wonders and wanders and the marriage becomes history. Pathetically predictable.
The front door opened. A half minute later Jenny stood in the kitchen doorway.
“Still up, Dad?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Have a good time with Sean?”
“Okay.”
“You’re still on target for Iowa, right?”
She looked at me warily. “Mom said something, didn’t she?”
“We talked.”
I hadn’t touched one of the cookies. I offered it to her. She accepted and took a bite.
“Did he pop the question?” I asked.
“No.”
“Would you go with him to Paris anyway?”
“Dad, I don’t know.” A strong note of irritation.
“And if he does pop the question?”
Her blue eyes bounced around the room, as if looking for a way to escape. “See, this is why I didn’t want you to know. I knew you’d interrogate me.”
“Interrogate? I just asked a question.”
“It’s the way you asked. And it’s only the beginning.”
“Jenny, I’m your father. I ought to be allowed to question your thinking and your actions. It’s what I’ve done for eighteen years. And if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s served us both pretty well.”
“It has.” Her face was intense. Beautiful and serious. “It’s helped make me who I am, a woman capable of making her own decisions.” Each word had the feel of cold steel.
“I never suggested you weren’t.”
“I love him, Dad. He loves me.”
Love? I wanted to say. What do you know about love, Jenny? Do you know what it’s like to hold on by your fingernails through doubt and deception and betrayal and despair? To go on hoping when you’re so exhausted by the struggle of love that giving up would be easy? To believe in the face of all contradiction? To walk alone in the dark — because in all love there are times of heartbreaking darkness — until you find that small flame still burning somewhere? Oh, Jenny, I wanted to say, there’s so much you don’t know.
What I said was, “Will you talk to us before you make a decision?”
“Yes, all right?” she snapped.
She turned away without saying good night and started upstairs, but she stopped. “Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d like to go with Sean for a drive along the North Shore tomorrow. I asked Jodi to fill in for me. She said she would. Is it okay?”
“Go,” I said.
I listened to her feet hammer up the stairs.
I turned out the kitchen light and trudged up to bed.
SEVEN
Early the next morning I went to the hospital to see Meloux. He was still in the ICU, still looking like he had a toehold in the next world. His eyes were closed. I thought he was sleeping and I turned to go.
“You have news?”
His eyelids lifted wearily. Behind them, his almond eyes were dull.
“Maybe,” I said.
One of the monitors bleeped incessantly. A cart with a squeaky wheel warbled past his door. In another room someone moaned. This had to be hard on Henry. He was used to the song of birds in the morning all around his cabin. If he were to pass from this life, it shouldn’t have been there in that sterile place but in the woods that had been his home for God knows how long.
“Tell me,” he said.
I walked to his bedside.
“I found a woman, Henry. Maria Lima. Her father was a man named Carlos Lima.”
Meloux’s eyes were no longer dull.
“Carlos Lima,” he said. The name meant something to him, and not in a good way.
“She passed away many years ago.”
He didn’t seem surprised. A man as old as Henry probably expected everyone from his youth to be dead by now.
“She was married, Henry. To a man named Wellington.”
From the way his face went rigid, I might as well have hit him with my fist.
“Wellington,” he repeated.
“Maria Lima Wellington had a son,” I went on. “She named him Henry.”
His eyes changed again, a spark there.
“And he was born seventy-two years ago.”
“What month?”
“June.”
He seemed to do the calculation in his head and was satisfied with the result.
“Is he…?”
“Alive? Yeah, Henry, he is. He lives in Thunder Bay, Canada. Just across the border.”
Meloux nodded, thinking it over.
“I want to see him,” he said.
“Henry, you’re not getting out of here until you’re better.”
“Bring him to me.”
“It was a miracle just finding him. Bringing him here? I don’t know, Henry.”
“You did not believe you would find him.”
This was true, though I hadn’t said anything like that to Meloux. Somehow he’d known my thoughts. Typical of the old Mide.
“You will find a way,” he said.
“Look, I might be able to talk to him, but I can’t promise anything. Honestly, I’m not sure how I can make any of this sound believable.”
“The watch, you found it?”
“Yes.”
“Show him the watch.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Meloux seemed comforted. He smiled, satisfied.
“I will see my son,” he said. His eyes drifted closed.
I started out.
“Walleye?” the old man said.
I turned back. “We’re taking good care of him, Henry.”
He nodded and once again closed his eyes.
I spoke with Ernie Champoux, Meloux’s great-nephew, who was in the waiting room. He told me the doctors were puzzled by the symptoms the old man was presenting and were still running tests. Things didn’t look good, though.
I’d dressed for church, suit and tie, and when I was finished at the hospital I met Jo and the kids at St. Agnes for Mass. I didn’t pay much attention to the service. I was thinking about Thunder Bay and how to go about keeping my second promise to Meloux. I thought about some guy approaching me with the kind of story I was going to toss
