There was nobody behind the counter, and the man in the Phillies cap didn’t seem too pleased about that, as he kept whacking the small silver bell on the counter loudly, in between mutterings about shoddy service. I took a step closer to check out what looked like a raspberry coffee cake, when I noticed, lying on the glass-topped counter, a pencil across it, that morning’s Pocono Record, folded to the crossword section. I took another step closer, trying to see if this person had had any more luck that I had with 19 across. As I leaned over, the man whacked the bell once more, hard, and a voice came from the back.
“Just a moment!” the voice called. “Be right with you.”
“I won’t hold my breath,” the man muttered, turning to me for agreement. But I had frozen in place. It was a voice I recognized. I glanced at the door, wondering if I had enough time to make it out without being spotted. I was thinking that I just might, when the metal door behind the counter swung open and Henry stepped out.
chapter eight
HENRY JUST STARED AT ME, AND I LOOKED BACK INTO HIS GREEN eyes, feeling the sudden urge to break into hysterical laughter, because it was beginning to seem like I couldn’t turn around in Lake Phoenix without running into him. The man looked between us, frowned again, and whacked the bell once more.
This seemed to snap Henry into action. “Sorry about that,” he said quickly, as the man harrumphed. “What can I get you?”
“Been waiting out here,” the man grumbled. Now that he had someone to wait on him, rather than ordering, he appeared to want to use his time to complain about the lack of service.
“Sorry about that,” Henry repeated, with the exact same inflection, and I could feel myself start to smile. To hide this, I bent down to look in the case, where there were rows of small iced cookies, cannoli, and brownies. But only half my attention was on the (admittedly delicious-looking) desserts. I snuck a glance at Henry as he nodded, appearing to listen as the man vented at him. He was wearing a light green T-shirt with his jeans. It had the Borrowed Thyme logo in black across the front and a dusting of flour on one shoulder. I realized I was surprised to see him working there, which was fairly ridiculous, since I clearly knew nothing about him now. But when I’d known him before—and seeing him in the woods had confirmed this—Henry had always seemed most comfortable outside. And on the rare occasions over the last few years when I let my thoughts drift back to Lake Phoenix and the people I’d left up there, I’d always imagined Henry doing something outdoors.
The ding of the register brought me back to the present, as Henry handed the man his change and slid a green bakery box across the counter. “Thanks,” he said, his tone still blandly professional. “Have a nice day.”
“Yeah,” the man grumbled, taking the box and heading out of the shop. It wasn’t until I turned back to the counter that I realized it was just me and Henry, alone in the bakery.
I looked at him, then down at my outfit, wishing for the second time that day that I had pulled myself together a little bit more. But then I dismissed the thought. He’d already seen me straight out of bed, scratched up in the woods. And anyway, it seemed like Henry had some blond girlfriend. Not that I cared about that.
“So,” Henry said, shaking his head. “I think we should stop meeting like this.”
“Do you work here?” I asked, then immediately cursed myself for my stupidity. Of course he worked there. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing behind the counter, waiting on irascible Phillies fans. “I mean,” I corrected immediately, trying to make it sound as little like a question as possible, “you work here.”
“I do,” Henry said, and I could see a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Clearly, my attempts at correcting my blunder syndrome had not been successful. “It’s my dad’s bakery.”
“Oh,” I said, not quite able to conceal my surprise in time. Henry’s father, from what I remembered, had been like mine, one of the many fathers in suits getting off one of the buses on Friday nights, briefcase in hand. I glanced around the bakery, trying to reconcile these two things, and failing. “But,” I started after a moment, “I thought he used to do something with banking?”
“He did,” Henry said, his tone clipped and final, and I immediately regretted asking my question. His father had probably lost his job, and Henry didn’t need me to point this out. “He says it’s the same principle,” Henry added after a moment, his tone softening a little. “Still trying to get the dough to rise.” I groaned at that—it was the kind of joke my father would make—and Henry gave me a tiny smile in return.
