envelope fell out, two words written in black ink on the outside. “The Girls.” Jen didn’t know until that second that she knew her father’s handwriting, that the memory of it had lodged fast and hidden all these years.
Tanya shook out three pictures. Two were their school pictures from the year before Sid moved away: shy grins, their hair curving out in Farrah Fawcett waves, sleeveless cotton shirts revealing thin suntanned arms. The third picture was of the whole family, much earlier: their mother in the middle, Jen no more than six or seven and wearing a sundress printed with anchors. Sid with a mustache, looking out of the frame, scowling with impatience, as though there was somewhere else he needed to be.
* * *
The afternoon held no more surprises. Forms to sign at the morgue, where it turned out that they were not required to view the body. A brief tug-of-war at the mortuary until Jen gave in to the pitch and bought their cheapest urn for the ashes she had no intention of ever claiming.
It was dark by the time they checked into the Double Tree. Their room had a view of the parking lot. The heater cycled on with a vengeance, something rattling deep within.
“Is it okay with you if we do room service?” Jen asked. “I really don’t want to go back outside in the cold.”
“I’ve got something better,” Tanya said, setting her overnight bag down on the nearest bed. She unzipped the bag and pulled out a bottle of wine, and then another. “I even remembered the corkscrew. And check it out. Snacks.”
Jen feigned enthusiasm. She knew Tanya was just trying to contribute, and she didn’t really need anything more than the canned nuts and snack mix. While Tanya was setting it all up on the nightstand between the two beds, laying out a hand towel for a tablecloth and pouring wine into the plastic cups, Jen called Ted, but there was no answer. She took off her makeup and changed into her pajamas.
“Wow, look at you,” Tanya said, when Jen came out of the bathroom. She was lounging against the pillows in her bed, watching television. She picked up the remote and shut it off. “Got big plans later?”
Jen looked down at her pajamas, a silky navy blue set that Ted had given her for Christmas. “These aren’t anything special,” she said, blushing.
“Seriously? I don’t dress like that unless I’m getting some action.” She grinned, her teeth pink from the wine. She was wearing a faded T-shirt over sweats. Her cup was almost empty.
Jen got into her bed, pulling the covers up over her legs and taking a sip of her wine. She was always embarrassed when Tanya talked about the men she was seeing. They never lasted long, and they were never anywhere near as good as Tanya made them sound when she first met them.
“I feel like we ought to drink a toast to the old bastard,” Tanya said, and it took a minute for Jen to realize that she was talking about their father. “Only, I can’t think of a single thing to toast him for.”
Jen raised her cup, reaching across the space between the two beds. She was going to say May he rest in peace, but something stopped her; she had never seen Sid at rest during her entire childhood. He was always on the move, fidgeting, pacing, coming and going.
Until Tanya called, Jen had barely thought about her father in years. Sid Bennett was often away from home when his daughters were young, disappearing for days at a time. Later he took pipeline work in Alaska and his absences stretched to months. When he was around, he wanted little to do with two solemn, skittish little girls, and spent his time antagonizing their mother instead until she finally told him not to bother to come back.
And then the summer that Jen was thirteen and Tanya a rebellious, sullen fifteen, their mother got sick. Sid started coming around again, looking for an opening, wooing her with smooth talk and cheap flowers when he needed a tank of gas or money to tide him over. She was unable to resist, the cancer rendering her silent and listless. He might have persisted right up to her death, but a bar fight landed him in the hospital for a long stay at the end of that dismal summer.
When he was released, he headed north, ending up here in Murdoch. They only found out where he was when the court tracked him down after their mother died, but by then Jen and Tanya were settled into their aunt’s basement, a solution everyone agreed was better than trying to extract any support out of Sid.
“He never got in touch with us, not once,” Jen said, after they both drank.
“That never seemed to bother you before.”
“It doesn’t. I mean, I don’t know what I would have done if he had. It’s just that now he’s dead, I’m realizing that it’s like he never aged, for me. I never saw him get old.”
“I guess it was too much to hope that he would have gotten remarried. Left someone else to deal with all his shit.” Tanya’s voice was bitter.
“At least it’s all done. After today we don’t ever have to think of him again.”
“So we just walk away.” Tanya sighed. “I guess at least we got a night away from the kids. Speaking of which—what’s Ted doing with his big night to himself?”
“Working on the bathroom, supposedly.”
“He’s still not done?”
Jen grimaced. Ted had been laid off for almost six months, and the renovation project was supposed to keep him busy while he looked for a new job, but lately he hadn’t done much job searching or renovating. In the past few weeks there had been several times when he went out “for supplies,” and came home empty-handed. “He swore he was going to get a lot done this weekend.”
“Good luck with that.” Tanya laughed. Jake’s father left when he was a baby, and she took a dim view of men in general, other than the brief infatuations at the start of her relationships. “With his wife and kids gone for the weekend? I bet he went out and painted the town.”
“I guess...” Jen said, more morosely than she meant to.
Tanya looked at her keenly. “Hey, I was kidding. Everything’s okay with you guys, isn’t it?”
“No, no, it’s fine. Just, you know, I wish he’d find something. It’s hard having him underfoot all the time.”
Tanya looked at her doubtfully, picking up the bottle. “Here, give me your glass.”
As Tanya topped off her wine, Jen couldn’t help thinking of the little slip of goldenrod notepaper Ted had tossed in the tray on his dresser along with his change. The feminine handwriting that wasn’t hers, the initials SEB in a curvy script at the top. On it, Sarah Elizabeth Baker had written Thx tons, Thursday 2pm Firehouse xoxoxo.
Sarah had been his assistant before he was laid off. She wasn’t gorgeous, but she had a knowing, sensual way about her that was hard to miss; she could make a Brooks Brothers blouse look like an invitation. At the Christmas party, when she’d had too much to drink, she’d kissed Ted on the mouth when she said goodbye.
None of which necessarily meant anything—except that Ted left Flores Martin months ago. And yes, for a while there was a weekly bundle of his mail, delivered with one of these little gold notes paper clipped on top.
But there hadn’t been mail from work in a long time.
Jen wondered if she could tell Tanya about Sarah. But Tanya would be too quick to turn on Ted, too quick to castigate him for crimes he might not have even committed.
So Jen drank her wine and changed the subject, and when the bottle was empty Tanya opened the second one, and they made a good dent in it before Jen finally turned the light out. They mumbled their good-nights just like all those years ago when they shared a bedroom and a bunk bed. Tanya was asleep in minutes, her breathing even and deep. Jen lay awake for a while despite the blurry wine buzz, thinking about Sarah and her glossy hair, the x’s and o’s at the bottom of her note.
When Jen finally slept, her nightmare had nothing to do with Sarah, or even Sid. She dreamed the red bird, its beak opening wider and wider,