Lucky(8)

She didn’t respond.

“Aw, come on. You’re still sulking?”

More silence.

“All right. Well, I have something that might cheer you up.”

He drove an hour before pulling to the side of the road. She could see water glimmering behind a line of trees.

“Behold, Chapel Pond,” he said when they got out of the car. But it didn’t look like any pond she had ever seen. It looked more like a lake, and was surrounded by cliffs that were dotted with climbers. Lucky peered up at them. How could you be that brave? The climbers moved ant-like up the rock slabs while falcons and hawks dove and swept around them.

“You can swim here,” her father said, drawing her attention back to the water. “It’s cold and fresh and perfect. And see? None of them bobbles you hate.”

“Buoys,” Lucky said, miserable, angry with him, and yet—he was right. It was perfect here. Her father was taking off his shirt, revealing his lanky frame. Women thought he was handsome, like a movie star. Steph’s mom had felt that way, which was why he had been able to charm her so easily and take her money.

“This is today’s classroom,” her father said now. “You couldn’t ask for anything better, Luciana.” He didn’t often call her that.

“She’ll hardly miss the money,” he had muttered the night before as they fell asleep, talking to her or to himself, she wasn’t sure. “Stephanie’s dad had money, and there was quite the life insurance plan, too.” But the money wasn’t the point. Her father had pretended to give Steph’s mother something: he had pretended to give her love. She was going to miss that. Lucky knew it.

He pointed up at the climbers. “Some of the world’s greatest have climbed those slabs,” he said, drawing from a pool of random knowledge deeper than the glacial pond itself. It always amazed Lucky, all the things he knew. Even then, as sad and angry as she was, she drew toward him to listen.

“There was a fire here once,” her father said. “A poet described it as ‘Dante’s Inferno.’ I read that somewhere. The fire was so hot it made the rocks break off and fall into the pond. Picture it. Sizzling and steaming as they hit the water. A lake of fire.”

Lucky looked up at the climbers and imagined the fire, centuries ago, turning those cool-looking rocks into lava.

“And now, look at it,” her father was saying. “All right again. Like the fire never happened. The world’s like that. What matters in one moment, it doesn’t matter the next. Things that fall apart eventually come back together again. Everything passes. You can be sure of that.”

“Maybe we could be like that, too,” Lucky said. “Maybe we could change. What if we put a down payment on a house, settled down a bit, with all the money Steph’s mom gave us?”

“Maybe, kiddo.”

The water was clear at the sandy shore and black as a chalkboard in the depths. It was mirrorlike around the far edges, and Lucky knew she wanted to swim out there and sit on a rock she could see poking above the surface of the pond like a high table. She could sun herself like a turtle and try to forget.

“Ready?” her father said. She nodded and followed him as he bounded down the beach, past a bleached-out tree skeleton that had toppled sideways in the sand. She plunged in; the water was the perfect kind of cold. She swam the way she had wanted to all week at the Sagamore. She swam toward the rock, going underwater for as long as she could stand, then surfacing and pulling in big gasps of air before diving back down. When she reached the rock, she found it was steeper than it had looked from afar. With determination, she pulled herself up to the top of it, her arms shaking with the effort.

Her father was already waiting for her there. He offered her a hand up at the last possible moment. “Good job, Lucky,” he said. “Excellent work. I’m proud of you.”

“Don’t,” she said, suddenly ashamed all over again. She moved away from him, preparing to dive into the water again and swim to shore, but he held her back.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it wasn’t easy for you to give up something you really wanted, for us. I’m sorry it hurt you. I wish the world were a different place, but it isn’t. The odds are stacked against us and we have to grab what we can, when we can—even if it doesn’t always feel like the right thing to do. This was a real break for us, kid. Money like this means we can indeed start chasing after some of our dreams and not worry about small-time stuff for a while. And it was all because you sacrificed for it. That’s why I’m proud of you—not because you’re a good con artist, but because you did a hard thing. I love you, kiddo.”

She was looking up as she listened to him speak, watching a climber reach the top of a ledge. Once he had made it, he stood on the edge and surveyed his surroundings. When he looked down into that pond, what did he see? Just a normal father and daughter, that was what. Two people who might soon swim to shore, get into their car, and head to their normal house and their normal life.

“I’m doing the best I can on my own,” her father was saying.

“Oh, Dad. I know you are. It’s okay.” She turned to him.

“You’re all I’ve got, you know.”

“You’re all I’ve got, too. Don’t be sad. I’m sorry.”

He reached for her and they hugged, and she tried not to think about how she was the one apologizing to him. Somehow, the tables were always turning.