Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

In the kitchen Nate perched on one of the stools that, in another life, he’d found at a garage sale, then sanded and repainted. He ran a thumb across the grain of the wood. Everything like a detail from a remembered dream.

Janie said, “I’ll see if she’ll come down,” and headed upstairs.

Pete finished washing romaine leaves in the farmhouse sink, set them aside, and dried his hands on his Wharton School sweatshirt. Pete was a widower, an intrinsically decent guy, and a former neighbor whom Nate and Janie had known in passing. He had made a lot of money in commercial real estate, and when he’d moved in here a few months ago, he’d cut a check to finish off the mortgage, an act of generosity that Nate still resented. Nate might have been struggling with that bank note, but at least it had been his. Even when he and Janie had separated about three years ago, it had given him comfort to know he was keeping a roof over the head of his daughter and the woman he still wildly, ineffectually loved. Over Janie’s objections he’d sent 70 percent of each modest paycheck to her until she stopped cashing every other one to make sure he kept some money for himself. Pete’s arrival had dissolved the last sure way Nate had known to help his family. Since then he and Pete had harbored an affectionate dislike for each other. Back in the months after Pete’s wife passed, Nate remembered walking Casper by his house and seeing him inside, eating dinner alone at that big dining table, and no matter how much Nate wanted to hate him now for sleeping with his wife and raising his daughter, he just couldn’t bring himself to get there in full.

Nate sat on his former stool and fussed with the neat stack of mail before him. Brokerage statements, Vanity Fair, a Lexus service reminder-all the accoutrements of a robust, prosperous life. They had added a wine fridge beneath the microwave.

“One of the bricks on the porch is loose,” Nate announced to the silence.

Pete laid the romaine leaves side by side on a paper towel. “How am I supposed to reply, Nate? I say it’s no big deal, I’m insulting you. I say I’ll fix it, you’ll get pissed off since you think it’s still your porch.”

Nate wanted to say, It is still my porch. I rebuilt it with my own two hands. I leveled the form, poured the concrete base, used a toothpick to scrape the mortar from beneath my fingernails. Instead he said nothing. He had lost the right to have opinions here.

Pete distributed the romaine across three plates, setting fewer spears on the last. By way of explanation, he said uncomfortably, “We’re trying to help her with her weight.”

At a loss as to how to respond to that, Nate lined up the mail nervously and smacked the envelope edges straight on the marble slab. Two tickets fell out- Turandot at the Ahmanson Theatre. Nate lifted them to the yellow light. “Opera?”

“To celebrate our engagement. You saw the ring?”

“No,” Nate said, “I didn’t notice.”

Janie entered, and he looked hopefully past her, but no Cielle. His disappointed gaze returned to the tickets. She took note of his expression. “What?”

Nate’s mouth moved instinctively before he could stop it. “You hate opera,” he told her.

Janie halted by the stove. “Huh?”

Pete paused from chopping. “It was a surprise.”

“Oh,” Nate said. “Oops. But she hates opera. You hate opera.”

Janie’s smile did not quite reach her eyes. “Not really,” she told Pete.

“There is no ‘not really,’” Nate said. “This is opera. There are two camps. You either love opera. Or you hate opera. There is no Switzerland when it comes to opera.”

Janie’s head whipped over to him. He showed his palms.

Pete looked confused and a touch disappointed. “You really don’t like opera? I’m sure I can find someone to give the tickets to if you-”

“Look,” she said, resting a hand on the small of Pete’s back, “can we maybe not have this discussion right now, honey?”

Constantly with the pet names, as though they were afraid if they didn’t label each other at the end of every sentence, they might find themselves estranged.

Nate said, “Where’s my daughter?”

“She doesn’t want to see you,” Janie said.

The words like a slap. It took him a moment to recover. “Why not?”

Pete said, “She’s probably afraid you’ll disappoint her again.”

“Don’t take yourself so seriously, Pete,” Nate said. “No one else does.”

Janie was studying him, furrows texturing her forehead. It wasn’t so much his words, he realized, as his tone that had caught her attention. She seemed less angry than mystified. “What’s gotten into you, Nate?”

Pete leaned over the counter toward Nate. “Cielle is my responsibility now, too. And you can have all the smart-ass quips you want, but I’m gonna do right by her. Which-if you actually took a second to think-is probably what you want instead of some asshole stepdad who doesn’t give a shit about her.”

Nate thought about those abysmal first months after the separation. How on day four the sight of a girl riding her father’s shoulders had nailed him to the pavement outside a grocery store. How one desperate night Janie had let him in just so he could sit in the darkness of his daughter’s room and listen to the faint whistle of her breath as she slept. How Cielle, standing in the dim light of his tiny one-bedroom, had clumsily declared, “It’s too hard when I see you and then you’re gone.” Then, a few visits later: “Sometimes it’s easier when the person who leaves just leaves for good.” And how, even though it gutted him, he’d given her more space and more space until their weekly dinner became monthly, then quarterly. And how after the diagnosis he’d torn himself away from her and Janie altogether, not wanting them to have to suffer anything with him, whether out of love, guilt, or obligation. Fair or not, he wanted to weaponize all that pain and loss and aim it right through Pete’s gallant face, but instead he looked at Janie and screwed his jaw shut.

Casper lifted his square, Scooby-Doo head and compassionately took in Nate’s discomfort. He wasn’t an animal so much as a human in a dog suit.

Janie said, “You’re bleeding.”

He peered over his shoulder and saw where a crimson seam blotted the undershirt. “I’m okay.”

She wet a hand towel, carried it over, and lifted his shirt in the back. Pete and Nate made an effort to avoid eye contact.

“Nice stitch work,” she said, dabbing at the edges of the wound. He relaxed a bit under her touch. “The bank robbery,” she reminded him.

Before he could speak, Cielle appeared in the doorway.

She still carried thirty or so extra pounds, though her fullness didn’t detract from her beauty. Those dark brown irises, almost black. Long bowed lashes framing her eyes, rendering eyeliner or mascara superfluous. Raven locks twisting this way and that, now streaked with maroon. Everything about her appearance, from the goth-girl highlights to the baggy charcoal sweater with torn thumbholes in the sleeves, seemed too angry for a fifteen-year-old girl. Or perhaps right on target. He’d forgotten how long ninth months was in the life cycle of a teenager.

“What’s with the undershirt, Nate?” she asked.

“Show some respect, Cielle,” Janie said. “Call him Dad. ”

“It’s from the hospital,” Nate said. “I got stabbed during a bank robbery.”

Janie took in a clump of air.

“And I shot the robbers. Well, most of them.”

Pete lowered his hands to the counter, and Janie’s hands stopped moving on Nate’s back, but Cielle didn’t miss a beat. “Were any of them named Jason Hensley?”