Empire Falls

there were certain things going on with her that he didn’t understand because he wasn’t supposed to. Still, it troubled him to feel so out of sync. Too often he found himself needing to see her, as if only her physical presence could reassure him of her well-being; yet when she did appear, she seemed different from the girl he’d been needing and worrying about. The week they’d spent together on the Vineyard had been wonderful, and by the end of it he’d felt much more in tune with Tick than at any time since he and Janine had separated. But since they’d come home, the disconnected feeling had returned with a vengeance, as if losing sight of her might lead to tragic consequences. Even now, instead of relief he was visited by an alternative scenario—the screech of tires somewhere down the block, Tick’s inert body lying in the street, an automobile speeding away, dragging her enormous backpack. Which had not happened, he reminded himself, quickly swallowing his panic.
    As she did every afternoon, Tick gave Walt Comeau wide berth, pretending not to see the arm he stretched out to her. “Hi, Uncle David,” she said, rounding the far end of the counter and giving him a peck on the cheek.
    “Hello, Beautiful,” David said, helping her off with her backpack, which thudded to the floor of the restaurant hard enough to make the water glasses and salt and pepper shakers jump along the lunch counter. “You gonna be my helper today?”
    “Whatcha got in that pack, Sweetie Pie? Rocks?” Walt Comeau called the length of the counter.
    Rather than acknowledge his existence, Tick went over to Miles and buried her face in his apron, stretching her arms around his waist and hooking her fingers at his back. “I’ve got Abba in my head,” she told him. “Make them go away.”
    “Sorry,” Miles told her, drawing his child to him, feeling the smile spread across his face at her nearness, at her confidence in his ability to dispel the bad magic of old pop groups. Not that she was a child anymore, not really. “Did you hear them on the radio?”
    “No,” she admitted. “They’re his fault.” Meaning Walt. And with this accusation she pulled away from her father and grabbed an apron.
    The reason it was Walt Comeau’s fault was that Janine, Tick’s mother, played “Mama Mia” and “Dancing Queen” in her beginning and intermediate aerobics classes at Walt’s fitness club, then hummed these same songs at home. Only her advanced steppers were deemed ready for the rigors of Barry Manilow and the Copa Cabana.
    “Your dad says you had a good time on the Vineyard?” David said when Tick passed by on her way to the kitchen with a tub of dirty dishes.
    “I want to live there,” she confessed, like someone who saw no harm in confessing a sin she was never likely to have the opportunity to commit. “There’s a bookstore for sale on the beach road, but Daddy won’t buy it.” The door swung shut behind her.
    “How much?” David wondered, tossing down his paper, grabbing a clean apron and joining his brother at mid-counter. He still had partial use of his damaged hand, but not much strength and very little dexterity. “Save me half an hour and tie this, will you?”
    Miles had already set down the salt shakers he was filling.
    “So?” David said when the knot cinched.
    “So what?”
    “How much was the bookstore? God! How come you can recite twenty-five consecutive breakfast orders and not remember a simple question I asked you two seconds ago?”
    “More like a book barn, actually,” Miles said, since that was what it had once been. There’d been enough room downstairs to sell new books and set up a small café, since people seemed to think those belonged in bookstores now. The upstairs could be cleaned up and devoted to used books. There was even a small cottage on the property. The same couple had owned and run the business for about twenty years but now the wife was sick, and her husband was trying to talk himself into letting it go. Their kids didn’t want any part of it after going away to college.
    “How come you know all that and not the price?” David wondered when Miles finished explaining.
    “I didn’t actually see the listing. Peter just pointed the place out. I don’t think he knew the asking price. He isn’t interested in running a bookstore.”
    “They got a fitness club over there, Big Boy?” Walt wanted to know.
    “I don’t know, Walt,” Miles told him, trying to sound