Page 81 of The Night We Lost Him

I nod. If he were involved with someone new, Inez and Elizabeth would certainly know before my father would have shared it with me. But, as she starts to answer me, she shakes her head instead, stopping herself.

“What?” I say. “Please say it.”

She puts her drink down and walks over to me, gently squeezes my hand. “I’m going to tell you what your father would say if he were here. Your father loved you. He loved all of us, the best he could. I think it’s better to leave it at that.”

“Better for who?”

She shrugs. “That’s always the question.”

Aspect Ratio

“I thought we were meeting at the brownstone tomorrow,” Morgan says.

I’m standing in the doorway of her and Sam’s loft. She is photo shoot ready in a sheer minidress, full makeup, clad once again in her blue boots.

“I’m just looking for Sam,” I say. “Is he here?”

“We’re actually on our way out the door.”

This is when Sam walks up behind her, puts an arm around her waist. He is also dressed to the nines in a dark blue suit, a vest beneath it. Everything about him looks rested and put together. It makes me even angrier that he didn’t return my calls. All five of them.

“Why are you so sweaty?” he says.

“I ran here,” I say.

“From Flatbush?”

I cross my arms over my chest and glare at him, Morgan looking back and forth between us.

“Morgan, would you mind giving us a minute alone, please?” I say.

He kisses her on the cheek, softly. Kindly. “I’ll be ready in five, babe,” he says.

Morgan heads inside, and Sam turns back toward me.

“What’s going on with you?” I say.

“What’s going on with you?”

“Why didn’t you call me back all day?”

He points in Morgan’s direction. “I’ve been busy,” he says. “And we are about to head out for a fundraiser—”

I ignore this. I ignore him.

“We need to go back to Windbreak,” I say.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s nothing at Dad’s apartment. There are a few family photographs, sure, but there’s really nothing personal. The scrapbooks, the photographs, all the things that made him him, separate from us, separate from the families, that was at Windbreak. He kept everything that mattered to him at Windbreak.”

“We were there.”

“Then we missed it.”

“You’re worse than me.”

“We need to go back.”