Page 53 of The Night We Lost Him

“You ready to admit that I’m growing on you?”

“Good night, Sam.”

“A little?” he calls out.

I shake my head, not turning around.

“Fine by me!” he says. “We’ll leave it unsaid.”

In Ditmas Park, the Moon Turns Purple

The house is dark when I get home.

It’s 10:00 p.m., Jack is still at the restaurant. Instead of going into the empty house, I pull my coat tight and take a seat on the front steps. The block is quiet this time of night, serene. The Ushers are walking their dog, but most of my neighbors are inside for the night—their windows lit up with late-night dinner and bedside lamps, the blue light of their televisions.

One of the last times my father came to see me in Ditmas Park, it was late at night, a little over a year ago, not too long after my mother died. I remember because it had been two months since she died. Two months exactly. I was still counting the days then. I’m still counting the days now.

My father was on his way back from an event in Midwood. Going back there was something he rarely did.

He had texted me to meet him at Sheet Music, but I was still working, so he said he would come to me instead and bring a little Sheet Music with him.

We sat on the steps and shared a strawberry sofrito pie and drank champagne out of coffee mugs.

“Are we celebrating something?” I asked.

“If I’ve learned anything it’s that you don’t need a reason for champagne,” my father said.

I smiled at him.

“But if you’d like a reason, I was supposed to go to my high school reunion tonight.” He shrugged. “And then I remembered I don’t have to go anywhere anymore that I don’t want to be.”

I laughed. “That seems worthy of a celebration.”

While we ate he asked me what I was working on, and I walked him through a commission in Connecticut. It was a memory care facility that I was building out with a geriatric specialist. Our goal was to create the type of coherent space that would aid orientation, alleviate confusion. We were leaning into a biophilic design concept to ensure all thirty occupants would be closely connected to nature and lots of natural light, a calming environment.

I thought I was boring him, but he kept asking more questions, wanting every detail. Pouring more champagne and asking more questions. It was his MO: He couldn’t be prouder about what I was doing. He couldn’t learn enough about what mattered to me.

But, that night, there was another layer to it. It felt like there was something my father wanted to tell me too. Something that he kept coming right up to the edge of saying. But he didn’t.

I wondered if it had something to do with the distance I was keeping from him—if he was trying to figure out how to broach the topic. But that didn’t seem like what it was. It seemed like it was good news he was trying to figure out how to share—something that was making him happy.

I didn’t push him. Even if he didn’t want to say it yet, whatever was bringing him joy just then, it was enough for him to be able to sit in it, with me. But I wish I had pushed. What I would give now to know exactly what had been going through his mind.

I pull my cell phone from my bag. And I click on his name before I let myself think about it.

Elliot answers on the first ring.

“Your ears must be burning,” he says. “Austin was talking about you at dinner tonight.”

“Really? What was he saying?”

“He wanted me to remind you about his piano recital on Tuesday.”

I feel a twinge in my chest, thinking about Austin’s last recital, last spring, his rhapsodic focus on his latest piece. My father was there with me, holding a big box of cookies on his lap. Proud.

“I’ll be there,” I say.

“So you’re back?”