Someone's Watching (16 page)

Just like Maddy the bartender with her son.

“I shouldn’t have listened to her,” her father said. “But I told myself I’d done enough harm to the two of you. The least I could do was respect your mother’s request to leave you alone.”

“And you honestly believed that was best for me? To grow up without a father? To grow up thinking you hated me? That I’d done something so terribly wrong that you couldn’t bear the sight of me?”

His eyes widened. “Oh, Roberta, not a day went by that I didn’t think about you. Worry about you.”

He touched her hair. A bolt shot from her scalp to her heart. Was it true? Had he always been thinking about her?

“You know your mother’s cousin Peter?” he asked.

Robbie nodded. Peter used to live in Boston and would have dinner with Robbie and her mom almost every week. He was a
ballet dancer who never made it to a professional company, but he loved teaching Robbie what he knew. Robbie adored him and was brokenhearted when he died a few years before.

“He was the only one in your mother’s family who didn’t shut me out,” her father said. “I used to call him once a week and he’d tell me what you were doing. When you gave up ballet for track. Then every track competition you won. Your grades on your exams. All the colleges you were accepted to.”

He knew all about her? She felt a surge of anger. “But then you would have known about my mom. How sick she was. How much we needed you. Why didn’t you do anything?”

He looked at his hands, folded in his lap against the creased navy shorts. “I tried to.”

“You tried to?”

“I called and spoke to her when I heard she was ill. I said I wanted to see her. To see both of you. She told me not to come.”

She’d told him not to come?

“And then, when she died, I tried one more time. At your mother’s funeral.”

“What are you talking about?”

He didn’t lift his head. “Peter had called to tell me of her passing. I didn’t even think about it. I caught a flight to Boston to be there for her funeral. To see you.”

He’d been there? Impossible.

“Peter had been sending me photos, but it was the first time I’d seen you in person since you were a little girl. You were wearing a black dress that was too big for you, but I couldn’t believe how lovely you were.”

The dress. He had been there. Robbie hadn’t had anything appropriate to wear and had borrowed the black dress from a girl in her dorm.

“You had flown in from New Orleans. You were in your freshman year at Tulane.”

He knew every detail.

“I stayed in the background,” he said. “I didn’t want one of your mother’s relatives to see me and create a scene. But you walked past me on the way to giving your eulogy for your mother. You dropped your notes.”

Robbie remembered the words she had written on the plane ride to Boston. Her memories of her mother. The paper had fallen from her trembling fingers as she made her way to the front of the room. A man had swooped down and handed it to her. A man in a suit with a beard and blue eyes. She had said thank you, and he said something to her. She remembered thinking he looked familiar, but didn’t pursue it. She had her mother on her mind.

“And I picked up your notes and gave them to you,” her father said.

She stared at him.

“And I said we would talk later.”

That was what he’d said.
Later. We’ll talk later
. “But we didn’t,” Robbie said. “I didn’t see you again.”

“There was no recognition in your eyes,” he said. “And then, when I heard you speak about your mother, I realized I was more dead to you than she was.”

“So you left without saying anything else to me? Because at a time of terrible grief, I didn’t recognize a man I hadn’t seen in over ten years, who had grown a beard?”

“It wasn’t that.” He shook his head. “I thought I’d made a mistake coming. You had grown up without me. I didn’t want to intrude on the memories you’d built with your mother. I decided to honor her wishes and leave you be.”

Her father had come to her.

Leaves drifted down from the tree. Green, yellow. They fell in her hair, on her shoulders.

Robbie remembered a beautiful day. She was seven years old and she and her mom had just moved north. The air was cold, the sky so blue it hurt her eyes. And the trees so many colors.
Yellow, gold, russet, crimson, burgundy, magenta
, her mother had said.

And then a gust of wind, and all around them, the leaves began to fall thick as a blizzard.

And Robbie had begun to cry.

Nothing is forever
, her mother had said.

“She was wrong to turn me against you,” Robbie said to her father.

“I didn’t mean to make you angry with your mother. She was lashing out the only way she knew how.”

“She should have let me see you.”

