Cameron has already mopped half the building when a flustered Tova hurries through the front door, almost an hour late.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she says.
“No worries. We’ve well established I can handle this on my own.” He smiles, but doesn’t add that he’d been disappointed, again, when she hadn’t showed. That, strange as she is, he has looked forward to their evenings together. And today has been a bit lonely. He’s hardly said two words to Ethan since their argument. All that garbage Ethan’s apparently been spreading around town . . . it doesn’t even make sense. Something about a bad check. From a thousand years ago. Like Cameron needs any reminding that his mother was a loser.
Tova nods, then leans in conspiratorially. “I won’t double- check the trash liners this time. I trust you.”
Cameron gasps, feigning shock. “You trust me to assemble garbage cans! Wow, I’ve arrived.” He laughs, and Tova laughs along with him. “So, where were you, anyway?”
“Oh, well, it’s been quite an adventure.” Tova picks up a rag and begins to wipe down the glass front of the bluegill exhibit, while relaying an almost-unbelievable story about Grateful Dead memorabilia and online auctions and some guy at a warehouse down in Tukwila who almost wouldn’t hand her purchase over because she couldn’t confirm her friend’s email address, which she’d used because she doesn’t have one of her own. She scrubs at a fingerprint on
the glass as she talks. Her cheeks are flushed in a most un- Tova-like way.
“Good heavens,” she says with a small laugh. “Look at me, yammering on and on.”
“It’s fine. It’s a great story,” Cameron says, chuckling. “And I could help you set up an email if you want. They’re free.”
“I don’t own a computer.”
“Neither do I. My email goes to my phone.”
“To your phone,” she says, with a dismissive wave of her rag. “Young people and their phones.”
“Well, having a smartphone would make it easy to keep in touch when you move away.”
At this, Tova’s face stiffens. Was he not supposed to bring that up? Is her departure some big secret? But how could it be? Ethan has mentioned it casually several times. It’s a source of discontent for him, his hopeless crush moving upstate.
“A smartphone. Perhaps.” She smiles. “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to say hello at Ethan’s house the other night.” It’s like she’s reading his mind.
“Ethan was super stoked about your date. How did it go?”
Tova straightens. “It was not a date.” “Okay. Your . . . dinner.”
Tova folds the rag and tucks it in her back pocket, then leans on the cart. “You know, Will and I were married forty- seven years when he passed away. I cannot date.”
“Why not?”
She sighs, as if the answer is beyond explaining. They clean together in silence for a while, rounding the curved hallway, pausing in front of the sea lion statue. Cameron makes a point of mopping thoroughly, getting into every corner of the alcove, under the benches and behind the trash can.
Tova polishes the creature’s bald head with her rag. “Make sure you get under its tail, dear.”
“Under what?”
“Under the statue’s tail. Here, I’ll show you.” She takes her dust rag and starts to slide it under the polished brass tail. Cameron resists the urge to roll his eyes. How would that spot possibly get dirty?
“I know, I know. There’s a right way to do things,” Cameron mutters, but Tova’s not listening. She’s squinting at something in the little gap between the statue and the floor.
She stands, slowly, not taking her eyes off the thing she’s clutching. A credit card? From the look on her face he expects her to say good heavens or my word or goodness gracious, but for a long moment, she says nothing.
“Is this your driver’s license?” she finally whispers, holding the card up.
It is, in fact, his license. He’d planned to collect it from his cubby, where Terry said he would leave it, on his way out tonight. How had it gotten all the way over here?
“Yeah, actually.” He holds out a hand to take it, but she grips it firmly, studying it closer.
“Cameron,” she says slowly. “I know you are here in Sowell Bay looking for your father. And I know you don’t have a relationship with your mother. But what is her name?”
He frowns. “Why?” Tova waits patiently.
“Her name is Daphne.” “Daphne Cassmore?”
“Um, yeah.” What is going on? He reaches again for his license and this time Tova lets him take it. Her face is as pale and thin as the moonlight streaming through the skylight.
“She was seeing him,” Tova says quietly. “Your mother is the girl.”
HEARING THE STORY of Erik’s disappearance from Tova herself, instead of Ethan, is different. They sit on the alcove’s bench, on opposite sides but facing each other across the sea lion’s smooth back. In a quiet, even voice, Tova tells Cameron how her son, the summer after his senior year of high school, went to work at the ferry dock one July night and never came home. The boat no one noticed missing. The cut rope on the anchor.
“I never believed it.” Tova shakes her head. “I never believed he killed himself. When I found out that Erik might have been seeing a girl, a girl his friends didn’t really know about . . .”
“Wait. This girl. How do you know it was my mom?”
Tova rubs at a black smudge on the bench. Probably a mark from someone’s shoe. “A former classmate. A long- forgotten memory.”
