opening up a particular small slice of it for him.
She was an eager student. She always wanted to take photos. Every day, no matter what else they did, they spent time doing that. At first he just let her take photos that interested her. But after a few days of that, he suggested she start looking for specific things. Patterns, themes, specific subject matter.
They shot trees, they shot flowers, they shot buildings and birds and kids and fishermen. They shot old men at work and playing dominoes under the shade trees.
Sometimes they picked a topic—heat, water, happiness, symmetry—and spent the day shooting whatever they saw that expressed it.
In the evenings they developed the black-and-white film together. They took the slides to Deveril’s, which had an overnight developing facility, then spent the next morning comparing the differences and similarities in the way they viewed things.
It was as instructive for Nathan as he hoped it was for Lacey.
He was fascinated to discover what interested her, to learn more about the way she looked at the world. And she rose to every challenge he offered, focusing on it, thinking about it, trying to see what she could bring to it that would be something he hadn’t thought of. Sometimes she wanted it too much, tried too hard.
“Don’t push it,” he advised her. “It’s about vision and about potential, but it’s mostly about patience. You’ve just got to be there. The opportunity will come.”
It was true in photography. Great photos came to those who were prepared, who knew what they were doing and were prepared to wait.
And as the days went by and nothing seemed to happen, he hoped to God it was true in life—in his life—with Carin.
His theory, which was not at all the theory subscribed to by his father or even by Dominic, for that matter, was that showing up and sticking around were half the battle.
“It’s all about opportunity,” he told himself, just as he’d told Lacey about photography.
But as one week went by and then another, he didn’t see any opportunities.
Lacey did her best to try to throw them together. It was no secret their daughter wanted them together, even though she never said so outright.
“Don’t push,” Nathan advised her when she was trying to get her mother to come to dinner with them one night. “It doesn’t do any good. She might show up because you asked her to, but it won’t be because she wants to.”
“I know, but—”
“And she’ll go home irritated and more resistant than ever.”
“Maybe, but—”
“So we’ll just cool it,” Nathan counseled. And tried to take his own advice.
But as the days passed, it got harder and harder to simply bide his time.
As the days passed Carin thought Nathan would get bored, get fed up, get antsy, be ready to leave.
Instead he stuck around.
Not only did he stick around, but he and Lacey bonded completely. They fished and swam and wandered all over the island, according to what her glowing daughter told her every evening. He listened to her and talked to her. He took her seriously. As far as Lacey was concerned, she could not have a better father.
“I wish he’d been here before,” she said more than once. “He wishes he had been here before, too.”
Carin tried to take that with equanimity. “Really? Did he say so?”
“No. ’Cause he’s too polite. But I know he feels that way. I can just tell.”
Which, of course, made Carin the bad guy of the piece. Good old Nathan wasn’t even complaining because she’d done him out of twelve years of their daughter’s life. Perversely it made her angry.
It was hard, too, because she felt such conflict. She didn’t want to feel beholden to Nathan, and yet she was. He was saving her bacon by taking Lacey every day, by having hired Elaine, by allowing her to paint.
Even so, it was hard to feel grateful. She didn’t want to feel grateful. And yet she knew she owed him.
More guilt.
And then there was Hugh. Carin was grateful to him, too. He made a point of stopping around in the evening along about the time Nathan would be bringing home Lacey. He stood in her kitchen, beer bottle in hand, acting like he’d been there all evening, giving her intimate little smiles and winks designed to make Nathan believe she and Hugh were an item.
He kissed her, too. And she let him—in front of Nathan. She told him they were friends. He said of course they were friends. But