Page 14 of Under the Stars

Audrey

Winthrop Island, New York

If I’m expecting some kind of reality-show reaction from Mike Kennedy—and maybe I am, the way I sprang myself on him— behold, your long-lost daughter! —he disappoints me.

He lets a beat or two of silence fall. Then—“Well, damn. I guess I should have known. You look like your mom.”

“I wish .”

“Sure you do. Let me take that for you.” He grabs the crate from my arms. “Jesus. What is this shit?”

“Wine. There’s more in the car. I’m trying to dry out Meredith.”

“Meredith?”

“She’s at Greyfriars with me. Just finished rehab and needed a quiet place to complete her recovery away from the pressure of the public gaze. As her therapist puts it. Careful!”

Mike drops the crate on a table next to a window and pulls out a bottle. “Fucking Pétrus ? What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Serve it to your customers. See if they notice.”

“You’re just giving these to me?”

“Ha, nice try. But I’ll give you the family discount.”

He sets the bottle back in the crate and looks at me like a truck just hit him. His eyes fill up. He wipes his hands on his jeans. “Audrey, what the fuck,” he says.

I hold out my arms for an awkward hug that lasts longer than the average hug, just because Mike needs to pull himself together. The top of my head fits comfortably against the side of his face. Under my hands, his ribs shudder once or twice. His palm hovers around the back of my head.

“I can’t believe this shit,” he says. “You were just a cute little kid.”

“Yeah, what happened, right?”

“You turned out great. Did you bring your other half? I’d like to meet the asshole who married my daughter.”

“Yeah. So, the asshole departed the scene a few months ago. Long story.”

Mike pulls back. “What, are you kidding me?”

“Nope. Gone.”

“What do you mean, gone ? Where the fuck is he? So I can track down his miserable ass and kick the shit out of it?”

“I have no idea, Mike. He didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

Mike drags a hand through his hair. His face is the color of strawberry jam. “Douchebag. He didn’t leave you pregnant, did he?”

“ What? No! God, no. Do I look pregnant?”

“No, no. You look terrific, kid. You do. Your mom—you know, she didn’t look pregnant until the last minute.”

“Yeah, well. That’s Meredith for you.” I smooth back the sides of my hair, which I’ve twisted back in a perky ponytail suitable for manual labor. “So are you going to help me with this wine, or what?”

—

I have only a couple of clear memories of my dad.

I was so little when Meredith took me to California that he figures more as a presence than an actual person, as parts not yet assembled into a whole—a pair of large feet, a warm chest, a reassuring voice reading me a story at bedtime.

A sense of comforting grown-upishness, though I guess he would have been no more than twenty when I was born.

But I do remember this. I’m sitting on a stool while Mike preps the bar for opening.

I remember he’s wearing his Budweiser T-shirt, faded and soft from years of washing.

He checks the bottles, like he does every afternoon.

The clinkety clink of glass meeting glass.

The smell of beer and whiskey. I’m reading aloud from a book.

I don’t know whether I’m actually reading or just pretending to read the words I’ve already memorized, because it’s my favorite book, the one I ask Mike to read to me night after night— The Runaway Bunny .

You know how it goes. The bunny wants to run away somewhere exciting, and the mother bunny keeps telling him she’ll follow him, wherever he goes, no matter how far or how strange.

At the end, the bunny gives up. Shucks, he says.

I guess I might just as well stay home and be your little bunny.

At this point, I notice the clinking has stopped. I look up from my book and see my dad’s back in the soft white T-shirt, facing the bottles. He’s braced his hands against the edge of the counter and his shoulders are shaking.

Don’t cry, Daddy, I tell him.

He doesn’t answer me. I start to panic. Maybe he’s hurt, maybe he can’t speak.

I scramble off my stool to run around the counter and hug him, but my little foot catches in the legs and I crash to the floor.

The stool lands on top of me. I don’t remember crying, though I guess I must have made a racket, because the next thing I know, my father is picking me up off the floor and asking me if I’m all right, am I hurt, holding me snug against his damp shirt, and his strong arms shudder around me as we cry together.

—

Not the nicest memory, I guess, but it’s pretty much all I’ve got.

As we walk to the car, I keep stealing glances—his ear, his nose, the fading strands of red-gold hair in need of a trim.

