Second Chance

Chapter 62

I DID SALMON on the grill in a ginger-miso sauce, fried rice with peppers, leeks, and peas. I remembered that my father liked Chinese. We cracked the '65 Latour. It was a dream wine, silky and gemlike. We satin the alcove overlooking the bay. My father said it was the best bottle of wine he'd ever tasted.

The conversation gradually drifted toward more personal things. He asked what kind of man I had been married to, and I admitted, unfortunately, someone like himself. He asked if I resented him, and I had to tell him the truth. “Yeah. A lot, Dad.” Gradually, we even talked about the case. I told him how tough it was to solve, how I held it against myself that I couldn't crack it. How I was sure it was a serial, but four murders into the case, I still had nothing.

We talked for three more hours, until after eleven, the wine bottle empty, Martha asleep at his feet. Every once in a while I had to remind myself that I was talking to my own father. That I was sitting across from him for the first time in my adult life. And slowly, I began to see. He was just a man who had made mistakes, and who had been punished for them. He was no longer someone I could blindly resent, or hate. He hadn't murdered anybody. He wasn't Chimera. By the standards I dealt with, his sins were forgivable.

Gradually, I could no longer hold back the question I'd been wanting to ask for so many years. “I have to know the answer to this. Why did you leave?”

He took a swallow of wine and leaned back against the couch. His blue eyes looked so sad. “There's nothing I could say that would make sense of it to you. Not now... You're a grown woman. You're on the force. You know how things get. Your mother and I... Let's just say we were never a good match, even for the old school. I had squandered most of what we had on the games. I had a lot of debts, borrowed money on the street. That's not exactly kosher for a cop. I did a lot of things I wasn't very proud of... as a man and as a cop.”

I noticed his hands were trembling. “You know how sometimes, someone commits a crime simply because the situation gets so bad that one by one, the options just close off and they're unable to do anything else? That's how it was for me. The debts, what was going on on the job... I didn't see any other choice. I just left. I know it's a little late to say this, but I've regretted it every day of my life.”

"And when Mom got sick.

“I was sorry when she got sick. But by then I had a new life, and no one made it seem like I was welcome to come back. ”I thought it would hurt her more than help.“ ”I know Mom always told me you were a pathological liar."

“That's the truth, Lindsay,” my father said. I liked the way he admitted it. I liked my father, actually.

I had to get up, shift gears. I started taking the dishes into the kitchen. My chest was heaving. I felt like I might be going to cry. My father was back, and I was starting to realize how much I had missed him. In a crazy way I still wanted to be his girl.

My father helped with the dishes. I rinsed them off, and he loaded them in the dishwasher. We barely said a word. My whole body was vibrating.

When the dishes were done, we just sort of turned and met each other's eyes. “So where're you staying? ” I asked.

“With an ex-cop buddy of mine, Ron Fazio. He used to be a district sergeant out in Sunset. He's got me on his couch.”

I washed out a pasta pot. “I have a couch,” I said.