Chapter Thirteen
Here’s where I should confess that seeing my father isn’t new. I’ve spotted him from time to time out of the corner of my eye, lingering on the edge of a crowd. When I’ve looked again, he’s been gone, leaving me wondering whether he was ever there in the first place.
The first time I saw him was years ago, when he hovered on the periphery of a soccer game.
I must have been six or seven and playing in the summer league in Hero, because Seton was on the team, too.
I moved the ball down the field, in control, ready to strike, but spotting my father was enough of a distraction that I lost the ball and the other team scored.
As kids ran onto the field to celebrate, I searched the sidelines, but my father was gone.
I can’t remember whether Mrs. Haviland came to the game or if we met her at the Landing afterward, but I do know she bought us ice cream.
“Sometimes you win,” she told me as we sat outside on a wooden bench, “and sometimes you lose the ball and the other team scores. That doesn’t matter in the end. Be kind, and focus on the positive.”
By then, I’d pieced together some of my family’s history. I knew Mrs. Haviland had grown up with my father. I also understood that my mother avoided her, but that Mrs. Haviland did things like taking me for ice cream. “You look just like him,” she’d say sometimes, especially when we were alone.
Later that night, at Idlewood, I lay in bed while Reid read me a story. I yearned for the times when I was away from boarding school, together with my mother and brother, when Paul and Hadley would visit, when we felt like a family. “What would you do,” I asked Reid, “if Dad came home?”
Reid put the book aside. “What do you know about Dad?” he asked.
“He went away.”
Reid turned off the bedside lamp. “You should go to sleep.”
“Dad came to my soccer game today,” I said into the darkness, my voice barely a whisper.
Reid stood and retreated to the bedroom doorway. “You couldn’t have seen Dad,” he said. “And if you did, don’t tell Mom, whatever you do. Dad was a bad man, and you’ll upset her.”