“Do you know who he is?” she asked.
His eyes changed. He looked more like the kind man Ellis remembered.
“Yeah, I knew your dad,” he said softly. “Is it okay to talk about this in front of your kids?”
“I’m sure they’d like to know something about their grandfather.”
“Unless he’s a mass murderer,” River said. “That I’d rather not know.”
Zane ignored him. “I knew him for years before your mother did. I cooked with him. To this day, I think of him as my best friend.”
“Your best friend? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Your mother wouldn’t let me. He was a really good guy, Ellis. That’s what I’ve always wanted to tell you.”
“Mom told me she didn’t know who my father was.”
Zane glowered. “She meant that as an insult. Your father was Lucas Rosa. But he usually went by Luke.”
So the father listed on her birth certificate was real. “Why isn’t Rosa my last name?”
“Because your mother preferred it for your middle name—and she usually got her way with Luke. At least at first.”
“Is that an Italian name?”
“Portuguese,” Zane said. “Your dad came from a family of fishermen in Massachusetts.”
“Interesting,” River said. “No wonder Dad couldn’t convince me to study law. My genes were calling me to a fish-slimed boat in the middle of the Atlantic.”
Zane cast a critical look at River. “It’s an honorable profession. And a dangerous one, even for experienced seamen. Luke’s father and brother died at sea in a storm.”
“How old was my father when that happened?” Ellis asked.
“Sixteen, and an orphan because his mom died when he was little. He lived with his grandmother for a couple of years, then went inland to live with a friend. We met at a restaurant in Pittsburgh when we were still prep cooks.”
Zane smiled. “You’d never know Luke came from a hard life. He really knew how to have a good time.” He studied her face. “You know, I think you look even more like him now than you did when you were little.”
That was why Ellis looked so different from her mother. She’d gotten her features from her father. Now she could visualize his face.
“Does the name Ellis have to do with that family?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Your mom was a few months pregnant when Luke took her to see where he grew up. They camped all over the northeast and—”
“What? My mother camping?”
“She did a lot of stuff you never knew. Luke liked camping and turned her on to it. It’s kind of interesting you called one of your kids River—because that’s how you got your name, from a river in the White Mountains where they camped.”
“I’m named for a mountain river?”
He grinned. “I knew you’d like that. It drove me crazy I couldn’t tell you any of this when you were a kid.”
“What happened with my dad? Why was all of this kept secret?”
“To make sure you never asked questions like that, I guess. None of us was allowed to talk about it.”
“Who wasn’t allowed to talk about what?”
“You see? This is what your mother didn’t want to happen.”
“She isn’t here. Tell me what I wasn’t supposed to know.”
“I guess you know her father kicked her out of his house.”
“Yes.”
“When that happened, she went to western Ohio with some guy, but it didn’t work out. She moved in with a friend who got her a waitress job where she worked. In a smaller town like ours, all the restaurant people knew each other. Your mom hit our scene like a storm. She was wild, always had fun, crazy ideas. Every guy who met her fell for her.”
Ellis had trouble imagining that.
Zane saw what she was thinking. “That was before the booze and drugs. She was really something to look at back then. Striking, I would call her looks. But there was only one of us she wanted, and that was Lucas Rosa.”
“How old were they?”
“She was twenty-one and he was twenty-six. They were totally gone on each other. But boy could they go at it when they had a fight. They toned that down a little when your mom got pregnant. They rented a place and seemed really happy.”
“They wanted to have a baby?”
“Yeah. They were into it. All of us were excited for them. You had twenty or so honorary aunts and uncles when you were born. You were the little princess of our parties—and we had a lot of parties.”
Ellis remembered. Climbing into laps. “Come here to your auntie, sweetie.” Arms lifting her. Someone swinging her around like an airplane. A smoky room. A man letting her drink out of his glass. “Don’t get that baby drunk, you idiot!”
“How old was I when they broke up?”
“Three.”
“What happened?”
He dragged in a slow breath and sighed. “Luke met someone else. He started going around behind your mom’s back. One night when some of us were at their house, your mom was drunk and confronted him about it. He got mad but admitted to it. She told him to get out and never come back. Luke was really pissed about her yelling at him in front of everyone . . .”
Zane looked down at the glass of tea in his hands.
“What? What happened?”
“He jumped on his motorcycle and rode away. He’d only gone a half block when he sped past a stop sign and got hit.” He paused, still gazing at the glass. “We heard the tires screeching. It was weird—we all knew right away what’d happened and ran over. We watched him die.” He looked into her eyes. “You too. You were in my arms.”
Ellis tried but couldn’t remember. But she could still see the faces of her many babysitters, her “aunts and uncles,” as Zane had called them. Now she understood they had been helping her mother after Lucas died.
“Your mom was never the same,” he said. “She thought she’d killed him. But she never said that. She’d only say how much she hated him for going off with that other woman. All that love she
