s cookies were one of the few sweet indulgences he allowed himself – he pulled out a six pack of cotton crew socks and set them on the bed.
The last item in the box was a blue and green knit cap, with a band of white snowflakes.
His mother was a good knitter, but he hadn’t seen her attempt an intricate Fair Isle design before.
Impressed, he pulled the cap over his sleep-tousled hair and wasn’t surprised to find that it fit perfectly.
Judging by how soft and lofty the yarn felt, the cap may have been cashmere.
He made a mental note to buy his mama an extra special Christmas present this year.
Moving the empty box to the floor, a flash of yellow caught his eye.
A postcard peeked out from under one of the box’s inner flaps. Stuck to its front was a Post-it note with his mama’s neat handwriting. He traced his finger under her words and mouthed them to himself.
Blakey,
I hope you and Dusty like your treats. The postcard is from your father. He always sends these to me in case you’ve moved. Silly man.
Xoxo Mama
Blake removed the Post-it note and stuck it to the box. On the front of the postcard was a statue of a child doing a cartwheel and a word in ornate, loopy script that made his eyes cross. It was probably the name of some place in Germany where his father’s orchestra performed.
Turning the card over, he inspected the address, written in his father’s compact, but easily readable printing. Although his father lived in Leipzig, this postcard had been sent from a hotel in Düsseldorf.
Hi Blake!
Greetings from Düsseldorf!
Isn’t this statue funny? The city has a cartwheel tournament every year. With your gymnastics classes, I bet you’d win.
Ich denke immer an dich -
Cal
His father often switched to German to express his feelings. It was like a secret language Blake had to decode. Maybe that’s why he did it – to make sure Blake paid extra attention to those words.
Mein hübscher Sohn.
Ich vermisse dich.
Ich liebe dich.
Blake called up a translation app on his phone and carefully typed the message in, letter by letter. He smiled at the translation that appeared.
I’m always thinking of you.
He moved to his desk and propped the card against the base of his lamp. Sitting back in his chair, he opened the desk’s center drawer and shuffled through its contents until he found the old, crinkled envelope labeled Dad.
With the care of an archivist handling a rare manuscript, he slid a handful of pictures out of the envelope – the only pictures he had of his father.
The picture on top of the stack showed Calvin Duffy, young and fresh-faced, with his lush, golden brown hair and green eyes, holding a four-year old Blake, whose curly toddler hair was corn silk blond.
That was the first time he’d met his dad.
It would be another eight years before Lena Larsen could no longer ignore her son’s questions about why his dad lived so far away, instead of at home like other kids’ dads.
“Your father and I had a no-strings-attached summer fling,” she’d said. He distinctly remembered the word fling, because at the time, he didn’t understand what it meant. “Our relationship had a built-in expiration date.”
Blake moved to the next picture in the stack, one of Cal and Lena from a sunny day in June of ’96, taken at the base of Lombard Street.
Over the years, Blake had studied every detail of his twenty-year old father, from his shaggy curtain bangs, to his green windbreaker, to his baggy jeans and scuffed sneakers, trying to understand who he was as a young man.
One afternoon when Blake was helping his mother with a sewing project, she told him the story of that summer.
She’d met Cal days after turning twenty, and was instantly smitten by the young, handsome cellist, with his intense eyes and gifted hands.
He had big dreams and was planning to move to Europe in the fall to pursue a career in music.
They only had the summer, so they made the most of it, exploring the city during the day and falling asleep in each other’s arms every night.
Blake asked if they’d ever thought of staying together.
“We talked about it,” she said with a faraway stare. “But it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe in another life we would have married, had things been different.”
A week before Cal was set to board a plane to Germany, Lena found out she was pregnant. By that time, she’d fallen hopelessly in love with him, and couldn’t bring herself to derail his career before he’d even had a chance to begin.
“So you didn’t tell him about me,” Blake said.
“No, baby. Not until years later, when he was established with an orchestra and couldn’t drop everything to come back to the States.”
That was the end of the conversation. She never told Blake how his father had handled the news he had a son. All he knew was that Cal came for a visit after that – a visit Blake was too young to remember.
Blake flipped through the remaining pictures with a wistful smile on his face.
Most of the photos were from his dad’s last visit, when Blake flew down to LA to spend the week with him.
On that trip, he finally had the chance to see his father perform in concert.
Spellbound, he tracked every movement, every sway, as Cal became one with his cello, weaving music out of thin air.
That week was the most time he’d ever spent with his dad as an adult, and the two hit it off immediately.
Up to that point, Blake’s dad had been a mysterious man who lived in a faraway land, distant and unknowable.
But now he saw Cal as a cool guy. Funny and smart.
A man who could be a friend. A role model. A father.
Too soon, it was time to say goodbye, and their communication fell into familiar routines. Emails. The occasional postcard. Birthday and holiday cards.
After the LA trip, Blake pressed his mama about why she hadn’t told Cal she was pregnant. He’d accepted it without question as a teenager. But now, as an adult, he needed to understand.
“I was afraid if I derailed his career, he’d come to resent me,” Lena explained. “But I was more worried he’d come to resent you.”
Blake reflected on that conversation a lot. His dad had never been given a choice. Maybe he would have preferred to be a father, rather than an international cellist. Then again, maybe not. Twenty-six years later, Cal was still living in Europe, playing in world-renowned symphony orchestras.
Blake tucked the pictures back into the envelope.
How different might his life have been if he’d grown up as Blake Lane Duffy? He’d never know. Those years were gone. There was no getting them back.
Ever since he was a little boy, he’d ached for a relationship with his dad, so he couldn’t fault Ethan for wanting to stay on his father’s good side.
The tension between Ethan and his father had been simmering the whole time, ever since the day he’d chosen the club over an internship, and lied about the club’s true nature.
Blake suspected Ethan’s hang-ups about porn had a lot to do with his father, but did it matter? He knew porn made Ethan uncomfortable, but he still chose to conceal his past. To lie.
They’d been building Siren on a shaky foundation, and that lie was all it took to bring it crashing to the ground.
He reached for his phone. He was itching to reach out to Ethan and apologize, to try and salvage their friendship if nothing else, but he kept flashing back to Ethan’s devastated expression from the night before, the look of shock and betrayal in his eyes.
He set his phone back on his desk. Ethan had asked for time, so he’d give him that.
But for the first time in weeks, he was once again facing the prospect of opening this club on his own, and that filled him with an all-consuming, paralyzing dread.