The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave (ebook reader ink .txt) 📕

a school play. There were Sunday night dinners at restaurants of her choosing, and a weekly trip to the movies. There were lots of jaunts to San Francisco museums, plenty of neighborhood potlucks, and the annual barbecue. She didn’t remember their life before Sausalito, except in vague snapshots: a birthday party with a great magician; a trip to the circus where she cried at the clown; a wedding somewhere in Austin, Texas. Bailey filled in the blanks with what her father told her. Why wouldn’t she? That’s how you fill in the blanks—with stories and memories from the people who love you.

If they lie to you, like he did, who are you then? Who is he? The person you thought you knew, your favorite person, starts to disappear, a mirage, unless you convince yourself the parts that matter are still true. The love was true. His love is true. Because, if it isn’t, the other option is that it was all a lie, and what are you supposed to do with that? What are you supposed to do with any of this? How do you put the pieces together so he doesn’t disappear completely?

So his daughter doesn’t feel like she is going to disappear completely too?

Bailey wakes up, shortly after midnight.

She rubs her eyes. Then she looks over to find me sitting in the crappy hotel desk chair, watching her.

“Did I fall asleep?” she says.

“You did.”

“What time is it?” she says.

“Late. You should go back to bed.”

She sits up. “It’s kind of hard with you staring at me,” she says.

“Bailey, did you ever visit your father’s childhood home in Boston?” I say. “Did he ever take you to see his house?”

She looks at me confused. “Like where he grew up?”

I nod.

“No. He never took me to Boston. He barely went back there himself.”

“And you never met your grandparents?” I say. “You never spent any time with them?”

“They died before I was born,” she says. “You know that. What’s going on?”

Who is going to fill in this blank for her? This kind of hole? I don’t know where to start.

“Are you hungry?” I say. “You must be hungry. You barely touched your dinner. And I’m famished.”

“Why? You ate both our dinners all on your own.”

“Get dressed, okay?” I say. “Would you get dressed?”

She looks at the fluorescent hotel radio-clock. “It’s midnight,” she says.

I put a sweater on and toss her sweatshirt to her. She looks down at it, splayed across her legs, her Converse sneakers peeking out beneath the hood.

She pulls the sweatshirt over her head, pushing the hood all the way down until her purple hair is sticking out.

“Can I at least get a beer?” she says.

“Absolutely not.”

“I have a fake ID that says otherwise,” she says.

“Please get dressed,” I say.

Magnolia Cafe is an Austin institution, famous for all-night eats, which might explain why it is still busy—music playing, every booth taken—at 12:45 AM.

We get two large coffees and an order of gingerbread pancakes. Bailey seems to love the sweet, spice-filled pancakes dripping in butter and coconut sugar. Bananas on the side. And watching her take them down, if nothing else, makes me feel like I’m doing something good for her.

We sit by the door, a neon red SORRY WE’RE OPEN sign flashing above our heads. I blink against it and try to find the words to tell her what Jake told me.

“It seems that your father hasn’t always gone by the name Owen Michaels,” I say.

She looks up at me. “What are you talking about?” she says.

I speak softly but unapologetically, filling her in. I let her know that her father’s name isn’t the only thing he’s changed. The details of his life—the story of his life—are something he has apparently altered as well. He didn’t grow up in Massachusetts, he isn’t a graduate of Princeton University, and he didn’t move to Seattle at twenty-two. At least he hasn’t done those things in a way that we can prove.

“Who told you that?”

“A friend back in New York. He works with an investigator who focuses on this kind of thing. The investigator believes that your father changed his identity shortly before you moved to Sausalito. He’s sure of it.”

She looks down at her plate, confused, like she’s heard the words wrong—all of it feeling impossible to compute.

“Why would he do that?” she says, not meeting my eyes.

“My guess is he was trying to keep you safe from something, Bailey.”

“Like what? Like something he did? ’Cause my father would be the first to say that if you’re running from something, it’s usually yourself.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“Right. All we know for sure is that he lied to me,” she says.

And I see it start to rise up in her. Her anger, her justifiable anger at being excluded from the most basic details of her life. Even if he was doing it for her own good. Even if he was doing it because he didn’t have a choice. One way or another, she is going to have to decide whether that’s forgivable. We both are.

“He also lied to me,” I say.

She looks up.

“I’m just saying, he lied to me too.”

She tilts her head, like she is trying to figure out whether she believes that, whether she can take that at face value. Why would she? Why would she believe anyone at this point? But it feels critical to try and assure her anyway—assure her that she can trust me—that I didn’t deceive her too. It feels like everything hinges on her believing that.

She looks at me with such vulnerability, it’s hard for me to speak. It’s hard for me to even hold her gaze without breaking down.

Which is when I understand, in a flash, what I’ve been doing wrong with her—what I’ve been doing wrong in how I’ve been trying to connect with her. I thought if I were nice enough, sweet enough, she’d understand she could count on me. But that’s not how you learn you can count