Part 3
For the first few miles, the boxes filled most of my rearview mirror. By the time I reached Alder Cove, my shoulders ached from holding the steering wheel. I carried the boxes upstairs, opened a window, and heard water slapping against the boats tied up beyond the road. No one here knew the house I’d left.
That evening, her skillet sat on a different stove. I unpacked the books before most of the clothes and put her photographs where I could see them from the table. Her grandmother’s quilt went across the foot of my bed.
I slept nearly eleven hours.
For a decade, I had often woken around three and listened to the house until morning. Here, I opened my eyes to daylight and lay still for a minute, trying to remember when that had last happened.
During that first week, I kept reaching for my phone. I would think about calling Claire, or wonder whether Patricia might come for dinner, then remember that I had moved without telling them. I’d already decided; my hands were still catching up.
I began walking instead. The path around the lake ran a little over six miles, past a public landing and beneath trees that dropped wet leaves onto my shoes. I took the full circuit every morning, breathing hard on the small rises and listening to geese quarrel near the shore.
They had very little tact. I appreciated that.
At the grocery store, I bought enough for myself. Cooking that way took practice after years of preparing for company, but I liked deciding at five what I wanted at six. When I finished dinner, there was one plate to wash and no portion to label for somebody who might come later.
The bookstore occupied a narrow storefront near the lake. Its owner had definite opinions about Willa Cather, including which novel people praised for the wrong reasons. I began going in on Tuesday mornings, and we argued comfortably enough that I started looking forward to Tuesdays before Monday was over.
Then six weeks had passed.
What happened back home reached me much later, in pieces from Claire and the others. Patricia tried my old cell number and heard that it was no longer in service. Claire called the house, got no farther, and called Suzanne instead.
Eventually, the four of them compared what they knew. The important part was what none of them could supply: a recent conversation with me. They had each assumed somebody else was keeping in touch.
Claire drove to the house.
The buyers’ baby had arrived by then. A young woman answered with the infant against her shoulder, and Claire stood on the porch long enough that the woman asked whether she could help her.
“My dad lives here,” Claire said, before seeing enough of the hall to correct herself. “He did live here.”
The woman told her they had bought the place about six weeks earlier.
Claire called Nathan from her car. He called Suzanne, and Suzanne called Patricia. They spent the ensuing conversation trying to establish when I had last been seen or heard from, a task they should have found easier than they did.
Nathan contacted the police. The inquiries confirmed that I had sold the house voluntarily, and there was no indication of a crime or an emergency. An officer explained that everything they could establish suggested a deliberate move.
Nathan didn’t find that reassuring.
Several months after I left, Patricia hired an investigator. He took about three months to find me. By late May, nearly eight months after my departure, she had my address.
He hadn’t uncovered an elaborate disguise. My lease said Daniel Mercer. So did my library card and the paperwork at the little gym near the water. Anyone dealing with me in Alder Cove knew my name; they simply had no reason to pass it along to people who weren’t there.
One morning, returning from the lake, I noticed an unfamiliar car in the apartment lot. Claire was on the front steps. She stood when she saw me and gripped the strap of her purse with both hands.
“Dad.”
I stopped beside the bottom step. “You found the place.”
“We didn’t even know you were moving. Nathan thought you might be hurt somewhere. We’ve all been terrified.”
Her voice broke on the last word. For a second, I wanted to take her in my arms and end the visit there. I sat beside her, leaving enough room for both of us.
“Claire, what’s the date of my birthday?”
She stared at me. “Why are you asking that?”
I waited.
“The ninth,” she said, less certainly. “August ninth.”
“A week later. The sixteenth, Claire.”
She pressed the heel of her hand against one eye. The apartment door opened behind us; somebody went out, crossed the lot, and left us alone again. I kept my hands on my knees.
“The first year after your mother died, you called four times. Twice, you hadn’t meant to call me at all. I wrote them down because I was beginning to think I must be imagining how long it had been.”
“I didn’t know you were counting.”
“Neither did I, until I needed something to tell me I wasn’t crazy.”
She looked down at the concrete.
“I drove over to see you and the children. Then I sat there trying to think of a reason I could give you for coming. I knew I was supposed to call first, but I was tired of asking.”
“Dad, I am so sorry.”
There was something of Elaine in the softness of her voice. Both children had their mother’s eyes. I looked at Claire and waited until I could answer her.
“I believe that you are. But it took somebody else’s name on the house for you to come see what was happening to me. I was in that house for ten years after the funeral.”
Claire searched my face. “So what are we supposed to do? Bring you home? Help you find another place near us?”
“I’ve chosen my place.”
“You’re really staying here?”
I looked toward the stairway.
“Tell me what I’d be going back for.”
She didn’t answer. Before I went upstairs, I gave her my new number. Then I measured coffee for one cup and switched on the kettle.
While the kettle heated, I watched Claire’s car leave the lot. I wanted to know she was steady enough to drive, and when she stopped at the exit and took a moment before turning, I let myself breathe. Then I sat down with my coffee.
Two weeks later, Patricia arrived…
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