September 13, Sunday
"CAN I talk to Aunt Elaine for a minute?" I asked, once Lily and Josh had delivered their usual clipped greetings.
Lily was gone before I'd finished the sentence, and Josh followed a beat later. Elaine's face settled into the frame, friendly but guarded.
"I owe you an apology," I said, before she could steer the conversation somewhere safer. "What I said last weekend—about you not knowing what it's like to be a parent—that was cruel, and it wasn't even true. You've always been there for the kids."
"It's fine, Sis."
"It doesn't feel fine."
She was quiet a moment, turning a mug between her hands. "I know you didn't mean it. I know you were tired and you have a lot of responsibility there. We're okay."
I wanted to believe her, but something in her voice still carried the faintest residue of the wound.
"Dad's coming to visit at the end of the month," she said then, almost as an afterthought, and the shift in subject was so abrupt I nearly missed it.
"Dad's coming here?"
"Flying in on a Friday. Staying through Sunday."
I felt something drop through the center of my chest, quick and unexpected. I hadn't seen my father in a long while. He lived a separate life with his new wife. He occasionally called and texted photos of golf courses and other people's grandchildren at his new church.
"What am I supposed to tell him," Elaine asked, "when he wants to know where you are? Because he's going to ask, Isabel. You know he is."
"Tell him I'm serving on a jury. That's all. I can't tell him what kind, or how long, or anything else—not over the phone, not to anyone." I paused. "He won't push much past that. He never really has."
"True enough." She didn't say it unkindly, just factually, the way we'd both learned to talk about our father over the years—a good man in his own limited way, present in the manner of someone checking a box rather than living a relationship.
"Why now, though? He hasn't visited in ages."
Elaine's mouth twitched. "Sandra wants to see the World of Coca-Cola."
I blinked. "The World of Coca-Cola. That's the reason he's flying two thousand miles."
"Apparently she's been wanting to go for years. Saw something about it on a travel show." Elaine shrugged, deadpan. "He mentioned it like it was self-explanatory. Like of course you'd cross the country for a museum devoted to soda pop."
We both sat with that for a second, the absurdity of it settling in slowly—our father, who'd managed maybe four visits in two years, whose calls came scheduled and brief, finally making the trip east not for a birthday or a holiday or to see his daughters or grandchildren, but because his wife wanted a photo with a giant fiberglass Coke bottle.
I don't know which of us started laughing first. It didn't matter. Within seconds we were both fully gone. And for a few minutes it was just my sister and me, finding the same ridiculous thing funny the exact same way.