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My father thinks for a moment, an expression I know well blooming across his face. The one he’d get when he was planning something fun. Or diabolical. Or both. “Draft this,” he tells me. “Loved the book you did on Mac Murray. I was sad when he passed away.” I type the words, wondering where this is going. “I knew him for years,” my father continues, “and considered us close but never knew about the Guatemalan orphanage. What a revelation.” He thinks a bit more and then says, “Send it.”
I do, and look at him, waiting for him to explain. “Mac Murray was a famous filmmaker. Mostly documentaries, but sometimes he’d branch into indies.”
“I know who Mac Murray was, Dad.”
“Mac was known for a lot of things—his talent behind the camera, but also his partying. We spent a lot of weekends together that I won’t go into detail about. However, not a lot of people knew that Mac was also a horrible racist.” My father shakes his head. “He put up a good front in public—working in the industry he had to, or risk getting passed over for jobs. But one time, he went on this rant about immigrants flooding into the country, about them taking our jobs. He hated everything and everyone south of the border.”
“Nice friends, Dad.”
He shrugs off my words. “He had good drugs. But the Guatemalan orphanage Calder wrote about? The trips Mac supposedly made every year?” He shakes his head. “They never happened.”
The email pings with Calder’s response. “Read it,” my father demands.
“‘As I said before, I can do the same to rehab your image.’”
My father gives a bark of a laugh. “Rehab my image by making shit up.”
“Are you absolutely positive Calder lied in the book?”
My father looks smug. “I’m not the only one who’s good at writing fiction.” Then he nods toward the computer and says, “Send this to Monarch:It has come to my attention that Tyler Blakewood has spoken to John Calder about the existence of this book. I expect Mr. Blakewood to be taken off this project immediately.”
Just as we’re finishing up, my phone buzzes with another text, Tom’s name appearing on the screen. Something white-hot passes through me, and I reach out to cover the screen.
“Who’s that?” my father asks.
I turn the phone upside down and say, “No one.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Doesn’t seem like no one to me, based on the way your shoulders flew up into your ears.”
I close out his email and put his computer to sleep, then swivel to face him. “Thanks to this job, he’s now my ex.”
“Explain to me how the book has anything to do with your relationship. That seems a stretch,” he says.
“The secrecy,” I say. “My inability to tell anyone why I’m here or what I’m working on.”
My father shakes his head. “I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts you never told your boyfriend who your family even is.” He tips his head to one side and says, “Let me guess…you’re a poor orphan whose parents died tragically. What was it, a plane crash? A car accident?”
I look away. “A heart attack,” I mumble. “And cancer.”
My father barks a laugh. “Smart. Nothing newsworthy anyone can google.” But then he looks at me with sad eyes and says, “You want me to be vulnerable, but you can’t even do that yourself.”
“I’m not the one who has to write a memoir,” I shoot back.
“No, you just have to live your life. And you’ll live it alone if you can’t figure out how to be honest.”
“That’s rich, coming from you,” I tell him. When he doesn’t take the bait, I continue. “Besides, there are worse things. Like being sued by a misogynist and losing my career. Like having to sell my home. Or dying a slow death where you lose control of your body.”
I expect my father to agree. He’d never remarried or dated anyone seriously after my mother left, claiming he didn’t have time for relationships. But he shakes his head and says, “There’s nothing better than being truly seen—truly known by another person. I would like you to have that someday.”
He nods toward my phone. “Read the text.”
It’s another link to Calder’s post and a statement.Once again, I don’t know what to believe.
I look up at my father. “It’s nothing important,” I tell him. Solitude is my lot in life. Those seeds were planted by my parents long ago, and it’s futile to think I would grow into something different.
“Why did Mom leave?” I ask.
My father looks as surprised as I feel at the question. We’d never discussed it. When I was little, I was too afraid to ask, for fear of upsetting him. And as I got older, I’d convinced myself I didn’t care.