He walks in a slow, loping gait and his arms are a little long for his torso, like an Irish gorilla crossing a gravel parking lot.

When I stop at the black Mercedes, he says Nice wheels in a way that doesn’t sound like a compliment.

I lift open the back. “It’s Meredith’s car.”

“So where’s your car?”

“I had to sell it to pay off the debts David left me with.”

“No shit? Sounds like you need a good lawyer, to me.”

“Oh my God, a lawyer ! I didn’t think of that! You men are so smart.”

Mike grabs the nearest crate and hauls it to the edge. “I see you got the sarcasm gene.”

“And which one of you is responsible for that?”

“Both of us, I guess.” He hands me the crate and hoists another into his own arms. The bottles rattle against each other. “Jesus. You said how many bottles?”

“I didn’t, but I’m guessing over three hundred. Maybe more. There’s another load back at the house, if Meredith hasn’t fallen off the wagon already and finished them off.”

We start back. Shoes crunching the gravel.

“So what happened with this dude? He just left?”

“Out of the blue. At least from my perspective. We opened this restaurant together a year ago and everything seemed to be going great. Stellar reviews, Thursday to Sunday fully booked. And he doesn’t come home from work one day. Just disappears.”

“And you’re sure it wasn’t…you know. Accident or some shit?”

“He emptied our bank accounts. Took his car. And it turned out he’d taken out loans in my name, forged my signature—”

“Holy shit, are you serious? I’m gonna beat the crap out of him.” Mike kicks open the door and holds it back for me to go first.

“You’d have to find him first.”

“Come on, Audrey. This is the internet age. Social media and shit. Cameras everywhere. He can’t just go dark. Unless he’s dead, I guess. Even then.”

“Well, he’s made it this far. All we got is some security camera footage from a gas station in Arizona.

His car, you can see the license. Definitely David pumping the gas.

He paid in cash, so the owner noticed him.

Then randomly saw the Daily Mail story a couple of days later and messaged me with the video. ”

“And this happened when? I mean, when was he pumping gas in Arizona?”

“I don’t know, like a few days after he disappeared? But nothing since. I’m assuming he’s ditched the car somewhere.”

“What do the police say? FBI should be on his ass. Fraud across state lines and whatever the fuck.”

“Except there’s no proof he committed fraud, except my word for it.

The signatures on the loan docs look like mine.

They might even be my signatures—I mean, we signed a lot of papers when we were starting up.

You know how it is, you stop reading every single line.

So I can’t get anyone interested in taking the case further. ”

“So hire a private detective.”

“With what money, Mike?”

“Hello. Meredith? Your famous mother? Or is the Bank of Mom closed to cash withdrawals?”

“No, she would help if she could. She always used to try to push cash on me. You know, guilt money? But she’s made some bad investments in the past couple of years.

She’s always been impulsive about money, like she doesn’t trust it to stick around.

Some friend will come to her with his pet idea and she’ll throw money at it.

Plus, her career isn’t—I mean, it’s not what it was.

She’s just not getting the roles anymore.

Hollywood being the cauldron of crazy that it is. ”

“So you’re both broke, is that what you’re telling me?”

We stand against the bar, next to the crates of wine.

Mike leans his elbow on the counter and takes me in with a pair of bright, inquisitive eyes.

Leathery face beneath a patch of faded ginger.

My father, I think. One entire half of me.

Same molecular knowledge stamped in our fabric.

Is it really this easy? You just pick up the thread like it was never snapped in the first place?

I rub the aching muscles on either side of my neck.

“I wouldn’t say Meredith’s broke, per se.

But she’s not what you’d call liquid, if you know what I mean. ”

Mike turns me around and kneads my shoulder muscles. “Listen, you’re beat. I’ll finish unloading the car. You go find yourself something to eat in the kitchen, all right? On the house.”

“Did you just say on the house ? I’m your daughter . This is my house.”

He laughs. “Holy shit, you’re so much like your mother.”

“ What? I am so not like Meredith.”

“The fuck you’re not.” He pushes me away. “Go. My fry cook’ll be here at four to start prep, so try not to leave a mess.”

“Fuck you, Mike.”

He grabs his heart and staggers back to the door.

—

I stand for a minute or two in the kitchen doorway, grasping the scale of the calamity before me.