from the past influence today? Should an old woman’s story change the present? I didn’t know, but I thought I was about to find out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
My head spun in a thousand directions, like a multicol ored pinwheel in the wind, while I waited in the kitchen for Daddy to come get his coffee the next morning. I’d been up most of the night, tossing from the left to the right in my bed while trying to find a comfortable spot on my down pillow. Daddy walked in rubbing the stubble on his chin.
“Good morning,” I said, attempting a smile.
He nodded at me, then glanced away. He grabbed his coffee mug, poured himself a cup.
A palpable tension shimmered between us, and I knew only one way to make it disappear, to diminish this loneliness—I needed to tell Daddy I was sorry for being disrespectful, that Jack meant nothing to me. I opened my mouth to try, but the words wouldn’t come.
Sunlight streaked through the window at that moment, casting a sharp yellow glow on Daddy’s face. His wrinkles were set deeper, his stubble now gray, and my heart reverberated with love.
He turned away from me, then walked out of the kitchen without saying a word. I called after him. “Daddy, don’t be mad at me.” I sounded like a child, like a desperate child.
He returned. “It is all well and good to listen to your heart, as your mother said, but you must also have integrity and character. Kara, my biggest fear was that if I ever told you all what your mother said before she died, it would do more harm than good.”
“Don’t let that be a fear, Daddy. That is not what that wish means to me. I think she just meant that I need to think about what I’m doing, about who I am.” I took a long breath, and with the new day coming through the window, soft and full, I found words that I didn’t even realize I’d hidden in the safer part of my heart. “I . . . have been afraid to think about what I really want because it might not be what other people want.”
Daddy nodded.
“I feel like you gave me a gift—Mama’s words before I get married.”
He wrapped his hands around his mug and stared at me, but didn’t speak.
I moved toward him. “Do you think you could ever love again?”
His face blanched, his hands gripping his mug tighter. “Kara Margarite, that would not be any of your business.”
“She would want you to love again, Daddy. She would.”
He turned around and walked from the room without speaking. My stomach knotted like a rope pulled tighter and tighter.
Daddy and Peyton: wanting and needing only the Kara they knew. A sob began to rise from the back of my throat, but I held it tight, let it dissolve before I moved, ran up the stairs to my room and grabbed several rolls of undeveloped film.
I stood in the Palmetto Pointe Photography Studio’s darkroom with only the developing pictures beneath my fingers, beneath the fluid in the pan. Clarisse, who managed the studio, had taught me years ago how to develop my own pictures, and she rented me the space when I needed it. There were at least fifty photographs on the rolls of film. I watched the pictures appear one by one, taking my time, focusing only on the pictures, not on my fatigued and shadowed thoughts. I focused on the skill of developing, on creating the right light contrast for each photo.
I knew exactly how to fix the rift between Daddy and me, between Peyton and me. I could just say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring Jack Sullivan back into this house. I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean I would leave and go to photography school.” And I’d probably still say these things, smooth the rougher edges of our relationships with my words, but now I stared at the developing photos below the water.
One of my favorite things about seeing the pictures was that often I forgot what was on the film, what I’d taken pictures of. This roll held mostly landscapes of the Palmetto Pointe golf course and the river behind it at Peyton’s house. I’d become enchanted with the way in which the sun—from the rising dawn to the fading evening—played with the river, tossed its light and shadows across the water, around the edges. The hummocks were exposed during low tide, then covered with the thick ribbon