Mount Rainier (Credit: Author)
Allison Graves
Now Playing: “It’s Personal” by The Radio Dept
Casey’s hand hasn’t left mine since we left the brewery. The ride back, the ascension to the rooftop deck of my father’s townhouse, and every moment we’ve been staring out at the sights have been accompanied by his hand in mine. I’ve refused to let it go.
Mount Rainier looms in the distance. Perpetually snow-capped, the dying sunlight paints its white coat a spectacular mix of orange and gold. The mountain is the sight I missed the most after leaving here. I used to stare at it, when it was visible, as a substitute for the ocean. It wasn’t quite the same, but it was something.
Again today, it serves as my anchor and fortitude. Dread has accompanied all thoughts around the impending conversation with my father. Despite having returned to Grantchester a scant month ago, the time back home allowed me to fit all of the scattered pieces together in my mind. Helping Casey with his apportioned challenge forced me to confront my own dumb bullshit.
Truth is, I am drowning; I have been drowning. Five years worth of things I never said to my father bottled up, and I could not return to Seattle without them ready to blow. For all of the perseverance which I have practiced the last five years, I am just as weak and pathetic as ever.
It also helped me uncover the reason for my aggressive pursuit of Casey these last several weeks. The lightbulb finally turned on in my bedroom last night, staring up at the ceiling with Casey right next to me. Not only does he represent the time before my parents split, and Grantchester, and the frivolous days of youth, he was always my safe harbor. Any storm I faced, I weathered because I had Casey Adams by my side. I guess it’s the same right now, but I still feel as though I am walking into the lion’s den slathered in bacon grease on my own.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Casey asks softly.
I shake my head in the negative. “Sorry, sweetie. I have to do this on my own.”
“I’m right here when you’re done. You’ve got this.” He takes my hand as I stand up and pulls it to his lips, gently kissing the top. It helps me smile. I steel myself and head back inside. While I’m jealous I can’t sketch the sunset tonight, I know this needs to happen sooner rather than later, and the weather projection is even clearer for tomorrow, so perhaps I’ll get lucky.
I lived here for five years, but the house still feels new to me. A cold, sterile place with its white walls and modern furniture my father picked up when we moved. It’s nice. That’s the best adjective I can use to describe his house out here, because it’s just…nice. There’s no character, really, just another Seattle-metro-area townhouse which was built way too recently to have charm. Not like home back east, which was built sometime between the 1850s and the 1880s and had generations of stories long before my parents bought the place. There’s no character to the house here, no warmth. I guess it’s a more potent metaphor than I thought.
My father is sitting in his office, watching the news. He turns the moment the door creaks open and offers me a tired, sad smile. “Hey honey.”
“Hey, dad.” My voice is small. I tried to psych myself up on the flight out, but it only served to make me more nervous. There hasn’t been a day since I left – since I chose to leave – that I haven’t had the anger needling at me towards him for uprooting our lives, well, my life, and taking us to the other side of the country. Even the nice days, when we’d do father-daughter activities like we did when Kat and I were kids, still had an undercurrent of resentment.
It’s not healthy and I want it to end.
In the quiet moments while Martin was flirting with Maggie at the restaurant, his words kept rattling around my head regarding my father’s choices, and by extension, my own. You don’t have to accept it. But ask yourself if the relationship with your father is a cost you’re willing to pay. I was angry all day. I was angry for five years. And now, staring him in the face, with tired eyes and stubble which he didn’t quite shave off this morning, the anger has fallen away and replaced with a feeling of deep absence.
“What’s the matter?” He takes his problem-solving tone when he turns his chair around to face me. Dad’s problem-solving tone sounds vaguely professorial mixed with a large quantity of managerial. It’s got a dash of sobriety, and a splash of resolve, served over a bed of optimism. He leans forward in his chair and steeples his hands while making an exaggerated face of someone deep in thought. I can’t help but grin. He’s done that since I was a child, and it has always chipped the ice with difficult conversations. Glad to see that, despite my status as a messy twenty-something, not everything has changed.
“I wanted to, um, well, say that I’m…” I trail off, impatiently tapping my foot as I try to summon the resolve to finish the sentence. “I’m sorry for blaming you for me moving away.”
“Oh, Ally,” he sighs. “I know it wasn’t easy for you. I was always proud you made the decision for your mother’s sake.”
I sit down on the armchair he has in the corner of the room.
“Really?”
He nods. This almost makes it worse. If he understood where I was coming from, why have I felt like I was never truly seen in the last several years? I should get mad at him, tear his head off, but it won’t do any good. Give me a brief sense of smug victory which’ll only reveal itself as ringing hollow within a few. The only way out of this quagmire is through it. So here goes.
I clear my throat. “I always felt like I was being pushed out. Couldn’t stay in Massachusetts, and then you came out here and rekindled things with Natalie, and I felt pushed out. Like your old life fell apart and you wanted to build a new one that barely included me.”
Dad’s face and voice fall. “My God, you did? Allison, I never meant to make you feel like you weren’t part of the family, or that you were unwanted. I didn’t know how to be a single father of an adult. I was trying to give you your space to grow and adjust and spread your wings. I didn’t want to be overbearing, I trusted you. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t even realize.”
He loses his gaze onto the bookshelf behind me. The wheels in his head are turning, and his focus only snaps back to our conversation when I start speaking.
“It’s okay,” I shrug. “I never told you. You did your best with what you knew. We both did.”
The anger releases its hold over my chest. Five years, and all it took was a very simple conversation which both of us have been reluctant to have. It would be funny if I wasn’t so deeply involved in the proceedings. Or if it didn’t rob the half decade we could have spent together.