He touched the emerald ring on Robbie’s finger. “Did she give that to you?”

Robbie shook her head. “I found it in her jewelry box. After she died. I was surprised I’d never seen her wear it.”

“I gave your mother that ring. It was for our engagement.” He moistened his lips with his tongue. “I hurt your mother, Roberta. I hurt her deeply. She believed we would be together always and forever. And when I told her I was leaving her for someone else—a woman who was pregnant with my child—I think I destroyed something very fundamental in her. Her trust and faith in others.”

Nothing is forever
, her mother had said. Of course she would have felt that way after her husband’s abandonment. But her mother had done a terrible thing keeping Robbie from her father.

Robbie put her other hand over the emerald ring. Her mother was gone. She had had such an unhappy life those last few years—deserted, unloved, dealing with the pain of cancer and the knowledge that she would soon be leaving her daughter behind. Yes, she
had made a mistake with Robbie, but she was just a woman. A mother who was trying to do what she believed best for her child.

So what did that make her father? He had cheated on his wife, left her for another woman and a new child. But he hadn’t meant to hurt anyone.

Neither had meant to hurt Robbie. But they had. Deeply.

Her father took a yellow leaf out of her hair. “I’m so, so sorry, Roberta.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She reached out toward him and he pulled her close. He held her, then. He held her tight. People came and went. Dogs barked. When finally they pulled apart, his eyes were red.

The retriever came by sniffing, picked up the energy bar on the bench, and dashed off.

Her father looked after the dog. “If I could give you one piece of advice,” he said, “it’s this. Don’t let anyone ever force you to be anything but the person you want to be.” He touched her chin with his forefinger. “Okay, Pocahontas?”

Several leaves drifted down around them.

“Okay, Daddy.”

Robbie was barely conscious of where she was going as her feet pounded the pavement. She had said goodbye to her father at the park, but her emotions were still in turmoil. In finding her father, she felt like she had lost something of her mother.

Robbie had seen her mom as a victim who had suffered the desertion of her husband and a devastating illness. But her mother always put on a front of strength and taught Robbie independence and self-sufficiency. Robbie had never imagined these lessons had been the result of vindictiveness born of pain.

But now that Robbie was a woman herself, she was beginning to understand the depth and complexity of her mother’s feelings. How much she must have suffered raising Robbie alone, worrying whether she was doing the right thing for her daughter.

No—Robbie hadn’t lost anything of her mother. If anything, she had gained a greater understanding of the woman her mother had been, and this new perspective made Robbie love and appreciate her mother all the more.

And then there was her father—the person she associated with her cold, lonely childhood. But he was back in her life now, along with the knowledge that he had always wanted her. That he had made a mistake allowing Robbie’s mother to keep him from seeing his older daughter.

Well, Robbie was going to take his advice. She wasn’t going to let anyone keep her from doing what she believed was right.

She reached the path that wound around the bay side of Miami Beach. A breeze came off the water like a cool embrace. Her jogging shorts and top were soaked through. She squeezed out the dripping sweat from her hair. She had made a mistake last night and she was going to fix it.

She went toward the marina. Yachts and smaller vessels overwhelmed the narrow concrete docks, which extended out into the water like tentacles. She examined the smaller cabin cruisers hoping to spot
Aimless
—Puck’s boat.

People strolled past her, walking their dogs. They probably lived in the apartment buildings that lined the promenade. Robbie found
Aimless
at the end of the last dock. It was a little before eleven in the morning. There was no sign of anyone on the boat.

Now that she was here, Robbie was having second thoughts. What was she going to do? Get on the boat and tell Puck she had lied to him about going to BURN tonight? That she was trying to do a friend a favor? The whole explanation sounded lame. And worse than that, what would Puck make of her coming to his boat? He might think she really was interested in him.

Telling him the truth would cause more problems than just leaving things alone. And big deal—what if he went to the club tonight and she wasn’t there? She’d already told him she probably wouldn’t be going.

Robbie backed away from the dock, bumping into a big guy wearing a Hawaiian-print shirt, mirrored sunglasses, and a floppy hat. “Sorry,” she said, but he hurried away without acknowledging her.

