Chapter 31 The Sirens Have a Story to Tell Part 2
Ten minutes from closing and the museum is still busy.
Bailey hasn’t left the bench. She ignores the tourists who stream in and out of the back room, tries not to make eye contact with any of them.
She keeps her eyes on the painting, studying it. The blues and the green light, the abstract faces of the sirens themselves. It’s breathtaking. And she knows it’s not a coincidence that her father picked this painting, the bench in front of it, as the place for her to wait.
For her eighth-grade English class, Bailey did a project on the Odyssey.
She waited until the night before to start.
She’d been distracted with the eighth-grade musical (she was playing Hope in Anything Goes).
She’d been distracted by dress rehearsals and a last-minute recasting of Billy.
She was rehearsing her song day and night. She was never without her tap shoes.
Plus she really didn’t like her eighth-grade English teacher, Ms. Lofton. She tended to put off the work that Ms. Lofton expected them to do.
Owen was not impressed with this excuse (with any of these excuses) when she woke him up at eleven that night to take her to the store to get poster board.
And markers. And glue. And, also, everything else.
They had to drive all the way into Marin proper to even find an all-night FedEx store open where they could buy supplies.
Bailey ended up staying up all night to get the project done, Owen staying up with her.
He made them plenty of snacks and brewed fresh coffee, playing records to keep them moving.
He didn’t give her any grief for that though—not that night, not after.
He joked that he was too tired to give her any grief.
But Bailey knew that wasn’t it. Owen had shown her enough times that he was the person who was never going to give her grief—not when what she was asking for was that he figure out how to do it. To show up for her.
This is when he does.
Again, like always, Owen sits down next to her. He sits down on the bench, leaving a little space between them.
Bailey keeps her eyes on the painting—Owen’s eyes focused on the painting too. It doesn’t matter. She can feel that it’s him before she lets herself look over at him. She doesn’t need to look at him to know it’s true. It’s his skin and his face and his body.
Her heart starts beating hard against her chest, catching in her throat. Making it hard to breathe. To hold herself steady. Her heart starts moving so quickly she thinks she may pass out, right there.
She has the thought: If I do, he will catch me. For the first time in a long time, he will be here to catch her.
Owen clears his throat, but he doesn’t say anything. Not at first.
She knows that he is waiting to see how she wants this moment to go.
He is giving her this moment. He is waiting to see if she wants to hit him or scream or walk away.
As if she could walk away, now. He is waiting in a way that tells her it is all okay with him.
She knows that any of it is okay with him, because he gets to be by her side again.
She can’t look over. She can’t make herself do that yet.
“Can’t believe that after all that work, Ms. Lofton gave me a B on that project…” she says. “I was robbed.”
“Were you? My memory is you were lucky to get that.”
She lets out a small laugh, almost in spite of herself. And she can feel it, the smile starting to break out on his face.
Out of the corner of her eye, she catches it though. She catches what Owen is fighting against at the same time—beneath that small laugh.
She turns toward her father. The first time she is looking at him.
His hair is different and his face more angular, rigid, the skin pulled around his mouth.
He looks older and too thin and worn down.
He looks sad, a sadness she isn’t used to seeing in his face.
But his eyes, the emotion there, is the same. It’s him. Undeniably him.
Her eyes fill with tears, taking him in.
Finally taking him in. And suddenly she is five years old again.
She is five and she is six and eight. She is running down the docks toward him.
She is ten years old and they are flying to New York City for her birthday weekend to see her first Broadway show.
She is twelve and he is taking her into downtown San Francisco (hiking her down there every weekend) for voice lessons with a teacher she begged to take lessons from.
She is fifteen and being awful to Hannah and being forgiven.
Because he would forgive her for anything.
He wouldn’t even call it forgiveness. He would just call it love.
Which makes it harder. What happens at sixteen. Sixteen and he is teaching her to drive. Sixteen, and like that, he is gone.
Bailey holds that too. She will have to make peace with it, one way or another, but that is for another day. Today she is twenty-two and he is back. And if tonight goes to plan, he will be here, with her, for twenty-three.
Bailey clears her throat, moves closer to him.
“I hear we have a boat to catch,” she says.
He nods. “We do.”
He still isn’t looking back at her, not directly. His eyes holding on the bench, filling up with tears. The tears he can’t stop, not anymore.
This is when her father reaches over.
And Bailey takes his hand.