“And the police never talked to this classmate?”
Tova clicks her tongue. “Adam was not a close friend, and the investigation was thorough, at first. But with no eyewitnesses and zero leads . . . well, they wanted to close the case, I suppose.”
“You think my mom could’ve had something to do with . .
.” Cameron lets out a low whistle.
Tova looks up, her face inscrutable. “I don’t know. But she was seeing him, it seems. She might have been with him that night. She might be able to tell me . . .” Her voice trails off, then she swallows before adding, “Do you know how I might contact her?”
He shakes his head. “I haven’t seen her since I was nine.”
“You haven’t heard from her? Not even a birthday card?”
The words twist like a knife in his gut. How many times has he thought the same thing to himself? Aunt Jeanne always insisted his mother loved him. That she left because that’s what was best for him. That maybe someday she’d conquer her demons and be ready for a relationship. But
what demons are so powerful they prevent someone from buying a ninety-nine-cent birthday card and slapping a stamp on it? How often has he convinced himself she’s actually dead, because that hurts less than believing she could care about him so little?
“Nope. Not even a birthday card.” He rises and walks out of the alcove. His eyes are burning, heavy and wet, and he doesn’t need her to see that. A good, hard blink or two will send the tears packing.
If it were that simple, she wouldn’t have let him miss out on being a part of your life. Aunt Jeanne’s words crash through his skull. For all your mother’s flaws, she was no dummy. If his father was dead . . . had died in some accident when they were both eighteen . . . well, that would be a pretty solid reason to never have brought him into Cameron’s life. He squeezes his eyes shut. Could that be possible? It would mean that Tova is his . . . No, it can’t be. She’s so tiny, and so weird. No one else in his family is tiny or weird. And it would mean his mother was something less than terrible, not a victim, maybe even honorable like a martyr, rather than a perpetrator of his own suffering. That absolutely does not compute, so he pushes the idea out of his mind.
Tova comes to stand next to him in front of the big
middle tank. They watch a school of cod drift by, propelled by the tank’s fake current. If they wait four minutes, Cameron knows, they’ll come by again. What a life, those endless laps.
“I’m sorry,” Tova says. She places a hand on his shoulder. Doesn’t rub or squeeze, just places it there, as if the contact might siphon off some of his pain. It’s the sort of touch that is so warm as to be almost maternal . . . No, he pushes the thought away. She’s just being nice, because Tova is extraordinarily nice, in spite of the stoic shell she puts on at first. He glances down at her, struck by how tough this tiny
little lady is, how much grief her ninety-pound frame has endured. And now she’s absorbing some of his, too.
How much can one person take?
In the tank, a big gray cow shark approaches, its blunt nose sweeping slow arcs along the sand, like it’s looking for something. “I’m sorry about Erik, too. I’m sorry my mom might somehow be involved,” Cameron says.
“Hardly your fault, dear. But thank you.”
The shark’s beady eye catches notice of them, and it pauses for a second before moving on.
Tova’s mouth curves into a tight smile. “Ought to get to the floors, I suppose.”
ETHAN’S LIGHTS ARE out when Cameron gets home from work, ruining his plans to smooth things over. Turns out Ethan’s incomprehensible ramblings had some basis after all. And deep down, somehow, Cameron strongly suspects that it’s more than a rumor. His mom was involved in this town’s biggest tragedy.
He keeps waiting for this information to make him sad or angry, as it should, but try as he might, he can’t seem to make those emotions appear. What does it matter, anyway? Let the rumors come. Townie chatter about Daphne Cassmore can’t hurt Cameron. He gives fewer than zero shits about Daphne Cassmore.
He roots around in the camper’s mini fridge until he finds one of those plastic lunch trays with crackers, cheese, and deli meat. Ethan brought a bunch of them home from the store last week and insisted Cameron take a few. They’ve passed their expiration date, so the store can’t sell them, he explained, but this stuff is so processed it’s practically rot- proof. Cameron peels back the plastic, and a peppery smell wafts out from the little stack of salami in its square compartment. He assembles a little stack on a cracker and is about to take a bite when his phone dings.
It’s from Avery. You up?
Just got home from work. Then he types out a whole explanation of the mess with his mother and Tova and Erik. The whole screen is filled with word vomit when he changes his mind and backspaces the characters. It’s too much for a text message.
Avery writes back. Paddle this week? Wednesday afternoon? You’re off Wednesdays, right?
Cameron grins into the dim camper cabin. He types,
What time?
Four? Meet at shop. I can duck out a little early.
At least she didn’t suggest the crack of dawn. Four in the afternoon, he can do. He sends back a thumbs-up.
Bring a change of clothes this time. Or . . . don’t. Avery adds a winking-face emoji.
Something warm, like contentment, floods through Cameron as he slips into bed.