Silence fell between us, and then Henry stuck his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. “So what can I get you?” he asked, back to sounding detached and professional.
“Right,” I said quickly, realizing that I was a customer in a shop, and the fact that I was supposed to know what I wanted should not have been such a shock to me. “Um…” I saw a platter of cupcakes with multicolored pastel icing, and I immediately looked away from them. Cupcakes reminded me all too much of my birthday, the slapdash celebration, the news about my dad. Searching for something—anything else—I tapped on the case in front of the next thing I saw. “A dozen of these.” I looked closer and saw that what I’d just pointed to were, unfortunately, oatmeal raisin cookies. I hated oatmeal in all forms, but especially when people tried to dress it up as a dessert; Gelsey refused to eat raisins, and none of the rest of my family had ever been huge fans. I had just ordered a dessert that nobody at our house would most likely eat.
“Really.” Henry didn’t exactly phrase it as a question, and he raised his eyebrows at me. “Oatmeal?”
I just stared at him for a moment. There was no way Henry remembered that, five years ago, I hated oatmeal cookies. It just wasn’t possible. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “Oatmeal. Why?”
“No reason,” he said as he took down another green bakery box from the shelf behind him and began transferring in the cookies two at a time. “I just didn’t think you liked them.”
“I can’t believe you remember that,” I said, as I watched the bakery box slowly fill with the World’s Worst Cookies.
“My dad calls me the elephant.” I just looked at him, not at all sure what to say to this, when he explained, “They’re supposed to have really long memories.” He reached toward the front of the tray to get the two remaining cookies. “I don’t really forget a lot,” he added quietly.
I was about to nod when the double meaning of this hit me. Henry hadn’t forgotten the kind of cookies I hated five years ago, but that also meant he hadn’t forgotten the other things that I had done.
He’d put all the oatmeal cookies into the box, and he straightened up and looked at me. “Only had eleven,” he said. “Can I give you one chocolate chip instead?”
“Yes!” I said, probably a little too eagerly. I thought I saw him smile as he bent down again and placed the lone chocolate chip in the box, tucked in the lid, and pushed it across the counter to me. He rang me up, and I noticed when he gave me back my change, he held the bills at the very ends and dropped the coins into my palm, as though he was trying to make sure that we didn’t make any accidental contact. “Well,” I said, when I realized there was nothing to do except take my bakery box and leave, “thanks.”
“Sure,” he said. His eyes focused on my shoulder, and he frowned slightly. “What’s with the shirt?” he asked, and I saw he was looking at my canvas bag, which had one of my new employee T-shirts peeking out of the top.
“Oh,” I said, pushing it down a bit farther, “I just got a job. Beach snack bar.”
“Really?” he asked, sounding surprised. It was definitely a question this time.
“Yes,” I said, a little defensively, until I realized that he would have no idea that I’d never had a job before and would therefore be somehow unqualified. “Why?”
Henry took a breath, about to answer, when the shop door opened and two women who looked around my mother’s age came in, both wearing caftanlike cover-ups and sandals. ?
??Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “Never mind.”
The women were now standing behind me, peering into the bakery cases, and I knew that it was time for me to leave. “See you,” I said, picking up the green box.
“Stay out of the woods,” he replied, smiling faintly.
I met his eye for a moment, and I wondered if this was an opening, if I should just bite the bullet and apologize for what I’d done. Not that we’d ever be friends again, but we were neighbors. And it might make things a little less strained—or at least allow me to feel like I could venture out to the dock again.
“Was there something else?” Henry asked, but not unkindly. I could feel the women’s eyes on me, waiting for my answer. But I had been a coward then—it was what had caused the whole mess—and it seemed that I was a coward still. “No,” I said, as I stepped aside to let the women order the coffee cake they had been debating about. “Nothing else.” I turned from the counter and left, walking back into the heat of the afternoon.
