Begin Again(34)

And then, almost like he heard the thoughts through the phone, my dad asks, “Hey, why haven’t you sent me your clips yet?”

I pull my fingers from the necklace in surprise. “Oh. I—I did. A few weeks ago.”

“All I got were your transcripts. Great work, by the way,” he says. “No wonder you got into Blue Ridge midyear.”

I flush. My grandmas always send him paper copies of my grades. My dad keeps a bunch of paperwork in an old-school filing system, and one of the hanging folders has all of my transcripts from kindergarten on. I’m oddly touched that it didn’t stop in college.

And embarrassed that I’ve been annoyed with my dad for weeks now over something that couldn’t be helped. I’m so careful to be direct with people and try to consider all the possibilities in different scenarios. But when it comes to my dad, it’s all so personal it just goes haywire.

“Um—thanks. Huh. Well, I’ll . . .”

“Send them my way, when you get a chance,” he says easily. “Figure you’re busy taking Blue Ridge’s grading curve by storm.”

I half laugh, half choke at the idea of it. “Not quite.” Before I have to elaborate, I quickly pivot by asking, “Did they put you up somewhere nice?”

“Actually, I’m staying with Kelly.”

“Oh?”

I don’t mean for it to come out like a question, because it shouldn’t be. I know my dad’s been dating Kelly for a few months now. From the light stalking I did the one time some friends of mine back home split a bottle of Yellow Tail and went to town on her Facebook, she seems perfectly nice. Big smile, white teeth, shiny hair, a pediatric dentist with a passion for making soap out of offbeat molds like cheese wedges and skulls and corgi butts. My dad asked if I wanted to get lunch with her when she was passing through Little Fells last month, but I blew him off because of finals. And also because the idea of my dad even dating was such a foreign concept to me that watching a dog pop a wheelie on a skateboard would make more sense to my brain.

“Yeah, her family has a house in Lake Anna,” says my dad. “So we’re just parking it here so we can cut down on company expenses.”

He works for a nonprofit, and has always been big on saving money. Even if I can’t quite wrap my head around him staying with her, I’m relieved he’s not trying to squeeze into another motel.

“A lake house?” I say, wiggling my eyebrows. “Sounds fancy.” “You’d love it here,” says my dad without missing a beat. I press my back farther into the wall, not sure how to process this. He’s been saying stuff like that lately—these little invitations into his world. The ones I wanted growing up, but never got. I know they coincide with Kelly coming into his life, and I can’t decide whether to be bitter or grateful. “Beautiful view. Huge porch. Maybe if you take a long weekend . . . or during the summer, definitely. We’d love to have you.”

We. I’m glad he isn’t here to see me flinch. I barely heard enough of him as an “I” growing up to suddenly make him a “we.”

But I can’t say I’m not tempted by the offer. Despite my jam-packed schedule, I’ve been making an effort to try to explore some of the trails in the arboretum, to try to take a beat and center myself. I was worried it might remind me too much of the hikes I took with my parents as a kid, but instead it stirred up memories I’d forgotten—like this old, beat-up compass my mom always used to keep in her pocket and jokingly pretend she couldn’t read, saying we should let the trail decide where it wanted to go. Or when my parents made their special hiking granola with its generous chocolate-chip ratio for us to take along.

Or the few times my mom would be away for work, and my dad and I went out hiking on our own. How he’d patiently stop and explain what different plants were to me, or follow the occasional bird call, or point out the trail signs in case I wanted to go out on my own someday when I was older. How sometimes we’d just walk these long stretches in companionable silence, easy and familiar with each other’s rhythms without ever noticing the rhythms at all.

It’s strange to think back on now, on the other side of him leaving. I don’t think there has been silence with him that I didn’t feel compelled to fill since.

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”

This is usually the part where the awkward silence settles in and one of us finds an excuse to hang up, but my dad surprises me by cutting right through it. “Your grandmas tell me you’re in Cardinal,” he says, with this hint of a smirk in his voice I recognize more from childhood than anything recent. “It’s no Bluebird, but I trust it’s treating you well?”

“Yeah,” I say again, but this time with feeling. “I love my roommate. Her name is Shay. She got me a job at the bagel shop near campus.”

“Bagelopolis?”

“Yup.”

My dad lets out a low whistle. “Listen. Take it from your old man. The strawberry cream cheese with the cheesy garlic bagel?”

“Dad,” I say, aghast.

“No,” he insists, a laugh in the back of his throat, “trust me. It’s great any day of the week, but it’s the best cure for a hango—uh. Well.”

“Noted,” I say, muffling a laugh of my own. “For all the ragers I’ll be attending.”