Puck wasn’t the real problem, she knew. She left the marina and reached into her waist pack for her cell phone. Brett answered on the fifth ring.

“Yeah.” His voice was sleepy.

“It’s me,” she said. “Can you meet me for coffee?”

“Shit. What time is it?”

“Eleven.”

He moaned. “I’m sleeping.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. Never mind.”

“No, wait, wait. Where do you want to meet?”

“Starbucks on West Avenue?”

“Okay, let me just wake up for a minute. I’ll be there soon.”

Robbie arrived before Brett, so she ordered a couple of lattes and went back outside. After seeing that all the umbrella tables were occupied, she sat down at one in direct sunlight. Her hair and jogging clothes had already dried out from the late morning heat. She knew she looked disheveled, but surprisingly, she felt more composed on the inside than she had in a long time.

She checked out the people at the surrounding tables—a young couple with their bulldog, a heavyset guy talking on his phone in a loud voice, several middle-aged people reading newspapers. No “Kate” candidates. Well tonight Robbie didn’t have to work, so she’d go back to the plan she’d talked to Gina Fieldstone about and hit some clubs that Kate might be at. Definitely not BURN. Robbie wasn’t going back there and risk running into Puck. And she certainly didn’t want to see Brett and Mister M. She’d had enough of that scene.

Robbie noticed a black BMW pull into a No Parking zone. Brett got out of the car. He was dressed in pressed khaki shorts and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Sunglasses hid his eyes, and his blond hair stuck out in gelled spikes. “Hey,” he said, leaning over to give her a kiss.

She turned so he connected with her cheek, not lips.

“Oh man. I see it’s going to be one of ‘those’ talks.” He sat down, took the cover off one of the lattes, and took a sip. “So what’s up?”

“Sorry to drag you out, but I didn’t sleep all night. This has really been eating at me.”

“What?” He looked genuinely baffled.

“I didn’t like the way you made me feel last night.”

“What are you talking about?”

Amazing. He had no idea.

“What did I do?”

“You asked me to lie to that man at the bar.”

“What man?” He pulled on his earlobe. “Oh. You mean the guy in the hat you were talking to? I just asked you to invite him to BURN.”

“You asked me to lie.”

“A small favor and it wasn’t even for me. It was for Mike and for my job. I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about this.”

“Because to me it is a big deal.” She was turning her emerald ring around her finger. The ring her father had given her mother. “I don’t see our relationship going anywhere, Brett.”

“Oh, come on. I didn’t know it would bother you or I never would have asked you. Let’s just forget about it. I promise I won’t do it again.”

“It’s not just about last night.”

“You’re making too much of this, Robbie.”

“I’m not myself when I’m around you and I don’t like that feeling.”

“You’re tired. You said you didn’t sleep last night. Let’s talk about it later.”

“Don’t do this, Brett. It’s over. Let it go.”

He slammed his hand against the table, causing his latte to spill over the side of the cup. “No. I’m not letting it go. You’re the first girl I ever really liked. I’m not letting you go over something so dumb.”

“Brett, I’m sorry but—”

His cell phone rang. He glanced at it. “Give me a minute.” He leaned back in his chair. “Yeah?”

Robbie gathered up her napkin and cup. No—she wasn’t going to sit here while he took his call.

“Oh shit,” Brett said to the phone. It seemed his face had turned pale, but it could have been the angle of the sun. “Now what?”

Robbie got up and threw the trash in the garbage. When she turned back to the table, Brett was gone. She looked around. He was getting into his car, his phone still against his ear.

She watched in disbelief as he pulled out and drove away.

“It was nice knowing you, too,” she said.

Robbie returned to her apartment and, without consciously deciding to, began scouring the bathroom floor. It was a familiar ritual—Robbie always cleaned when there was disorder or a major change in her life. Like each time before her mother came home from the hospital, Robbie would try to eradicate the evil germs or vibes that might be lurking in the bedding, under the sofa. On some level, Robbie had believed the process would help her mother recover.