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Harley had to come back up to call me to dinner. "It's ready," he said. "They're waiting for you."

"Okay. okay," I cried and hurried as fast as I could. The pain was thumping in my leg. and I wondered if I should at least take one of my pills now. I didn't want to bring any unhappiness to the table, not for this first and important dinner with Harley's father.

"I guess I'll just take one of the pills." I reluctantly decided.

I did so and then Harley helped me go down the stairs to the dining room. He looked a lot happier.

"Guess what he wants me to do tomorrow," he whispered as we went along.

"What?"

"He wants me to go on a job with him. He says I could be a great help since he lost his assistant this week."

"How?"

"He said he was a big drinker and got arrested for his fourth or fifth DWI. He's in jail."

"Oh."

"Best way to get to know someone is to work with him," Harley said. "especially if he's the father you've never known,"

.

The dining room table was a hard cherry wood that once must have been a beautiful piece of furniture. I thought. Now it was stained and badly scratched. The chair legs were so loose, I was afraid that mine might just fall apart. I never sat so still. Suze hadn't put a tablecloth on the table, but she had a thick candle burning at the center.

Whether we liked it or not, we were in for a Haitian dinner, Harley's father explained each dish Suze brought out from the kitchen. We began with a pumpkin soup. I thought it was quite spicy, and so did Harley from the look on his face. Our main dish was something called gliots, which I gathered from Suze's broken English explanation was pork first boiled and then fried. She served it with what she referred to as riz pois cones, which looked to be nothing more than rice cooked in with red kidney beans.

For dessert, we had pain potate, which was a cake she had made with sweet potatoes, coconut and raisins. It was delicious. Most of the flavors were true discoveries for both of us. Harley scraped his plate clean.

"I guess I was really hungry and this was all so good," he explained.

Throughout the dinner. I noticed how intently Harley's father stared at him. It's only natural. I thought. He was looking for resemblances, recalling memories of Aunt Glenda, perhaps feeling proud of the good-looking young man who now sat at his table.

Harley did a great deal of the talking, more than I had ever heard from him. He talked about our property, the lake, working with Roy, his interest in architecture. It was as if he were trying to get seventeen years of life summarized quickly so that he and his father could have a fresh beginning, move on from this moment as if they had never been apart. It was a hope I could see in his eyes as he spoke.

For his part his father listened asked an occasional question, glanced at Suze and smiled, and ate. He told surprisingly little more about himself. I tried to get more out of him for Harley's sake.

"How long have you been living here?" I asked.

"Oh, a while," he said.

When Suze went back into the kitchen. I remarked at how unusual it must be for someone from Haiti to be living here. I was hoping he would explain how they had met, but all he did was agree.

Suze gave us a juice drink with our meal. It was a little too sweet, but when Harley's father bragged about how hard she worked to make it. I thought I had better drink it all. Just before we finished our dessert, she looked at me and nodded.

"That be helping you now," she said.

"Pardon?"

"Suze means she gave you something for your pain."

"Gave me something? When?" I asked nervously.

"In your drink," Harley's father said laughing. "Don't worry about it. She's kept me alive for years, and the way I neglect myself and abuse myself, it's truly a miracle. Her mother was the equivalent of what we might call a witch doctor or something, Hell. I ain't been to a regular doctor for nearly ten years now. I haven't even been to a dentist!" he bragged.

"Maybe she shouldn't have done that." Harley said cautiously. "Summer already took one of her pills before we began to eat."

"Naw, nothing to worry about. Everything she uses comes from nature," his father assured us.