no warning, and it had been nearly half a year since last she’d visited. It was another place she kept promising not to visit again—too many sad memories, her dad too difficult—yet here she was. She walked toward him, leaving Lily in the car with the windows open. He walked the path, grass as tall as his thighs.
“I thought you’d come,” he said when he reached her. He took her face in his palms, kissed her gently on the head. Then he walked past her to peer into the car at Lily, who was sound asleep, head tilted to the side, snoring a little.
“She’s just like you,” he said after a moment.
“Is she?”
Lily always just seemed like herself, this magical gift from the universe, not like Rain really, not like Greg. There were flashes of her husband—in her smile and in her frown, in the color of her eyes. But Rain didn’t see herself in Lily’s face.
“You don’t see it?”
“Maybe around the mouth?” It didn’t pay to argue with her father. He was never wrong.
He squinted at her from behind his glasses. “It’s in the spirit.”
Something about this made her smile.
“We can sit on the porch,” he said. “Until she wakes up.”
She sat on the old rocker and watched the car, while her dad went in to get them something to drink. The ghost of her mother was everywhere here, kneeling in the overgrown garden, staring up in disbelief at the monstrosity in their yard, standing on the porch looking for Rain to come up the drive on her bike. Rain tried not to think about her mother’s final days in hospice, the dim room, the sound of her breathing, how quiet and slow the world became. Everything that was important—school, grades, internships, her trauma, her father’s disgrace—slipped away behind a curtain of grief. He was there for them then, even if he hadn’t been any other time. He was there, a hand on her shoulder, by her mother’s bedside, whispering to her. He was the husband and father in Mom’s dying days that he had never been when she was well.
“I regret so much,” he’d said to Rain after the funeral.
Don’t be angry with him, her mother said once. He is only the man he knows how to be.
“It doesn’t matter, Dad,” she’d said. There was an ache in her chest for him, for both of them. “She knew you did your best.”
“I did,” he said. He bowed his head and took off his glasses. “A poor showing, but, yes, unfortunately, my best.”
Now he handed her a cold glass of lemonade, which she couldn’t even believe he had. It was good, tasted fresh and sweet, tingling. There was a woman who came in twice a week, did the housework, the grocery shopping for him. He’d mentioned it the last time they spoke.
“How’s motherhood?” he asked.
“All-consuming,” she said. “Wonderful, exhausting, frustrating as hell and totally blissful.”
Her father demanded total honesty. He could hear the ring of lies and half-truths, dug in until he got the whole story in all its terrible, shimmery, dull and beautiful layers. She wouldn’t dream of bothering with the pat answer.
“Was it a dig?” she asked. “That damn jogging stroller.”
“Not a dig,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “An encouragement. A reminder.”
“Hmm.”
He gave a chuckle, looked at his glass. The wind chimes sang.
“You know, your mother was a better writer than I ever was—really in every way. Whatever small amount of ability I had was dwarfed by her talent.”
Lilian Rae Winter wrote about love, motherhood, failure, regret. Her characters were layered—wise, flawed, human. They hurt each other, did wrong, were redeemed. She’d had a few books published, as well, small literary novels that were well reviewed and sold a smattering of copies. Rain had them on a shelf in her office, opened the pages when she wanted to feel close to her mother’s love, her wisdom.
“Compared to you, we were both hacks,” he went on.
“Stop.”
He lifted a palm. “Talent doesn’t know itself.”
Rain sat up from the slouch she was in. She didn’t like to think that Lilian had given things up because of motherhood, because of her selfish husband, that her life hadn’t been all she’d hoped.
“She didn’t want your life,” said Rain. “Gone all the time, dogged by fans, lauded then slammed by reviewers, living and dying by the numbers you couldn’t control.”
She listened to the wind, for the sounds of Lily waking.
“But she missed the writing,” her father said. “Which she