Tribute

Patty sprang up to take the flowers. “I never thought of food, or flowers. I never thought—”
    “Of course you didn’t. How could you, with so much on your mind? Cilla, I’m going to heat you up a bowl right now. My chicken soup’s good for anything. Colds, flu, bumps, bruises, lovers’ spats and rainy days. Ford, find Patty a vase for the flowers. Nothing cheers you up like a bunch of sunflowers.”
    Clutching them, Patty burst into tears.
    “Oh now, now.” Penny cradled the Tupperware in one arm, Patty in the other. “Come on with me, sweetie. You come on with me. We’ll make ourselves useful, and you’ll feel better.”
    “Did you see her poor face?” Patty sobbed as Penny led her away.
    “She’s just so upset.” Angie sat beside Cilla, took her hand.
    “I know. It’s okay.”
    “It’s not.” Gavin turned from staring out the front windows. “None of it is. I should have confronted Hennessy years ago, had this out with him. Instead, I just stayed out of his way. I looked away from it because it was uncomfortable. It was unpleasant. And because he left Patty and Angie alone. He didn’t leave you alone, and still, I stayed out of his way.”
    “Confronting him wouldn’t have changed anything.”
    “It would make me feel like less of a failure as your father.”
    “You’re not—”
    “Angie,” Gavin said, interrupting Cilla, “would you go help your mother and Mrs. Sawyer?”
    “All right.”
    “Ford? Would you mind?”
    With a nod, Ford slipped out behind Angie.
    Cilla sat, her stomach twisting with a new kind of tension. “I know you’re upset. We’re all upset,” she began.
    “I let her have you. I let Dilly have you, and I walked away.”
    Cilla looked into his face and asked the single question she’d never dared ask him. “Why?”
    “I told myself you were better off. I even believed it. I told myself you were where you belonged, and being there, being with your mother, allowed you to do what made you happy. Gave you advantages. I wasn’t happy there, and whatever turned between your mother and me brought out the very worst in both of us when we dealt with each other. When we dealt with each other about you. I felt . . . free when I came back here.”
    “I was only about a year old when you moved out, and not even three when you went away.”
    “We couldn’t speak two sentences to each other without it devolving. It was better, a little better, when we had a few thousand miles between us. I came out every month or two to see you for the first few . . . then less. You were already a working actor. It was easy to tell myself you had such a full life, to agree that it wasn’t in your best interest to come here for part of your summer break when you could be making appearances.”
    “And you were building a life here.”
    “Yes, starting over, falling in love with Patty.” He looked down at his hands, then dropped them to his sides. “You were barely real to me, this beautiful little girl I’d visit a few times a year. I could tell myself I did my duty—never failed to send the support check, or call on your birthday, Christmas, send gifts. Even if I knew it for a lie, I could tell myself. I had Angie. Right here, every step. She needed me, and you didn’t.”
    “But I did.” Cilla’s eyes swam. “I did.”
    “I know. And I’ll never be able to make it up to you, or to myself.”
    His voice went thick. “I wanted a quiet life, Cilla. And I sacrificed you to get it. By the time I understood that, you were grown.”
    “Did you ever love me?”
    He pressed his fingers to his eyes as if they burned, then, dropping his hands, walked over to sit beside her. “I was in the delivery room when you were born. They put you in my arms, and I loved you. But it was almost a kind of awe. Amazement and terror and thrill. I remember most, a few weeks after we brought you home. I had an early call, and I heard you crying. The nurse had fed you, but you were fussy. I took you, and sat with you in the rocking chair. You spit up all over my shirt. And then you looked at me. Looked right into my eyes. And I loved you. I shouldn’t have let you go.”
    She took a breath as something opened in her chest. “You helped me pick out rosebushes, and a red maple. You painted my living room. And you’re here now.”
    He put an arm around her, drew her against him. “I saw you,” he whispered, “standing on a veranda you’d built with your own hands. And I loved