Over doughy pancakes at the hotel restaurant, Amanda said, “Walter now that I’m adult, why can’t we…” She looked down, unable to ask outright. Besides, he knew very well what she wondering.
He waited to look into her eyes and said, “Honey, grown-up or not, you’re my daughter. Not officially, but still—really.” He tapped the counter. “Truly.”
[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]
She swallowed and squeezed her eyes shut, two salty drops spurting through her eyelashes. And, she shook her head. That was half her question. The other: What had he gone through, caring for her when she was a young girl desperate for affection? Had she driven him past paternal doting?
Oh yes. He’d warred against himself day and night. He hadn’t slept, keeping vigilance against his terrible desires. And, he had won.
“I wanted so much to be a good father-figure. It was probably worse than you were capable of realizing.”
“No.” She swore he had saved her life.
At the airport their flights left from side by side gates. He smiled and held her hand. And watching his face, feeling his touch, Amanda caught a spark of what he had fought to accomplish: Father and daughter defined them. To pretend otherwise would hurt them both, possibly as much now as then. She nodded. “I know. I know you’re right.”
“Amanda, whatever you might have imagined between us, I've imagined more.”
They exchanged phone numbers and emails. He agreed to visit some time and meet her daughters. And he made her promise, “If you ever need anything—anything—ask me.”
The last week in August, before the new school year started, she met David Tighe at a district-wide conference. For four days, from nine to five, the teachers and administrators gathered at a fancy business center to re-establish goals and guidelines. A woman in pale blue pants and jacket divided the group into teams of twelve. David and Amanda arrived at their discussion room before the others. Tall, with thick white hair, he projected an intense, self-conscious intelligence. She already knew David chaired the high-school history department, but not that he had PhDs in education and world history.
“Let’s play hooky,” he said. “Go bike riding.”
Amanda explained that she was partly responsible for arranging the seminar.
“Well then.” He flashed very white teeth. “Maybe it’s not the waste of time I was assuming.”
“The lunches are good,” Amanda said, since they were the big perk. “Did you see the menu?”
He wrinkled his face, “Ugh,” and asked if he could take her to dinner. “It just might be that you’ve never tasted really good food.”
Amanda laughed, and once he swore he wasn’t married, agreed to a date. She wasn’t free, though, until next weekend when Mike cared for the girls.
David participated throughout the whole workshop. He reported on studies he’d read about bullies.
He ate lunch with Alyssa, the program consultant. Sitting at a different table, Amanda watched him flirt. Later, she overheard him inviting her out for drink.
When school started, though, he appeared first thing in the financial office. Amanda was on the phone getting an estimate for new podiums. David sat on her desk’s corner until she was done.
“Can you get away for lunch?” He had something for her.
He drove a vintage car. Amanda didn’t pay attention to what kind, just that it was a convertible, open to a golden day.
They sat on a blanket under a tree, secluded from the street. He opened a pomegranate with a paring knife. They split it, the juice dripping into cloth napkins he had also thought to bring.
When Amanda picked out the tiny, gleaming fruit with her fingers, he told her, no. That wasn’t how to eat a pomegranate. “Use your tongue.”
She was protesting that surely she could eat a pomegranate however she liked, but he leaned over and kissed her. He said, “Please.”
Was Amanda familiar with the poet, Rumi? “Thirteenth century, Afghanistan. Which was part of the Persian empire.”
He put down his half-pomegranate and squinted, recalling two lines from “The Sun Rise Ruby.”
She asks, Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth.
He says, There’s nothing left of me,
I'm like a ruby held up to a sunrise.
“Oh.” Amanda held up a ruby red bit of fruit and blushed. He kissed her hands and settled her flat on the blanket, the two of them going at it like teenagers until his ring tone alerted them: time to leave.
(Click here to read the next episode.)
