I do know that. Ten years after my parents divorced, Margo called in a tearful rant about an auto accident that she claimed Mom wouldn’t have been anywhere near if Dad hadn’t made her feel so unwanted that she dated anyone who asked, including a guy with a history of DUIs. An auto accident. She was dead before I could ask her about all the things I didn’t know.

Which is about me. But we are talking about Jack. “Where’s your dad now?”

“Berkeley. He gave it a couple of years here, but the memories were hard to take.”

“I’d have thought you’d leave, too.”

Bending, he picks up a rock and wings it into the sea. “And let your father off the hook?” he asks almost distractedly. “Are you kidding? I want him to see me here in this house, year after year after year, and remember the family he destroyed.”

I can’t imagine nurturing that kind of bitterness. “How do you do that—live with constant anger?”

A piece of driftwood is bobbing in the shallows. Sloshing over, he catches it and lobs it toward the firepit. Then he straightens and puts his hands on his hips, thumbs bearing the weight while his fingers lie long and loose against the cotton tee. He takes a visible breath. “My work helps. Animals appreciate what you do for them. Pets give the unconditional love parents can’t.”

I want to tell him that what I feel for Joy is unconditional to the extreme. But Elizabeth never felt that. Nor, really, did my mother, or she’d have answered the questions I lacked the courage to ask.

With mention of Jack’s work, we’ve come full circle, but I don’t want to leave him just yet. I always felt a connection to the boy he used to be. Time and adversity haven’t changed that. I hated the anger between us twenty years ago and would give anything to replace those memories with kinder ones. It has nothing to do with my being the peacemaker and everything to do with my feelings for Jack. The past may be over. But I want us to be friends.

Returning to the splotch of a firepit, I sit on one of the logs at its edge and hug my knees.