My father makes a living captaining a tourist boat in Mombasa. He’s lived in several different places in Africa, but he feels settled in Kenya now; he can’t imagine ever leaving. He has a decent place to live, and the job is a good compromise between a simple life and the comfort of sophistication: the romance of the high seas coupled with the commercial safety of the tourist trade. Nothing too complicated. If he had to explain in a few words why he walked away all those years ago, that might be it: it felt like life had become too complicated. A job, a wife, a mortgage, a child, friends, relatives, all with expectations; he was drowning in them, failing them all. He was losing himself. But that was then; he was a different person. He can only be who he is now.

FIVE

The wood—my wood—is a joy.

Wandering through the trees, I feel far more like myself than I have all day. It’s being outside the Manse, I think. When I’m there, I can’t help straining myself to tug on memories that tease, just out of reach. Even when I catch on to one, my mother and father only lurk in the edges of it, a solid adult presence that’s peripheral to my childish concerns. I thought I had discovered a gleaming Technicolor memory, of my mother in the garden, but then I realized I was just seeing the tableau from the box room photos. Though perhaps in time I will believe it’s a memory. How can one tell the difference?

I feel better when Carrie is in the house too. But Carrie is staying up in Edinburgh for dinner with the cast; she rang to say so. I wonder if this is just the start. In mere days she might not be coming back at all. I know she thinks I invited her here as reparations for not making the funeral, but that was beyond my control. And it’s not an apology for all the times I didn’t call or didn’t visit. It’s not even an apology for allowing my relationship with my mother to drive me away without thinking about what else I was leaving behind, because I truly don’t know what else I could have done. What it is, is an attempt to start afresh, because we both might need someone we can count on in life. I thought I had that, but I was wrong.