He starts fidgeting with his hands and anxiously tapping his foot like he’s playing the drums for one of those metal bands that Kat has gotten into recently. “I didn’t try as hard as I could have. Or, really, should have. It was an adjustment for me, and it was an adjustment for you, and bringing Natalie into the picture so soon wasn’t my brightest move. I never meant for it to happen the way it did, it just…did.”
“I never gave her a fair chance. I never gave either of you a chance, honestly. I didn’t try as hard as I could have either. I’m sorry dad.”
“Look, Allison, I love you dearly. I can’t promise that it’ll be perfect off the drop. But I promise that I’ll do my best to do better for both of us.”
I can’t help but smile. “I promise to do the same. I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.”
We both stand and pull each other into the tightest hug we’ve had in a very, very long time. I came to Seattle anticipating answers for Casey, and I am lucky to have found some catharsis of my own. I think my stepmother is owed an apology also. I tell my father as such and make my way back downstairs.
Natalie is wearing a pink sweater, a green apron, and a bit more flour than I think she was anticipating. I get her attention and ask if I can say something. Natalie has never looked at me with a scowl, as such, but sometimes I feel like she gets the closest she can. Despite the general aura of annoyance I’ve always felt coming off of her, she’s never been anything but polite to me. Polite, not nice, is the key differentiator.
Unlike with my father, I’ve never had a problem being blunt with Natalie. Which, I suppose, is part of the problem. “I wanted to say I’m sorry for not being more considerate of the position you were put in when you and my dad reconnected. I was mad at myself for moving, and I resented the situation, and I took it all out on you. It wasn’t fair.”
Natalie relaxes, and loses her polite but disapproving body language. She gives a small, soft laugh of disbelief under her breath, and when she looks back at me, it’s like she’s looking at me seriously for the first time.
“I appreciate that Allison. I owe you an apology too. When your dad reached out to me, I don’t think there was anything,” she clicks her tongue and twists her face into a scowl while searching for the word. Then she shakes her head in frustration, throws up her hands, and huffs.
“Having trouble finding the words?”
Natalie nods with an annoyed frown on her face. I can’t help but grin sympathetically. I’ve been there so many times.
She finally sighs and picks up the thought with a fresh sentence. “I don’t think he meant for anything to happen. I tried to pick up where he and I left off, and then we both ended up in the right places in our lives and looked at each other differently, and I got so caught up in it that I never looked at it from your perspective. Your dad had a daughter to care for, and I didn’t consider you or your feelings. And I’m sorry.”
Again, old weights fall from my shoulders and cease pressing on my lungs. The pressure in my skull is relieved; the anaconda around my heart has vanished. All of this pain and anguish for years, and all it took was dropping pretenses and hostility and just talking shit out. Jesus, no wonder there’s always a market for therapists.
“Look, I know that it’s a little late for us to have a more typical stepmother-stepdaughter relationship, but I’d like to try and be better. If nothing else, for my dad’s sake,” I offer an olive branch. Natalie smiles warmly and before I can protest, pulls me in for a hug almost as tight as my dad’s.
“I think we can make that happen. Go get your dad and your boyfriend, the cake’s almost ready. I made your favorite.”
The small gesture doesn’t go unnoticed. Despite not knowing I was going to clear the air between us, Natalie still baked me one of my favorite desserts. I know she was being sincere, and maybe she’s always been more fond of me than she let on.
I return upstairs to find the two of them talking about the real reason we came here for. I squeak into the office and press myself against the bookcase, where I intend to remain until Casey grabs my hand and pulls me closer.
“Yeah,” my dad answers Casey’s question that I didn’t hear, “I talked to your mom. When she got out here, I helped her get set up with an apartment, and we’d talk occasionally. She left after about a year here, that was six months ago. Last thing she told me was that she was headed to the east coast.”
Damnit, we knew all that. All this way for nothing would leave both of us severely depressed. Casey lets dad know that we figured all of that out. His mention of her letters to his uncle prompts my father to point upwards in a eureka moment and give a triumphant laugh.
“Good thing you mention that, your mom also wrote me a letter.” Dad rummages around in a desk drawer before revealing an envelope which holds a single sheet of paper which he unfolds delicately. Casey scans it really quickly before handing it to me. I don’t bother looking at the contents, I snap a picture with my phone. This may be our missing link, and I want it recorded as clearly as possible.
Only once I have a digital copy, which I email to myself and Casey both, do I actually read the letter in front of me. Not only does it mention her new house being by a lake, but she mentions a concert she’s seen. It must have been in the last six months. Doesn’t give the band’s name, but some context clues might give us a lead if we had her journal with us to check.
Casey and I then have a silent conversation consisting of several “Oh my Gods” and multiple “holy shits” and additional excited expressions of excitement that aren’t actually words. This trip may have been the skeleton key for both of our respective troubles.
“You think it might help?” dad asks, oblivious to our full efforts or the wealth of information we’ve already collected.
“Mister Graves, you might have just given us the last piece to solve a mystery which has plagued me for the last five years. I don’t say this lightly, but you’re my goddamn hero right now,” my boyfriend pulls my father out of his chair to give him a giant hug.
“All right you two, Natalie says that cake is almost ready. I don’t know about you guys, but I do not intend on letting a good dessert go to waste.”
I don’t have to say anything more for my father to bolt out of the room. I inherited his sweet tooth, and then some. Casey hangs back to pull me into a tight hug.
“Thanks for doing this. I’m lucky that you’re so wonderful. Thank you for being you, Allison Graves.”
I gently kiss him on the cheek. “There isn’t a doubt that I’d move heaven and earth for you, Casey.”
With his arm around me, we head downstairs for cake, reassured that we truly do our best when we’re together.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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