Page 43 of Secrets at Seaside
“Just you, kitten. It’s who you are insideandout that I love, and it was no different back then.” He kissed her as the photos flashed on the dune behind her, and when they parted, she cuddled beneath his arm again.
The next picture was of all of them—Tony, Jamie, Amy, Bella, Jenna, and Leanna—huddled together on blankets around the bonfire. Bella and Jenna were gazing into the distance. Leanna and Jamie were talking, and Tony and Amy were staring at each other with an undeniable look of lust in their eyes.
“Wow,” Amy whispered.
“There’s no way they didn’t noticethat.” Tony tightened his grip on Amy.
“They weren’t looking for it. We are.”
Another picture of Tony and his father appeared on the screen. His father held a bottle of beer in one hand and he was looking directly at the camera. Tony’s eyes were drawn to his father’s. He was powerless to look away, and the eye-to-eye contact nearly pulled Tony under. Anger, resentment, and confusion warred for his attention again, and at the tail end of those emotions, love held his voice at bay. The picture changed before Tony could manage to say a word, and the next picture was of him and his father, his father’s arm around his shoulder.
“Can you pause it?” His voice was so quiet he barely recognized it.
Amy scrambled to pause the disk.
It was all Tony could do to stare at the image on the screen as memories flooded him. His father had never been a big drinker, but that had changed around that summer, too. How had he forgotten that? And how had he missed how much his father’s appearance had also changed. Alcohol had taken away most of the man Tony had looked up to by then, leaving his once-toned muscles soft, a shadow of the strong man his father had once been evident in his six-two, broad-shouldered stance. He and his father shared the same deep-set blue eyes, though in the picture his father’s had dark moons beneath them. Moons Tony had no recollection of seeing. They had the same strong jawline, though even against the peaks and valleys of the dune’s rough facade, Tony could see the hollowness in his father’s cheeks.
“Tony.”
Tony turned at the feel of Amy trying to unfurl his fist.
“Maybe I should turn it off,” she offered.
He shook his head and inched closer to the dune. “No. I need to see him.”
“He was handsome. You look a lot like him.”
“Beyond that, what do you see?” Tony squinted at the bigger-than-life image, which suited how he had once thought of his father. He hadn’t been afraid of his father, but memories of his father’s demeaning comments that summer fisted his hands a little tighter. He felt Amy touch his arm.
“He’s not here, Tony.”
“He’s not gone, either.” Tony shook his head, a million thoughts whirling through his mind at once. “Look at his smile. It looks real, right? Not forced?”
“Yeah, he smiled a lot.”
“Yeah, he did. That’s why it cut so deep that summer when he was such a jerk to me. I don’t know what happened to my memories, but that man right there…” He pointed at the dune. “Amy, that’s not the man I have in my head. I don’t remember him looking so happy. In my mind I see the angry man he was toward me. I can’t even begin to draw the memory of him looking like that. But he was that man. He was jovial, lighthearted.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Wha—? How?”
Amy shrugged. “I guess for the same reason that the man I see in the pictures of my dad doesn’t look like the image of him in my mind. That’s why I wanted to see these. I think our perspectives were skewed. When I went down to the woods today, I started thinking about our parents and I wondered if they’d seen anything between us that summer. And that made me wonder what we’d seen of them. My dad was always pushing me to do well in school, make something of myself. To be my best. He had expectations—there’s no doubt about that—but would he have really cared if we’d dated? I just don’t know the answer to that. And your father?”
She looked up at the image of Tony’s father on the dune.
“He was hard on you, and he was a real jerk with some of the things he said that summer. And for all these years I’ve sort of blamed him for my shutting you out of my life. I was always worried that he’d throw our relationship in your face in some way, and after…well, after what happened, I felt like he’d never let it go.”
“He would have used it against me, Amy. He’d have told me that I was irresponsible and that I’d messed up your life and mine. You know that.” Tony clenched his jaw.
“Maybe.” She shook her head. “But what if he was just pushing you like my father pushed me, but he just handled it in a horrible way?”
“Does that make it any better?”
Amy shook her head. “Of course not, but…”
“But we can’t change the past no matter how much we wish we could. Would I love to know my father was sorry for all the things he said to me? Of course I would. But the truth is, I’ll never know.” Tony shook his head.
“Why? Why can’t you ask your mother?”
