I didn’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the coffee going straight to my head. The fatigue of trying to be present on this forced trip. Or maybe I finally had to ask him, make him admit it out loud . . . to me at least.
He warily wiped a blob of pie filling from his mouth.
“What makes you ask that?”
I lowered my head. “Come on, Dad. We all knew.”
He went quiet, keeping his eyes focused on his plate, not looking up at me once. My question was being ignored. He was walking past it as if it had never been asked.
The table seemed to grow longer between us.
He took his last bite, scraping it up with a fork. “What do you want to do first when we get to the cabin?”
I slid the coffee mug from one hand to the other. It was my turn to ignore his question.
We got up and stood in line to pay. I thumbed through a rack of brochures and came across one for Covet Falls, a stunning picture of the waterfall nearly spilling out of the flap.
“Let’s go for a hike.”
He turned around, surprised, and looked at the pamphlet in my hand. He frowned briefly and nodded.
“Okay, Isla.”
When we approached the cabin, the clouds hurriedly covered the skies over us like sheep herded together. The windows appeared so obscure and vacant, like an old tree that had been hollowed out and left to decay.
He parked the car, and we opened the trunk to retrieve our backpacks. The slow rain dropped on our heads.
“Are you sure you still want to go to the falls?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
He wiped a few drops off his face. “We’ll need those rain slickers. I think they’re still in the shed.”
I followed him along the side of the cabin down to the dock. He fumbled with a bronze key and unlocked the padlock. I stepped inside behind him as he foraged around looking for the slickers. My elbow bumped into a few folding chairs and a large red tote fell to the ground.
He looked over his shoulder and then held up two dusty slickers triumphantly.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, picking up the long, heavy tote.
“It’s all right, sweetie. It’s just the tent.”
I patted the tote as I propped it back up. “Was this the one that replaced the yellow one from all those years ago? You know, right before that big storm?”
He shook the slickers out, distracted. “We never had a yellow tent,” he uttered quickly.
What he said was like a paper cut, sharp at first but then dull as the pain settled in to stay. His hands gripped the jackets and remained still for a moment. I wasn’t sure what it was about his words that stung me like that.
It lasted a few seconds. But it was there.
He shook the jackets even harder, making flapping noises that wrapped around us both until one fell out of his hands.
“We should go. Before the rain gets too heavy,” he said, pushing one of the jackets into my hands and brushing past me.
I pulled a sleeve on and watched him march ahead of me, tearing his jacket on with his head ducked down. He was smaller, shrunken—nothing like the tall figure I had grown accustomed to as my father.
We remained that way, me a few yards behind him as he led the way to the falls.
They roared. Tumbling and louder than ever, snarling at us for our prolonged absence. A grand display of mist and wetness. We stood staring out at its vastness and never-ending depth, the water strands of long thread pulled down and yanked into whatever lurked below. I could see him looking at me out of the corner of his eye, not quite turning to face me. What was he looking for? Was I lost to him? Where had I gone that he needed to search?
I stepped forward, disturbing the dirt loosened from the rain, and a few small, gray stones tumbled down and into the falls below.
Fall and disappear forever.
What were the stories Dad used to tell me?
I felt the beats of the waterfall in the pit of my stomach, the beginnings of a recollection that contained nothing to look back on fondly. They were pieces floating around, crawling back together, creating what exactly—I was afraid to try to understand or even know.
He turned to venture back to the cabin. I stayed behind a few minutes longer, tipping my face down toward the bottom of the falls, light-headed from the thought of how far I would plunge.
I felt drained and wet as I strode back the way I came. I found Dad standing still at the back of the cabin. He was staring at something.
She stood in front of the windows. It dawned on me it was in almost the exact same spot where I first saw her. Her arms were crossed, and she spread her mouth open into something between a grimace and a grin.
“Hello, Isla.”
CHAPTER 51
THE INTERVIEW
