Miracle Beach (18 page)

Jack’s chest felt rubber-band tight. He looked up toward the ceiling, inhaled, and exhaled forcefully, as if to prove to himself that he still had the ability to breathe.

Glory and Sophie were both looking at him expectantly. At the same time, Glory asked, “So where is he? Where’s my dad?” and Sophie asked, “Jack, what is going on? Who is that letter from?”

He pushed the letter across the table toward Sophie, half doubting that she could focus enough to read it anyway.

Again, Glory asked him, “Where is he? Why doesn’t he live here anymore? Did they get a divorce—him and the Blue Angels girl? My mom and her boyfriend got a divorce a while ago. I didn’t like him all that much, but my mom did. She said lots of people split up. That it’s ‘not uncommon.’ ”

Jack inhaled deeply again, trying to figure out what to say, or how to say it. “Nash,” he started, then stopped. “Nash, the person who wrote that letter, is my son, Glory.” He had to force each word out, his voice choked. “Do you know what that means?”

She shook her head no, looking at Jack with rapt attention.

“That means that I’m your—your grandpa.”

Jack brought his hands together, as if in prayer, held them in front of his nose, and closed his eyes for a second. “And,” he started, opening his eyes again and gesturing out in front of him with his palms still together, “Nash doesn’t live here anymore because there was a terrible accident and he passed away. Do you know what that means, Glory?”

She looked at him and rolled her eyes. Of course she knew what it meant. How stupid of him. But the last time he had raised a child was decades ago. Amazing how fast a person could forget what developmental stages children went through and when. There was a time when he thought the range of normal for rolling over, speech development, and potty training would be forever stamped on his brain.

“Dirt nap,” said Glory.

Jack raised an eyebrow.

“Duh. It means he’s dead. My friend from home, Jilly—it’s short for Jillian—” she explained, “calls it a ‘dirt nap’ when someone dies.”

Jack wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that expression. “Where are you from?” he asked her.

“California,” answered Glory.

“And how did you end up here? I mean, how did you get way up here?” Jack asked.

“Took a bus,” Glory said, as if taking a bus straight up the western coast of North America at eight years old was a perfectly normal thing to do. She held her glass with both hands and finished up the last of her orange juice with a loud slurp.

Sophie, perhaps more lucid than Jack had been able to give her credit for, chimed in. “I think we need to call Glory’s mother, Jack.”

“You’re right. You’re right. We do.”

Sophie nodded, her lips pursed. “Glory, do you know your phone number?” she asked the girl.

“I’m
eight
,” Glory snipped.

“Okay, well, do you want to call your mum, then?” Sophie asked. “The phone is right there on the wall.” She pointed behind her to the far side of the kitchen.

“Nope,” Glory said.

“Do you want Jack or me to call her?” Sophie asked.

“Nope,” Glory said.

“Well, someone’s going to have to,” said Jack sternly. “Either you or me or Sophie. But you can’t just run away from home. Your poor mom is probably worried sick about you.”

“Don’t think so,” Glory said in a singsong voice.

Jack looked at her, raising his eyebrow. He could see already that this little girl was turning out to be quite the handful.

“Worried? I’m
sure
she
isn’t
,” Glory said, glowering at him.

“And what makes you so sure?” Jack asked tenderly.

“Why do you think I’m here?” Glory volleyed.

“Why don’t you tell us?”

“Well, brainiac, what did the letter say?” Glory asked him.

Jack’s initial impression of the girl seemed to be right on. She was precocious as all get-out.

“It said to contact your father if you needed help, so I’m assuming you need help. But first you need to tell us what happened. Did you get in a fight with your mom?”

Glory rolled her eyes at him and then stared down at the table. She shook her head slowly back and forth. “Oh, boy.” She sighed.

“Well, why don’t we talk about it?”

“Don’t think so,” said Glory in that same singsong voice.

“I’m sure whatever it is, we can sort this out,” said Jack. “But your mom is probably worried about you. So first let’s hear what happened, okay? Then we’ll call her and let her know you’re all right.”

“Okay. But you asked for it.” Glory leaned back in the chair and drew her knees up so that her feet were resting on the seat; then she crossed her arms over them, and the words came tumbling out like water through a burst dam. “So, my mom has some issues. She used to be fine. She was a model, you know. Her picture was on a couple of the buses, and on a billboard for a car seller, too. But that was a while ago. She got into some bad stuff.
Drugs
,” Glory said, as if the word were a secret, a juicy bit of gossip, not to be shared.

“Anyway, she leaves a lot lately. Probably to score. At least, that’s what Jilly thinks, and Jilly’s right about a lot of things. Most everything, actually. My mom always comes back, though. Before, when she’d leave, I’d just go down the street to Jilly’s house and stay there. But then the last time I heard Jilly’s mom tell her that if my mom left me again, even for an hour, Jilly’s mom would turn her in. This time, when she left, she told me that her friend Sasha would be coming to watch me. But I waited three sleeps and Sasha never came. And I didn’t want to tell Jilly because of her mom. So here I am! Voilà!” The word came out
wah-lah
. Glory made a wide, sweeping gesture with her arm and fixed them with a proud smile, but Jack was having a hard time taking it all in. Her
mother
was on
drugs
? Nash, his clean-cut son, had had an affair with a
drug addict
? This beautiful little girl had a mom like
that
?

Jack couldn’t help himself. “Honey, are you
sure
about all of this? That it’s the honest-to-God truth?”

Glory rolled her eyes at him again. “Big people are so
clue
less,” she said, exasperated. “My mom never thought I knew about half the stuff she did, but I do. I’m plenty old enough. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Klaus, said that I was one of the most observant kids she ever knew. And I think that’s pretty much right. I notice lots of things. Lots. And I don’t lie.”

