“How?”
He kept one hand on Ariel’s shoulder.
“Before I met you, I volunteered at an arts center downtown.”
“You’re right.”
“I know that,” I snapped.
He had told me about Saturday classes and community murals.
He had never told me about Clara.
Clara pressed the towel tighter against herself.
Glen looked at the tattoo again.
“There was a program for people recovering from surgery. Local artists helped them design things to cover scars. I’m not a tattoo artist,” he added quickly. “I only sketched.”
He had never told me about Clara.
Clara’s mouth parted. “The community room on Willow Street.”
Glen looked at her.
“You remember?”
“Only pieces.”
She touched the lighthouse.
“I remember a young man with paint on his hands.”
“Only pieces.”
My father looked from Clara to Glen.
“No one knew each other?”
“No,” Clara said. Her voice was barely above the water dripping from the pool ladder.
“It was almost 20 years ago.”
Glen sat back on his heels.
“A woman came in one Saturday and asked everyone to draw something that meant hope.”
“No one knew each other?”
Clara closed her eyes.
The party disappeared around us.
No plates clattered.
No children shouted.
Even Ariel stood still.
“I had just had surgery,” Clara revealed.
“I had just had surgery.”
Her hand moved to the tattoo.
“I had a tumor removed. The scar ran across my stomach, and I couldn’t look at it without thinking about everything that almost happened.”
My father stared at her.
“You never told me that part.”
“I told you I had surgery.”
“You said it was years ago.”
“It was.”
“You never told me that part.”
She looked at him, then away.
“I did not want to spend the rest of my life introducing myself through the worst thing that had happened to me.”
Glen rubbed one thumb against his palm.
“I drew a lighthouse because it stands in bad weather without pretending the weather isn’t there.”
Ariel leaned against him.
“And the sun?”
“I drew a lighthouse.”
He gave her a faint smile.
“I put that sun on everything back then too, sweetheart.”
Clara looked at the tattoo as if seeing it for the first time.
“Underneath, he wrote two words.”
She lowered the towel slightly.
Below the lighthouse, almost hidden by the swimsuit seam, faded letters curved along the scar.
Still Standing.
“Underneath, he wrote two words.”
My father sat down again.
Nobody laughed now.
The suspicion inside me did not vanish all at once. It loosened slowly.
Glen had been 21 then.
Clara had used her maiden name.
Years later, she married my father.
Glen had been 21 then.
By then, Glen had moved away, cut his hair, and become the man I met at a friend’s barbecue.
Clara had changed too.
Different hair.
Different last name.
A brief afternoon in a crowded art room had disappeared beneath two decades of living.
Until a three-year-old noticed one crooked sun.
By then, Glen had moved away.
***
Ariel reached toward Clara’s stomach.
“Can I touch it?”
Clara nodded.
Ariel placed one finger on the lighthouse.
“Daddy made it pretty.”
Clara laughed once, but tears had gathered in her eyes.
“He did.”
“Daddy made it pretty.”
Ariel traced the sun.
“You kept it.”
No one spoke.
Those three words seemed to settle over every year between us.
The drawing.
The scar.
The life that followed.
Those three words seemed to settle over every year between us.
I looked at Clara differently then.
Not as the woman standing beside my father.
Not as the person who entered our house after my mother was gone.
As someone who had once sat in a community center frightened of her own reflection, asking strangers to draw her a reason to keep looking.
The thought should have made me softer immediately.
I looked at Clara differently then.
Instead, another question rose.
“Then why have you always hated me?”
Clara flinched.
My father began to say my name, but she lifted one hand.
“I never hated you, Helen,” Clara choked out.
“You barely spoke to me for 15 years.”
“I know.”
“You barely spoke to me for 15 years.”
“You missed birthdays,” I argued. “You left dinners early. You acted like being around me was work.”
Clara looked toward the patio.
The guests had begun guiding the children back toward the pool, giving us the privacy of pretending not to listen.
She sat on the edge of a lounge chair.
“I was afraid of you.”
“You missed birthdays.”
I almost laughed.
“Of me?”
She nodded. “Of what loving you might look like.”
Her fingers moved over the lighthouse.
“Your mother had been gone two years when I married your father. Her photographs were everywhere. Her recipes were still taped inside the cabinets. You wore one of her sweaters even when it was too hot.”
“Of what loving you might look like.”
