“Fine,” Caddie said. She hoped her carefully adopted attitude of disinterest would spark him into action. When, to her frustration, her father said nothing for some time, merely adding more things to the car, she said, “Going diving?”

Her father nodded. “Pt. Lobos,” he said. The name meant nothing to her, and she didn’t ask for more information. She didn’t care where he was going, only that he was going and that she might once again have the day to herself.

“You could come,” her father said, not looking at her as he put a plastic box filled with gloves, a mask, and other items she didn’t recognize on top of the tanks already in the car.

Caddie forced a yawn. “I don’t dive,” she said.

Her father shut the Volvo’s rear door. He was wearing a baseball cap with the name of a dive operator—PNG Muck Divers—embroidered on it. As he talked, he took it off and held it in his hands, running his fingers back and forth along the brim. “You don’t?” he asked.

Caddie shook her head. “No,” she said.

Her father seemed genuinely surprised. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t like she or her mother was the one all into marine biology. And it wasn’t like he’d ever offered to teach her.

“I could teach you,” he said, as if hearing her thoughts. “If you want to. I’m a certified instructor. You know, so I can teach the research assistants if they need it. I don’t actually teach classes or anything. But I could—”

“That’s okay,” said Caddie, interrupting. His earnestness was bothering her. It made it difficult to pick a fight. “I don’t really want to.”

Her father stopped fondling his hat. “Okay,” he said. “Well, I guess I’ll get going. Have a nice day.”

He got into the car and started it. Caddie, half expecting him to get out and finally start the fight she still felt herself longing for, waited a minute. Then, not wanting him to think she had anything else to say, she went inside and shut the door.

It had been an unsatisfying encounter. Her father’s refusal to even broach the subject of her behavior of the night before erased any feelings of sympathy for him she might have had five minutes before. Obviously, she told herself, he doesn’t care.

By the time she got back to her room, she had managed to convince herself that she was the one who should be angry. Even her father’s invitation to accompany him, his offer to teach her to dive, seemed an affront. She saw him as weak, afraid of his own daughter. Why else would he let me get away with something like that? she asked herself. His lack of backbone disgusted her.

“I would have been pissed,” she said aloud, laughing roughly at her father’s meekness.