Page 53 of Lovers at Seaside
It’s Chanukah. All I wanted was a guitar. I got this stupid diary and a bunch of ugly jewelry and fancy clothes…
Chapter Twenty-One
THE SOUND OF car doors closing and Christmas’s barking pulled Parker from Abe’s daughter’s diary. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting on the dock reading, but she’d read every entry from December 3, 1980, through November 2, 1982, and was nearing the end. Christmas charged up to meet Sky, Bella, Amy, Leanna, Jenna, and Jessica, who were headed down to the dock. Parker waved, still in a bit of a fog from all she’d read. The girls looked like they’d come from the beach, each in a cute sundress, the tops of their bathing suits tied around their necks. Their flip-flops slapped against the dock as they made their way to Parker with Christmas bumping into their legs and excitedly licking their hands.
Parker smiled up at her new friends, traipsing toward her like the cavalry.
“There you are,” Amy said. She set a bag down beside Parker. “We were worried about you.”
“I’ve been calling you all day.” Sky sat beside Parker, and the other girls sat, too, forming a circle around her. “Jana wanted to come, but she wasn’t able to reach her dance students to cancel her class.”
“My phone’s inside. Sorry. I guess I’ve been out here longer than I thought.”
Jenna reached into the bag and withdrew a jumbo package of snack-sized candy bars. “We brought grief food.”
“Aw, you’re so sweet. But Grayson beat you to it.” She grabbed the unopened bag of chocolate from behind her. “Did he ask you to check on me?”
“Please, we don’t need to be asked,” Bella said. “We wanted to come earlier, but when you didn’t answer your phone, Sky called Grayson, and he said you were probably sleeping. So we waited, and waited, and finally got sick of waiting.”
“Um, full disclosure.” Sky wiggled a finger in the air. “Grayson did call me this morning on his way to work and asked if it would make him a total overbearing a-hole if he turned around and refused to leave you alone today.”
Parker melted. That wassoGrayson.
“I told him it would, and that if you told him you were fine, you were and he should trust you.” Sky leaned closer and said, “I hope that’s what you wanted, but don’t think for a minute that we girls think ‘fine’ means ‘fine.’ We know better.”
Unexpected tears welled in Parker’s eyes.
“Oh no,” Leanna exclaimed. “We didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Parker shook her head, overwhelmed with affection for these women who had so quickly become a part of her life, and for Grayson for calling Sky, and for…Well, geez. Couldn’t a girl just cry? She swiped at her tears.
“You didn’t make me cry. I mean, you did, but not in a bad way. I’m really okay. As okay as I can be. I just…” She tried to find the right words to express how much their friendship meant to her. “Grayson called you, and you’re all here.” She fanned her face to dry her tears. “I’ve never had this type of support before.”
“Tissues,” Jessica said.
“On it.” Jenna dug in the bag again and tore open a big box of tissues. She handed a bunch to Parker.
“Thank you.” Parker wiped her eyes and held up the diary. “I think I’m crying because of this. Abe left me his daughter’s diary, among other things, buthis daughter’s diary! It’s so full of teenage angst and heartache.”
“Why did he leave it to you?” Amy asked.
Parker shrugged. “His nurse said he had no one else. Abe said his wife left him for another man, and he was so full of hate when he spoke of her, I’m not surprised they didn’t keep in contact. And his daughter?” She ran her hand over the diary, remembering the frustrations it held. “Abe said she ran off to join a band and he spent thousands trying to find her but she left no trace.”
“I wonder if she was abducted,” Jenna said.
“You never know,” Jessica added.
“She wassounhappy. I think she really did run away. She wrote a lot about wanting to play in a band.” Parker flipped through the diary. “But I don’t think it was just the band. Listen to this. ‘Today Jackass’—that’s what she calls Abe.” Her heart hurt thinking about Abe reading those words, and she wondered if he’d read them a million times, or only once, and tossed them aside with the rest of his emotions. She forced herself to continue reading. “‘Today Jackass actually spoke to me. He said to be dressed and ready by seven for dinner with the Paddingtons. That’s eleven words in six days. A record.’” She lowered the diary.
“Can you imagine your own father never speaking to you? The whole thing is filled with this kind of stuff. He worked all the time. Her mother seemed nice, but listen to this.” She flipped a few more pages. “‘Two hours of straight fighting. Going on three now. I begged Mom to leave him again’—‘again’ is underlined about ten times—‘but she looks at me like I’m crazy and says he’s a good man, he’s just stressed, he doesn’t mean it, and all the other crap adults say to kids like we’re idiots.’”
“Wow,” Sky said. “No wonder she left.”
“Does it say where she was going?” Jenna asked.
“No. It doesn’t even say she planned to run away in so many words, but there’s this.” She flipped to the last entry she’d read. “‘I’m saving every penny Jackass gives me. I was going to finally buy my guitar, but it would be too bulky to carry and too easy for people to remember.’”
“Sounds like she didn’t want to be found. And she was smart,” Sky said.