My father was leaning against the Land Cruiser when I reached him, a paper Henson’s Produce bag between his feet and a plastic bag of licorice bits in his hand. They were for sale by the register, and whenever my father was in charge of picking some produce up—or able to intercept one of us before we went—he put in his order for a bag, the black licorice only. His particular views on this had only become more deeply entrenched when Warren had told him the fact that red licorice isn’t technically licorice at all, as it’s not made from the licorice plant.
“Hey, kid,” he said as I approached, smiling at me. “What’s the news?” His eyes landed on the bakery box, and he smiled wider. “And what did you get?”
I sighed and opened the box. “Oatmeal cookies,” I said a little glumly.
“Oh.” He peered down into the box, his brow furrowing. “Why?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, not wanting to admit that it was because my ex-boyfriend had flustered me. “But the news is that I got a job. I start tomorrow at the beach snack bar.”
My father’s smile returned, real and genuine and happy. “That’s great, kid,” he said. “Your first job! It’s a milestone. I can remember—” He stopped short, his eyes squeezing shut as a spasm of pain flashed across his face.
“Dad?” I asked, stepping closer, hearing the fear in my voice. “Daddy?”
My father’s face twisted again, and he grabbed his back with one hand, the bag of licorice bits falling and spilling onto the ground. “I’m okay,” he said through clenched teeth. I didn’t believe him—his eyes were still tightly closed and I could see perspiration beading on his forehead. “I just… need a second.”
“Okay,” I said. I gripped the bakery box tightly, looking around the street for someone who might help us somehow or tell me what I should be doing. I could feel my heart pounding, and wished that my mother was here, that I wasn’t alone with this.
“You all right?” The redhead I’d seen through the window was standing in the doorway of Doggone It!, watching my father, her expression concerned. She held a cordless phone in her hand. “Do you need me to call someone?”
“No,” my father said, his voice a little strained. He opened his eyes and took a folded white handkerchief from his back pocket, passing it quickly over his forehead. My father was never without one; they got washed with the rest of his laundry, and when I was really stumped for gift ideas—or really broke—they were what I gave him for Father’s Day. He returned the handkerchief to his pocket and gave the girl a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m fine.”
“Okay,” the girl said, nodding. But she didn’t move from where she was standing, instead keeping her eyes on my father.
My father turned to me, and I noticed he looked much paler than he had only a few moments ago, and his breathing was labored. “Didn’t mean to scare you, kid,” he said.
I nodded, and swallowed hard, not sure what exactly had happened, or how to address it. “Are you,” I started, then heard my voice falter. “I mean…”
“I’m fine,” my father said again. He reached down to pick up the Henson’s bag, and I noticed that his hands were shaking. He took out the key ring and headed to the driver’s side, the keys jangling against one another in his trembling hand. Without realizing I was going to do it, I took a step closer to him and reached out for the keys. He looked at me, and a terrible, resigned sadness swept over his face before he looked away.
He let me take the keys from his hand, then walked around to the passenger side of the car without a word. As I unlocked the car, I looked down and saw the scattered licorice bits at my feet, the plastic bag trapped under the tire of a minivan two parking spots away. I climbed into the car and reached over to open the passenger door. I caught a glimpse of the girl, still standing in the door of the pet shop. She raised a hand in a wave, and I nodded back, trying not to notice that she still looked worried.
My father settled himself into the seat a little more gingerly than he had only an hour ago. I dropped the bakery box and my bag in the backseat and moved my seat way up—even though I knew how tall my father was, this never seemed as clear as when I was attempting to drive a car he’d been in before me, and my feet couldn’t even reach the pedals. I started the car, and we drove in silence most of the way home, his head turned to the window. I didn’t know if he was still in pain. But for whatever reason, I couldn’t seem to form the words to ask him. After we’d had the dining room conversation on my birthday, we had talked very little about the realities of his illness. And I hadn’t really tried. He clearly wanted to pretend that things were just normal—he’d said as much—but in moments like this, everything that we hadn’t said seemed to prevent me from saying anything at all.
