Father Formula

He’d expected to find her at the head of the trail that led to the campsite, but she wasn’t there. He wanted to take that as a good sign, but he couldn’t. His brain and his body refused to relax.

He discovered only moments later that she’d gone ahead of them in some misguided plan to clear the way for them, and that her traitorous brother had warned the camp.

He heard the gunfire, heard her scream.

Then he heard himself scream.

There was gunfire from three directions as he ran toward her. She was dead. He knew that before he reached her. And as he knelt there, staring at her stillness, he felt that he was dead, too.

But he and Bram and Dave were pinned down by loud, continuous bursts of gunfire, and he had an overpowering need to stop it, to stop all sound so that he could think.

Dave took hold of his arm and was pulling him backward.

He resisted. He couldn’t leave Farah. Maybe he’d been wrong. He wasn’t a doctor, after all. Maybe she was still alive.

He struggled against Dave, who finally helped him lift her body onto his shoulder, then knelt with Bram to cover his escape.

Trevyn awoke in a cold sweat, panic and grief at the very edge of his consciousness, the darkness he lived with all the time threatening to suffocate him.

Then he noticed the familiar beige wallpaper with little flecks of brown in it, and the chair in the corner over which he’d thrown his shirt and jeans. No camouflage, no flack jacket. He was back in Chicago.

No, he reminded himself, spotting the photo he’d taken of a lone freighter in the middle of the vast ocean just beyond the edge of Cliffside’s property. He was in Dancer’s Beach. He was starting over. He was opening a portrait studio.

He’d thought he’d seen the end of the nightmares, the occasional confusion about the past, but apparently he had more work to do on that. That was fine. Mostly, he had it together.

Everything began to settle down inside him. Until he remembered that he was going to be a father. Then he sat up, feeling excitement and trepidation all at once. How could a man in darkness raise a baby?

He liked babies, he told himself. He’d photographed a lot of them in his time at the Tribune—in good situations and in bad—and he’d been touched every time by both their fragility and their miraculous endurance.

He prayed that Gusty had endurance. He knew so little about her, except that on the night of the costume party, she’d walked into his arms like a beautiful bundle of everything he’d needed at that moment.

He had to take care of her.

He had to be with her when their baby was born, whatever bad memories he had. They were his responsibility.

But at the rate the search for her was going, their baby would be a toddler before he saw her again. For a man accustomed to taking action, having to wait was frustrating, exasperating, and downright infuriating.

Still, those were emotions he’d grown familiar with in his journey to reclaim his life since Afghanistan. He knew that the only way to fight it was to take action in whatever avenue was open to him.

He climbed out of bed and jumped into the shower. He’d rented his studio before he’d left for Canada, but there’d been little time to work on it. It had been cleaned but needed paint, furniture, signs, and he had to move in his equipment.

He wondered idly as he dressed if he should ask Alexis if there was anything she needed. She’d insisted yesterday morning that she didn’t think she’d ever need help from him—then she’d come over, pride in hand, when she’d found herself locked out.

He let himself enjoy that memory for a moment, then grabbed his jacket and checked his watch. The boys would be waiting for the bus already. He headed out to the truck.

The issue of whether or not to approach her was settled for him when she walked right by him, Ferdie prancing excitedly on the end of a long leash.

“Good morning,” she called, her arm stretched way out, thanks to the dog’s eagerness. “We’re off for our constitutional.” Then she did an almost theatrical double take, and dragged the dog to a stop, frowning as she focused on Trevyn. “Is everything all right?”

The dream always lingered in his eyes for a while. He hated that, considered it a vulnerability, a weakness. After their mild confrontation yesterday, he was surprised by her concern, and annoyed by it.

“Sure,” he replied. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because you look a little…” She paused, apparently searching for the right word. There couldn’t be one, as far as he was concerned.

She must have read that in his eyes. She shook her head as the dog tugged on her, extending her arm as though she were on the rack. “My mistake,” she said, giving him the feeling she knew she was letting him get away with something.

That annoyed him further.

“Need anything from town?” he shouted as she picked up speed in the wake of the dog. He did it to prove to himself that she might annoy him but she couldn’t upset him.

“No, thanks!” she replied over her shoulder as Ferdie kept going. They raced toward the tree-lined driveway.

Trevyn opened the four-car garage. David’s spot was empty, but Bram’s Jeep was in place, looking none the worse for the fact that Athena had dumped it on its side on her way to town when she’d first arrived in Dancer’s Beach.

David had had it towed and repaired.

Trevyn climbed into his battered red truck. He should get something else someday, he thought. A neat van or SUV onto which he could fasten magnetic signs with the name of his studio. Once he decided on a name.

Hot Shots? Picture Perfect? Or the more formal McGinty Photos, or Trevyn McGinty Photography?

Nothing struck a chord.

He drove off toward town, honking at Alexis and Ferdie at the bottom of the driveway, offering a brief wave.

She waved back, smiling.

That was how he remembered Gusty looking the last time he saw her.

ALEXIS AND FERDIE RAN through the park in downtown Dancer’s Beach. After the dog had worked off steam—though how he could still have any after the mile and a half walk to town was beyond her—they walked up and down the main street and several side streets. She took photographs of scenes she might paint—children on swings in the park, three older men on a bench under a streetlight, kibitzing as the world went by, two little old ladies looking in the window of a flower shop, the old hotel.

The Buckley Arms was a turn-of-the-century gray-and-white building, five stories high, with an old-fashioned awning to shelter those waiting for cabs in the rain. She smiled, wondering how often people who rode cabs visited Dancer’s Beach.

She took several shots, then noticed that the coffee bar on the bottom floor of the hotel was still there. She tied Ferdie to a newspaper stand in the front, then went inside to order a hazelnut latte.

She was considering a hazelnut biscotti to go with it when a voice called from behind her, “Athena!”

Alexis had been accustomed to being mistaken for one or the other of her sisters when they were children, but they’d been apart so much as adults that it hadn’t happened in years.

She turned around in surprise, to find an older couple at a round table, half-finished cups of coffee and the newspaper between them.

The woman clearly waited for recognition. “Peg McKeon?” She smiled expectantly, putting a hand on the man’s arm. “Charlie? We were in the antique shop when you were looking for an egg whip for your sister.”

Alexis went to their table, smiling apologetically. “I’m Alexis,” she explained. “We’re identical.”

Peg continued to smile. “So, you’re the one she was shopping for!”

Alexis shook her head. “That’s Augusta. We’re triplets.”