“Okay,” Jack said.

“But how did you get across the border?” Sophie jumped in. She had either sobered up quickly or was a more detail-oriented person than Jack originally suspected. Maybe both. He hadn’t even thought about Glory having to cross from the United States into Canada alone.

Glory shrugged. “Easy-peasy. I was in the way back of the bus and I just curled up on the seat. If anyone came all the way to the back to check, which they didn’t, I was going to tell them that I was sick and my mom had my papers to check me in.”

“Check you in?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. Check me in to the country,” Glory said, impatient with Jack for not seeming to keep up with the conversation. She might as well have added, “Dummy,” afterward.

Jack chuckled at Glory’s attempt at adult terminology. But somehow this little eight-year-old who talked like she was sixteen and acted like she was forty had gotten herself on a bus in California and ended up in Campbell River. And now what were they supposed to do with her? How was he going to explain this to Magda, or Macy for that matter?

Fuck
, Jack thought.
Fucking FUBAR. Fucked-up beyond all recognition.
It was the only time since he’d been in Vietnam when that expression seemed to fit perfectly. He couldn’t think of a better way to describe the nightmare unfolding in front of him.

“She’s a little young for you, Jack, don’tcha think?”

Jack jumped at the sound of Macy’s voice. He hadn’t even heard her come in the door. He had forgotten that Macy was supposed to be there. Forgotten that she even lived there.

Before he could say anything, Glory jumped out of her seat and extended her right hand to Macy.

“Hi! I’m Glory Jane Gibson. Are you the Blue Angels lady?”

Macy smiled blankly. She turned to Jack without taking Glory’s hand. “Who is this kid? And what the hell is she talking about?”

Sophie, sensing what was to come, scooped Glory up. “Let’s go wash your hair and your face, little one,” she said. “We’ll get you all cleaned up, okay?”

“Jack,” Macy said sternly, “what is going on here? Why is there a kid in my kitchen?”

Every inch of Jack’s skin quivered. He couldn’t look at her. He had been hoping Macy wouldn’t notice Glory for a little while, at least, give him time to come up with something. Anything. As it was, he had no idea what to tell her. So he just handed her the letter.

Macy read the first paragraph, then skimmed most of the rest. After she was finished, Macy folded the pages and slipped them back into the envelope.

“Where did she come from?” Macy asked.

“California.” Jack couldn’t look at her. Instead he studied his folded hands. He suddenly had a strange desire to do the Here’s the Church game. He would do it with Nash when he was a baby, probably hadn’t done it since.
Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, now look inside and see all the people
. He’d turn his hands upside down and Nash would laugh and clap. “Again, Dada,” he’d say. “Again!” And Jack would do it over and over, neither of them tiring of it.

“How?” Macy asked. The word fell out measured and icy. She didn’t look at him.

“She caught a bus,” Jack said.

“Why?”

Jack told her, then, about what Glory had told them: about the supposed drug deal gone awry, about how the little girl waited for her mom to come back for three nights, about how she got herself across the border, and about how they had found her on the front stoop.

Macy shook her head, her lips pursed to the point of puckering. “And how old did you say she was?”

“I didn’t,” he said. It was the one question Jack had been afraid she’d ask, and the only one he didn’t want to answer. “She’s, ah—she’s eight, Macy. On June twenty-third, she turned eight.”

Macy chewed on her bottom lip. Jack thought maybe she was doing the math, trying to figure it out, but really, he knew she didn’t have to. Hell, it hadn’t taken him very long, and Macy would be the last person to forget how, the first week he had arrived on the island, they had all danced awkwardly around the fact that it had been her and Nash’s tenth wedding anniversary.

“YOU GET THAT KID OUT OF MY HOUSE, OR I WILL. UNDERSTAND?” And then Macy walked away from Jack, who stood there opening and closing his mouth like a guppy but not saying a goddamn thing.

As if she were watching someone else’s hands, Macy saw her own reach out and grab the silver-framed wedding portrait in which two people who used to be her and Nash sat facing each other on a carpet of green with the Fox River shimmering in the background, both of them with heads thrown back in openmouthed laughter. She remembered that moment. She remembered what had been so funny: Nash had whispered to her that she was one hot burrito. He was forever doing things like that—mixing metaphors, or massacring them completely. She told him it was
hot tamale
, not burrito, and they erupted into laughter, unable to take even minor direction from the photographer, whose exasperation just made them laugh harder.

For good measure, she also swept up the mosaic-framed picture of her and Nash on Long Beach, on the west coast of the island, the two of them draped in ponchos post–whale watching and grinning at the camera in black and white with troubled swells crashing far behind on a giant expanse of beach.

Macy could feel Jack’s eyes on her, boring into her back as she walked through the living room, snatching the photographs and continuing down the hall and into the bedroom, where she shut the door behind her, dropped the pile on the bed, and let out a wail that originated so deep down it felt as if it were coming from beneath her. She took aim at the opposite wall, holding their wedding photo by the stand, and heaved it like a discus.

She followed that up with the Long Beach picture, holding it with her palm flat against its back and flinging it like one might a pie at the same wall. It shattered, glass and shards of green and silver and blue tile raining down. And it only made her feel worse.

Because what she really wanted was to throw things at him. To pummel Nash with her fists. To yell at him and scream at him and ask him why, and when he answered, to pummel on him and scream some more. There was no answer he could give that could make this right. But at least he would have been there. At least she wouldn’t be hurling photos at a ghost.

She smashed another picture, and then another, and another. And when the floor glistened like sharp water and there was nothing more to break, she tore the covers from their bed and then the sheets. It didn’t matter that these weren’t the last sheets that Nash had slept on; he had slept on them once upon a time, and they needed to go.