“Did you see the name of the pet store?” I asked after driving in silence for as long as I could stand it. I glanced over and saw the corner of my father’s mouth twitch up in a small smile.
“I did,” he said, turning to look at me. “I thought it was a little ruff.” I groaned, which I knew he expected, but I was also feeling a wave of relief. It seemed like the air in the car had become less heavy, and it was a little easier to breathe.
“Wow,” I said as I made the turn onto Dockside. “You came up with that one without taking a paws.” My father let out a short laugh at that, and gave me a smile.
“Nice,” he said, which was the very highest compliment he gave, pun-wise.
I pulled the car in next to my mother’s and shut off the engine, but neither of us made a move to get out of the car.
“It really is good news about the job,” my father said, his voice sounding tired. “Sorry if that got lost in…” He paused, then cleared his throat. “Everything.”
I nodded, and ran my finger over a spot on the steering wheel where the leather was cracked and could probably be coaxed to come off, if I worked hard enough at it. “So,” I started, hesitantly. “Should we… you know… talk about it?”
My father nodded, even as he grimaced slightly. “Of course,” he said. “If you want to.”
I felt a flare of anger then, as sudden and unexpected as if someone had set off a firecracker. “It’s not that I want to,” I said, hearing the sharpness of my tone, regretting it even as the words were spilling out of me. “It’s just that we’re all here, we’re all up here, and we’re not talking, or…” I seemed to run out of words and anger at the same time, and was left with only a sinking feeling in my stomach, since I knew that the last thing I should be doing was yelling at my father. I started to take a breath, to apologize, when my father nodded.
“We will talk,” he said. He looked away from me, straight into the screened-in porch, as though he could see the time in the future when this would be happening. “We’ll say… all the things that we need to say.” I suddenly found myself swallowing hard, fighting the feeling that I was on the verge of tears. “But for now, while we still can, I just want to have a little bit of a normal summer with all of you. Sound good?” I nod
ded. “Good. The defense rests.”
I smiled at that—he used the legal expression whenever he wanted to declare a subject closed—but I couldn’t push away the question I’d had ever since he’d been diagnosed, the question that I somehow never felt I could ask. “I just…”
My father raised his eyebrows, and I could see that he already looked better than he had a few minutes earlier. And if I hadn’t known, if I hadn’t seen it, I might have been able to pretend that it hadn’t happened, that he was still fine. “What is it, kid?”
I felt myself smile at that, even though I still felt like I might start crying. This was my dad’s name for me, and only me. Gelsey was always “princess,” Warren was “son.” And I had always been his kid.
As I looked back at him, I wasn’t sure I could ask it, the thing that I’d been wondering the most since he’d told us, sitting at the head of the dining room table. Because it was a question that went against everything I’d always believed about my father. He was the one who checked for burglars when my mother was sure she heard a noise outside, the one we yelled for when confronted with a spider. The one who used to pick me up and carry me when I got too tired to walk. The one I’d believed could vanquish dragons and closet-dwelling monsters. But I had to know, and I wasn’t sure I’d get another chance to ask. “Are you scared?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. But I could tell from the way that his face seemed to crumple a bit that he had heard me.
He didn’t say anything, just nodded, up and down one time.
I nodded as well. “Me too,” I said. He gave me another sad smile, and we sat there together in silence.
The shuttle bus rumbled up the street and passed our driveway, coming to a stop in front of the house next to ours, the CUT TO: SUMMER house. A dark-haired girl in an all-white tennis outfit got out, looking, even from this distance, fairly disgruntled as she stomped off the bus and up her driveway, soon obscured by the trees that separated our houses.
“Was that it?” he asked, after the girl had disappeared from view and the shuttle bus had moved on.