She called home more frequently, timing her calls for when Jonah got home from school or after they had finished dinner. Jonah seemed subdued, and when he asked about their dad she sometimes felt guilty about holding back the truth. But she couldn’t burden him that way, and she noticed that whenever her dad spoke with him, he always did his best to sound as energetic as he could. Afterward, he often sat in the chair by the phone, spent from his exertions, too tired even to move. She would watch him in silence, chafing at the knowledge that there was something more she could do, if only she knew what it was.
“What’s your favorite color?” she asked.
They were seated at the kitchen table, and Ronnie had a pad of paper open before her.
Steve gave her a quizzical smile. “That’s what you wanted to ask me?”
“This is just the first question. I’ve got a lot more.”
He reached for the can of Ensure she’d placed before him. He was no longer eating much solid food, and she watched as he took a sip, knowing he was doing it to please her, not because he was hungry.
“Green,” he said.
She wrote down the answer and read the next question. “How old were you when you first kissed a girl?”
“Are you serious?” He made a face.
“Please, Dad,” she said. “It’s important.”
He answered again, and she wrote it down. They got through a quarter of the questions she’d jotted down, and over the next week, he eventually answered them all. She wrote down the answers carefully, not necessarily verbatim, but she hoped with enough detail to reconstruct the answers in the future. It was an engaging and sometimes surprising exercise, but by the end, she concluded that her dad was mostly the same man she’d come to know over the summer.
Which was good and bad, of course. Good because she’d suspected he would be, and bad because it left her no closer to the answer she’d been seeking all along.
The second week of November brought the first rains of autumn, but the construction at the church continued without pause. If anything, the pace increased. Her dad no longer accompanied her; still, Ronnie walked down the beach to the church every day to see how things were progressing. It had become part of her routine during the quiet hours when her dad was napping. Though Pastor Harris always registered her arrival with a wave, he no longer joined her on the beach to chat.
In a week, the stained-glass window would be installed, and Pastor Harris would know he’d done something for her dad that no one else could do, something she knew would mean the world to him. She was happy for him, even as she prayed for guidance of her own.
On a gray November day, her dad suddenly insisted that they venture out to the pier. Ronnie was anxious about the distance and the cold, but he was adamant. He wanted to see the ocean from the pier, he said. One last time, were the words he didn’t have to say.
They dressed in overcoats, and Ronnie even wrapped a wool scarf around her father’s neck. The wind carried in it the first sharp taste of winter, making it feel colder than the thermometer suggested. She insisted on driving to the pier and parked Pastor Harris’s car in the deserted boardwalk lot.
It took a long time to reach the end of the pier. They were alone beneath a cloud-swept sky, the iron gray waves visible between the concrete planks. As they shuffled forward, her father kept his arm looped through hers, clinging to her as the wind tugged at their overcoats.
When they finally made it, her dad reached out for the railing and almost lost his balance. In the silvery light, the planes of his sunken cheeks stood out in sharp relief and his eyes looked a little glassy, but she could tell he was satisfied.
The steady movement of the waves stretching out before him to the horizon seemed to bring him a feeling of serenity. There was nothing to see—no boats, no porpoises, no surfers—but his expression seemed peaceful and free of pain for the first time in weeks. Near the waterline, the clouds seemed almost alive, roiling and shifting as the wintry sun attempted to pierce their veiled masses. She found herself watching the play of clouds with the same wonder her father did, wondering where his thoughts lay.
The wind was picking up, and she saw him shiver. She could tell he wanted to stay, his gaze locked on the horizon. She tugged gently on his arm, but he only tightened his grip on the railing.
She relented then, standing next to him until he was shuddering with cold, finally ready to go. He released the railing and let her turn him around, starting their slow march back to the car. From the corner of her eye, she noticed he was smiling.
“It was beautiful, wasn’t it?” she remarked.
Her dad took a few steps before answering.