Chapters (46)
- Cover
- Other Titles
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Friday
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- Saturday
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Sunday
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Monday
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“I guess it wasn’t the best idea. I just figured, why would you do something like that if you didn’t want people to know it was you?” Dallas shoves his hands back into his pockets. “I always used to kind of imagine she was my mom, you know? You guys don’t know how lucky you are.”
He’s right, Walter realizes. In all this time, it has never occurred to him that they were lucky – or how someone like Dallas might look at them and see not dysfunction but beautiful, crazy chaos. Why couldn’t he see it before? It’s as though all of them, the entire Parker family, are so short-sighted they can’t even see what’s right in front of them. Maybe they’re born with the inability to make sense of the bigger picture. Maybe it’s just in their genes.
You should come by sometime and see your son, he thinks, but he knows it is not his place to say this. So he leaves Dallas on the bridge, still watching the river.
Walter continues across the bridge and over to the portage trail, used by the voyageurs to navigate around the falls, the same route that he walked with Kate a week earlier. She had talked about mundane things then: getting the windshield wipers replaced on her Volvo, what she was going to buy Milan and Vienna for their birthday, how she was worried about Bruno’s left eye. “There used to be some stuff in his eye in the morning, but now there’s lots of stuff in it. Do you know what I mean, stuff? The stuff in your eye in the morning?” she asked.
“Yes, I know the stuff,” Walter said.
“No, but what is it called?” Kate asked. “It’s not stuff. I just can’t think of the word.”
“It’s stuff,” Walter said, feeling irritated. “People just call it stuff.”
“But it must have a name,” Kate insisted. “An actual name.”
“Not really.”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know, Katie. Mucus? That’s the technical term, but most people call it other things, like sand or sleep or goop or, yes, stuff. So there are a lot of words people use. I’m not sure which one you’re thinking of.”
Kate’s brow furrowed. “None of those words sound familiar,” she said. “Are you sure those are the right ones?”