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They simply began expecting him to sit there.
“Is this them?”
Mom nodded.
I looked again.
For years I’d seen a beach.
Now I noticed the people at the left edge.
Teenagers.
A woman near the cooler.
“Is this them?”
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Someone crouched in the sand.
Dad’s thumb had worn the photograph smooth near those tiny figures.
Not over the ocean.
Over them.
“He wasn’t looking at the beach,” I said.
Mom shook her head.
“Not usually.”
“He wasn’t looking at the beach.”
Dad left Hawaii at twenty because an opportunity opened on the mainland.
Nobody threw him out.
His foster family encouraged him to go.
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He expected to return.
Then one year became several.
Oregon became a job.
The job became a life.
Nobody threw him out.
Then Mom.
Then me.
“So why didn’t he go back?”
Mom looked toward the window.
“At first, money.”
That made sense.
“Then?”
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“Work.”
“And after that?”
“So why didn’t he go back?”
She was quiet.
“He thought he’d waited too long.”
“Too long for what?”
“To show his face.”
I frowned.
“They were his family.”
“He thought he’d waited too long.”
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“He didn’t use that word easily.” Mom picked at the corner of a condolence card. “The longer he stayed away, the more embarrassed he became about staying away.”
