reached the water first and splashed out to his knees, and I followed behind in his wake, squealing as if ice needles were piercing my skin. The water foamed around our legs, hissing as the undertow sucked the sand from underneath my feet. Dad clasped his hands above his head and arrowed himself through the belly of an oncoming wave, ducking under it and popping up on the other side to float on his back, his arms out in a T-shape for balance and his long feet cutting the water like shark fins. He made it look effortless, as if his body was made of Styrofoam. He lifted his head to address me.
“Now you!” he hollered.
I mimicked his entry and launched myself directly under the next rolling barrel of water. I blinked in the stinging salt water, and although it was murky, I could see phosphorescent bits of something floating all around me, like gold dust in the water. I kicked toward the light, and when I broke the surface, I felt arms encircle me from behind, and all of a sudden I was sitting in a throne made from Dad’s bent knee and chest as he braced me from the next wave with his back.
He showed me how to float by filling my lungs with air and then holding my breath, and we bobbed like sea otters for so long that my fingers puckered into prunes, and eventually, growls of hunger emanated from my stomach. We rode the next wave in on our bellies, and joined D’Ann on the blanket for lunch.
“I was about to call the Coast Guard, you were out there so long,” she teased. She handed us ham sandwiches, and tore open a bag of potato chips and set it in the middle of the blanket. Dad chomped his sandwich, consuming it in four bites. Then he stretched out on his back, propped his head up with a towel and placed a hill of potato chips on his stomach. He crunched loudly and let out a long, satisfied sigh.
“Can’t believe I have to go back to work,” he announced to the bluebird sky, which I think was his way of saying he didn’t want the week to end, either.
I dug at the sand with my toes.
“Me, too,” I said.
D’Ann reached out and silently rubbed small circles on my back. We finished our lunch in silence, chewing slowly, and I tried to not think about tomorrow.
That night, Dad tucked me in as he had all week, but he sat with me longer than usual. He flicked off the light, and the bug zapper outside the window cast a purple glow into the room.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he said, pulling the sheet up to my chin. He sat back down, and the springs squeaked under his weight. I could hear him scratching his scalp, a nervous tic.
“So, do you like living in California?” he asked. In the darkness, his words sounded heavy and important.
A big moth flew into the zapper and sizzled.
“I mean,” he continued, “are you happy?”
These were big questions that I’d never been asked, and I wasn’t sure what kind of answer he wanted. I had never considered my own happiness, so the question took me by surprise. I wasn’t happy like those kids who goofed around in music class, but I wasn’t sad like Mom, either. I was somewhere in the middle, but was that where I was supposed to be? I wasn’t sure, so instead of answering I pulled at a loose thread on the sheet.
This was the serious conversation we’d been avoiding all week. Both of us had been reluctant to interrupt our vacation with reality. Now his words were ruining the spell, reminding me that this week as his full-time daughter had been nothing more than make-believe.
Dad tried again.
“Is your mother nice to you?”
Nice wasn’t the right word. Mom was Mom. She wasn’t nice; she wasn’t mean. She wasn’t anything, really. I tried to come up with the right description, but I couldn’t figure out how to put her into words. He must have thought my silence meant I was hiding something. He lowered his voice to barely a whisper.
“Does your mother ever...hit you?”
I bolted upright in bed, suddenly not liking where this conversation was going. The question was preposterous. She would never do that. “What? No!”
An uncomfortable silence stretched out between Dad and me. I still hadn’t told him about Mom’s list, or Granny’s letter, not because I