what I’d done to Tim—not so much the others, I admit—and angry at Savannah for what had happened on the pier.
I could barely remember how it had started. One minute I was thinking that I loved her more than I’d ever imagined possible, and the next minute we were fighting. I was outraged by her subterfuge yet couldn’t understand why I was this angry. It wasn’t as if my dad and I were close; it wasn’t as if I even thought I really knew him. So why had I been so angry? And why was I still?
Because, the little voice inside me asked, there’s a chance she might be right?
It didn’t matter, though. Whether he was or wasn’t, so what? How was that going to change anything? And why was it any of her business?
As I drove, I kept veering from anger to acceptance and back to anger again. I found myself reliving the sensation of my elbow crushing Tim’s nose, which only made it worse. Why had he come at me? Why not them? I wasn’t the one who’d started it.
And Savannah . . . yeah, I might be able to head over there tomorrow to apologize. I knew she honestly believed what she was saying and that in her own way, she was trying to help. And maybe, if she was right, I did want to know. It would explain things. . . .
But after what I did to Tim? How was she going to react to that? He was her best friend, and even if I swore it had been an accident, would it matter to her? How about what I’d done to the others? She knew I was a soldier, but now that she’d seen a small part of what that meant, would she still feel the same way about me?
By the time I found my way home, it was past midnight. I entered the darkened house, peeked into my dad’s den, then proceeded to the bedroom. He wasn’t up, of course; he went to bed at the same time every night. A man of routine, as I knew and Savannah had pointed out.
I crawled into bed, knowing I wouldn’t sleep and wishing I could start the evening over again. From the moment she’d given me the book, anyway. I didn’t want to think about any of it anymore. I didn’t want to think about my dad or Savannah or what I’d done to Tim’s nose. But all night long I stared at the ceiling, unable to escape my thoughts.
I got up when I heard my dad in the kitchen. I was wearing the same clothes from the evening before, but I doubted he was aware of it.
“Mornin’, Dad,” I mumbled.
“Hey, John,” he said. “Would you like some breakfast?”
“Sure,” I said. “Coffee ready?”
“In the pot.”
I poured myself a cup. As my dad cooked, I noted the headlines in the newspaper, knowing he would read the front section first, then metro. He would ignore the sports and life section. A man of routine.
“How was your night?” I asked.
“The same,” he said. I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t ask me anything in return. Instead, he ran the spatula through the scrambled eggs. The bacon was already sizzling. In time, he turned to me, and I already knew what he would ask.
“Would you mind putting some bread in the toaster?”
My dad left for work at exactly 7:35.
Once he was gone, I scanned the paper, uninterested in the news, at a loss as to what to do next. I had no desire to go surfing, or even to leave the house, and I was wondering whether I should crawl back into bed to try to get some rest when I heard a car pull up the drive. I figured it might be someone dropping off a flyer offering to clean the gutters or power-wash the mold from the roof; I was surprised when I heard a knock.
Opening the door, I froze, caught completely off guard. Tim shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Hi, John,” he said. “I know it’s early, but do you mind if I come in?”
A wide strip of medical tape bridged his nose, and the skin surrounding both eyes was bruised and swollen.
“Yeah . . . sure,” I said, stepping aside, still trying to process the fact that he was here.
Tim walked past me and into the living room. “I almost didn’t find your house,” he said. “When I dropped you off before, it