Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(80)

“I’ve never gotten used to it,” Dad says, reading my mind. “How it keeps going and going whether we’re here to see it or not.”

That’s right, Dad. Things keep going whether you’re there to see them or not.

“I want to get closer,” I murmur. “So I can feel the water.”

“Sure.” Dad slips off his shoes and socks and rolls up the bottoms of his khakis.

I take off my black Delilah Darkwood ankle boots and hold them, with my socks stuffed inside. I can’t roll up the bottoms of my black vinyl pants very well, but I don’t care if they get wet. I walk tottering in the cool sand toward the water, approaching cautiously, like it’s a wild animal that could devour me. I get right to the edge of where the waves are washing up. Cool water nibbles the tips of my toes. Dad is to my side, a couple of feet behind me. I inch forward. The water floods over the tops of my feet. The vastness and emptiness of the expanse in front of me makes me light-headed.

“I literally tracked you down to the end of the earth,” I say over the crash of the surf.

Dad smiles sadly.

“Why here?” I ask.

He takes a few steps to stand beside me, the waves rushing over his feet and ankles. He puts his hands in his pockets.

“Did you hear—” I start to say.

“Yeah, I’m thinking.” After a moment, he says, “Because it seemed like a good place to start over. A place where no one would care who I was or what I’d done in my life. That wouldn’t judge me. I guess that’s my best explanation.”

“You know what the worst part is about your dad leaving you?”

He murmurs something, but I can’t hear over the waves.

It was a rhetorical question anyway. “It makes you scared to trust anyone or anything, because if your dad can leave you, who won’t? What won’t?”

“I know,” he says softly.

“Where did you get the name Derek Armstrong?”

“Well, the Armstrong part comes partly from Neil Armstrong. I was always fascinated with the idea of people standing on the moon. I’d look up into the night sky, and I couldn’t get my head around it. It seemed like such a brave thing to do, and I wanted to start over, but braver. And part of it was that if I had another shot at the name thing, I wasn’t doing the end of the alphabet again. It was a good, solid last name that made me feel like I could be strong in my new life and better than I was before. And Derek was the name of one of my best friends growing up. I always liked his name better than mine. And I had a choice.”

“I thought maybe you’d become a secret agent, or you’d joined the Mafia or something.”

“Nope. Just became a database administrator.”

“You really wanted to make sure I’d never find you again.” I bend over and let my fingers trail in the water. I touch a fingertip to my tongue. The ocean tastes like thin blood.

When I glance back at Dad, he’s hanging his head, his face pinched. In the darkness, it’s hard to tell, but it looks like tears are streaming down his face.

“I, um…” His voice quavers. “I wanted to be someone else. Very badly. I hated myself. I had to change my name because I couldn’t stand to say my old name.”

“So it wasn’t to keep me from finding you?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve thought about you so much in the last ten years. Had dreams where we did this very thing. Talked about our lives. I tried to imagine what you were like. Who you’d become. But every day that passed, I was more scared to seek you out.”

And then I steel my heart and I ask him. I ask him why.

“Pie?”

“No, why. Why did you leave?”

“Sorry, I thought you said ‘pie.’ The waves were too loud.”

“Why?”

He takes a deep breath and holds it for a while before exhaling. And another. “Because your mom got sick and wasn’t getting well, and I was scared. I was afraid to have to take care of two people. All that responsibility terrified me. I felt like in the cartoons when a character runs out over water and does fine until he notices he’s over water, and then starts sinking. I kept thinking how much I wished my life was simpler and someone could take care of me, or at least that I only had myself to worry about. I hung in there as long as I could with your mom, but I was sick too. I was depressed and drinking a lot because of it. I couldn’t be strong enough for all three of us. I started thinking nonstop about how great it would be to be dead. It was leave or die. So I chose leave. I wanted to succeed. I wanted to be a good father to you. Or at least a present father. But I was a coward. I wasn’t up to the hard task. And in my frame of mind then, it was better to leave you than to stick around and be a terrible father and have you remember me that way. So that’s it.”

I take it in along with the sound of the waves. You thought wrong, I want to say. But my tongue is paralyzed.

Dad continues. “I’ve pondered a lot since, and I’ve realized there was more to it than I thought at first. I never told you this, but my dad—your grandpa—left our family when I was young. And he was my example. I wanted so badly to be better than him. More than anything. I have a half brother and a half sister I’ve never even met. But I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was made out of the same weak stuff he was made of. I convinced myself that it was unavoidable. Wilkes men leave and start over. It’s what we do. It wasn’t even in my plan to become a dad because of that fear. Then it happened. So I guess that’s why. Maybe I could have come up with a better explanation if I’d known I’d be giving it tonight.”