Just for a few seconds, it was possible to stand here and be that kid again, filled with wonder and at ease in the world. Just for a few seconds, he wasn’t a confused thirty-eight-year-old guy trying to start all over again, juggling family and work and life and a new town.
“Let’s go this way,” he said to Daisy, and they glided along a marked path, their narrow skis entrenched in the tracks formed by the early-morning groomer.
It felt good here in the quiet outdoors, alone with Daisy. The only sound was the rhythmic swish of their skis on the trail and the accompanying cadence of their breathing. Gliding along, he disappeared into himself and didn’t think. After a while, they were both sweating with exertion.
Daisy said, “I feel like taking some pictures. Do you mind if we stop for a break?”
“Not at all.”
She had chosen a spot where a grove of birch trees bordered a small stream, which in turn emptied into a pond, now a field of snow-covered ice. A man-made footbridge arched over the stream. In warmer weather, there would be parties of golfers everywhere. Now the whole place was empty of everything but chickadees and snowshoe rabbits.
“How are you doing?” Greg asked her.
She leaned back against a fence rail. “I’m okay.” Her cheeks were rosy red, and yet there was something in her eyes, a flicker of trouble.
“You sure?” He handed her a bottle of water from the backpack.
She twisted off the top and took a long drink. “Sure.”
The old Greg, the one who hadn’t spent enough time with his kids, would have taken her reply at face value. One thing that came of the divorce was that Greg had become friends with his own kids. What a concept. Now he knew “Sure” didn’t necessarily mean she was fine. Judging by the look in her eyes, it meant, “Dig a little deeper, Dad. It won’t take long to figure out what’s going on if you just ask the right questions.”
“How are things at school?” he asked.
She smiled briefly as if he’d said something ironic. Maybe he had. In the past, he’d asked the same question, accepting her reply that all was well. Then one day she came home and said, “I’m failing four classes.”
“All right,” he said, “moving right along. How’s work? You like working at the bakery?”
“The bakery is fine. I’ve made two friends—Zach and Sonnet, and they’re fine, too. And it’s fine to be working for my long-lost cousin. See? It’s all good.”
Another thing Greg had learned in his crash course in fatherhood was the power of silence. Sometimes if you kept your mouth shut and waited, a kid would come out with things. He was amazed more adults hadn’t figured that out. So many people he knew who were parents tended to fill every silence with talk, talk and more talk. Greg’s kids had taught him that sometimes the important things came out in the middle of a long silence, after sitting in a boat for an hour or two, trying to catch a fish. Or standing in the middle of a quiet snowscape.
It took some discipline, but he simply waited. Shook the snow off one of his skis and took a ChapStick from his pocket and smeared it on his lips. Squinted at the sun. There was a peculiar quality to the blue sky, a hardness that contrasted sharply with the white of the snow and the bark of a grove of birch trees. And for the time being it was easy to stay quiet. He could hear sounds undetectable in the city—the burble of a creek choked by ice except for a single trickle down the middle. The rustle of the wind through dried cattails fringing the pond. The trill of a chickadee in the bushes.
It was, he decided, a perfect moment, standing here in the middle of this empty, gorgeous spot with his adored daughter who had suffered through such a miserable time during the divorce. And now, at last, things seemed to be looking up for her.
She got out her camera, the new one he’d bought for her last September. Daisy had always had a quirky, creative eye for a photograph. Now, with a camera that actually matched her skills, her talent shone through. The images she came up with never failed to surprise him.
Greg watched her with appreciation. She worked with self-assurance and a natural instinct to find the best angle for each shot. Her facility with the camera had emerged…when he thought about it, her passion for photography coincided with his and Sophie’s decision to separate.
When he’d first given her the camera, she’d been obsessed with photographing him and Sophie and Max, preferably together. He figured it was because a picture froze a moment in time: here is my family now, before it gets shattered apart. Then in her photography class, she had branched out, taking pictures of architecture, nature, any color or shape or motion that caught her eye. In a way, he was reminded of himself at her age, discovering his passion for design. In time, his success had actually been his downfall. Creating his own firm had consumed him, leaving little time for family—and his marriage. Ultimately, he’d lost the latter and was hanging on to the kids by a thread, by reorganizing his life. He wished he could tell Daisy to balance her passion for her art with other elements, so she wouldn’t be consumed and neglect the things that really mattered. But you couldn’t tell her anything, just as his own elders couldn’t tell him anything when he was a kid.
For a while, Daisy seemed to forget he was there. He suspected the shots she was getting today would be outstanding. It was one of those perfect winter days that arrived like a gift of gold.
“Keep looking off to the side,” she said, surprising him by aiming the barrel-like lens
