steeling myself. Even though I know his answer, I still have to ask. “Did you miss me? Because I sure missed you.”
“Every day, boy,” he rumbles as he wraps his arm my shoulder again, pulling me tight. “Every damn day, which is apparently longer than I thought. A second hasn’t gone by when I haven’t thought of you.”
“That’s why you stayed? When the others left?”
“Yes,” he says simply. “Are you really twenty-one now?”
“Yeah.”
“My God, you’re a full-grown man.”
“I guess so.”
Silence.
“Dad?”
“Yes, son?”
“I heard your promise. To Cal.”
“I know. I tried very hard to show you.”
“The dreams? That was you?”
He sighs. “Sort of. I tried to show you as much as I could.”
I scowl, anger rising again. “And he tried to keep me away from you. Cal always pulled me out of the river. He didn’t want me to see what you were trying to show me.”
My father looks stern. “As well he should have. It wasn’t all me, Benji. Those dreams. It was the river too. Cal was only doing what I had asked of him. To protect you as much as possible. I couldn’t control it as well as I thought I could. He saved you from drowning. He saved you again and again and again.”
I don’t reply.
But this is my father. He knows me better than anyone. “So that’s what I was feeling,” he says in awe.
“What?” I say, my face flushing.
“You love him.” It’s not said as a question.
“Dad….”
“Well, shit.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s… a nice guy.”
I can’t help the laugh that comes out. “A nice guy?”
“Does he love you back?”
I nod. “I think so.”
“He better.”
“I don’t know if I can do right by him.”
“I raised you, didn’t I?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then you’ll do the right thing, Benji. You always will.”
My eyes start to burn again. “I’m losing him,” I say through the tears. “When I thought he was gone, it felt like I’d lost everything all over again. He’s… Dad, he’s made me feel alive for the first time in a long time. He’s sweet, and kind. And smart. And everyone loves him. He had such reverence for the Ford you would have thought he helped to build it too.”
“Maybe he did,” Big Eddie says slowly. “I gathered he’d been around for some time.”
“But he can’t stay,” I say, my breath hitching in my chest. “He can’t stay.”
My father pulls me closer. “Why?”
“Because he’ll die. Angels can’t stay where we are. He has to go back.”
“Says who?”
“I do!” I say angrily, trying to pull away from him. He doesn’t let me go. “I couldn’t take it if he died too. My heart couldn’t take it.”
“It will,” he tells me. “It will because I’ve raised you to be strong and brave. I’ve raised you to always think of others before yourself.”
I’m incredulous. “I am! I don’t want him to die!”
“What does he want?”
“I don’t….”
“You’ve never asked him, have you?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll bet if you did, he’d tell you exactly what he wants. It seems to me if he wanted to go back, he would have already. If he wanted to avoid any risk at all, he could have. But he didn’t. He took a chance.”
“Because he promised you,” I remind him sadly. “He wouldn’t even be here if he hadn’t promised you.”
Big Eddie sighs. “You don’t know that. He could have chosen just the same. We all have a choice, Benji, with everything we do. And if you ask him, I’d bet anything he’ll tell you he wants to stay. And even if it means he dies, don’t you want to say you had what you could with the time you have left? It’s better, Benji, to have something burn brightly for a short time than to never have it at all. But that may not even happen. You just have to have faith.”
“In what?”
He smiles. “That everything will be okay. If he believes in you, then you need to believe in him. Nothing’s written in stone.”
“I don’t know if I can do this without you,” I say, starting to break again.
“Hush,” he says, resting his chin on my head. “There’s still time.”
We say nothing for a while after that, just sit there, content with each other’s reassurance that somehow it’ll all be okay. He never removes his arm from my shoulder. Our feet kick the water. He ruffles my hair. I breathe him in, and he does the same to me. After a time I hear him humming, and I can’t help but go along with it. He finds his words and we sing