sort of used to it, but it still eats at me sometimes. And then
last night, to feel like you know things you’re not telling me . . .
Dad, come on. Don’t do that to me.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told her family a decade
ago,” he says. “The same thing I’ll tell the police again today if
they want to talk with me about it. Trina went through a hard
time with her family. Whether or not I wanted to see her, she
showed up from time to time. She dropped in a few months
before Delilah left. But after that I never saw her again. And
Sam, we were never—romantically involved during those vis-
its. I was married by then to your mom.”
“Happily?”
He pauses on this one and meets my gaze. “Not as happily
as I would’ve liked. Obviously.”
“Cass said Mom cheated on you.”
“She said that, huh?”
“Yeah. She said you and Heather used to talk about it.”
“Maybe we speculated once or twice, but that doesn’t mean
it’s true.” He shakes his head. “That’s exactly why I don’t want
you discussing this Trina business with your sister.”
I think of the memories resurfacing lately. The bonfires,
Mom’s laugh. I almost can’t believe I’m about to ask this. For
years, our neighbor has been a quiet, slightly standoffish fixture
across the lawn, watering his hydrangeas. I’ll get an occasional
smile or wave fromhim, but he andDad aren’t on speaking terms,
and honestly he doesn’t seem to be on speaking terms with most
of the world. He may as well be a garden fountain these days.
But lately, I’m remembering he wasn’t always that way.
Maybe something happened that turned him inward.
Most of my sunflowers have thirty-four petals. Some of the big-
ger ones’ll have fifty-five, but . . .
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