Page 43 of Your Every Wish

“Bent McCourtney. I got caught in the downpour when he happened to drive by, and he gave me a lift.”

“That was nice of him. Crazy weather, huh?”

“Terrible. If not for Bent I would’ve had to swim home. I’m going to hit the shower.” My running clothes are soaked through to my skin, chilling me to the bone.

“Hurry up, I want to show you something.”

The urgency in her voice makes me stop and turn around. “What?”

“Go ahead and shower first before you catch a cold. This is going to take a while.”

Now I recognize it. It’s the photo album from Willy’s safe, the one we took with his watch and ring.

The latter turned out to be one of those cheesy high school class rings.

And the watch, a Rolex knockoff. Both clearly held sentimental value for Willy because neither is worth more than a few bucks.

“Why are you looking at that? Is there something in there that can help us find the money?”

“No, but it’s interesting. Go put on something dry, and I’ll show you.”

I’m not big on looking at other people’s photographs.

Lorelie used to love showing off her vacation pictures, watching the gang from Caesars scroll through her phone while she described in tedious detail each site, each meal, each hotel room or Airbnb where she stayed.

There’s nothing duller, except maybe photos of coworkers’ children. Those are the worst.

Less intrigued than I was a minute ago, I shuffle off to bathe and put on warm clothes.

My phone goes off with Madge’s ringtone—after all, it’s been more than an hour.

I let it go to voicemail, swearing to myself that I’ll call her back after my shower, when I will once again explain to her that no, we still haven’t found the money.

And, yes, hopes of ever finding it are fading fast.

When I return to the kitchen, Emma’s still there, poring over the photo album, her eyes watery.

“Come look,” she calls me over.

“Do I have to?” I scrounge through the pantry for something to eat. Time to make another Pop-Tart run.

“You’ll be glad you did.”

“Whatever.” I plop down next to her, so she can show me the freaking pictures.

One of a little boy, who I presume is Willy, pages of photos of what I’m guessing is his mother, grandmother, and brother, a snapshot or two of a barrel-chested man with brown hair and twinkly blue eyes, possibly Willy’s father.

His resemblance to me is so uncanny it’s like looking in a mirror.

I have his eyes for sure. Same cleft chin and Greek nose.

“I wonder if any of these people are still alive?” I mutter aloud.

“His brother is for sure. His mother died when he was a boy and his grandmother passed when Willy was in his twenties. Not sure about his father. He ran off with another woman when Willy was just a boy.”

For a second Emma’s and my eyes meet and I say what we’re both thinking, “Like father, like son.”

“Keep looking.” Emma turns the page.

There are more snapshots of the same people but mostly of Willy’s grandmother. It’s clear from the pictures that whoever took them really loved her.

“She looks nice,” I say, though there’s no way to really tell from a picture. Perhaps it’s her white hair and cherubic face. It’s her resemblance to Mrs. Claus. Everyone loves Santa’s wife, right?

Emma shrugs. “Never met her.” She turns the page again. “Frank looked just like Willy when they were kids.”

“The brother?”

Emma nods. “I wonder what he looks like now. After he called me, I looked him up on Google but couldn’t find anything. It was obvious from his call that he and Willy fell out of touch a long time ago. Interesting, that Willy didn’t put him in his will.”

I flip through more of the pages, feeling a bit like a voyeur, peeping into the life of a stranger, when I come to a picture of someone familiar. At first, I think it’s Emma and then I realize it’s her mother.

“Wow.” The next page has a picture of Emma’s mom in a wedding dress. She’s standing next to Willy in front of an ornate public building, maybe a city hall somewhere. “Were you surprised to see this?”

“A little. Interesting that he saved it, huh?”

“Maybe he still loved her,” I say, though he had a strange way of showing it.

“Or he once did and wanted to preserve the memory of what it felt like. Keep going,” Emma urges me on.

There are more pictures of Willy and Emma’s mom. One on a green couch in an apartment, another of the two of them on a sandy beach. Judging by the palm trees it could be Hawaii or San Diego or even Florida.

I turn the page and there’s Madge in one of her dance costumes, hunched over a birthday cake with a sparkler on the top, smiling for the camera. She looks so impossibly young and so blissfully happy that I get a lump in my throat.

“Your mom, right?”

“Mm-hmm.” I have to look away because my eyes are swimming in tears. He’d kept a picture of her.

And there’s more. Two, to be exact. One of them together in front of the water fountains at the Bellagio and another of the two of them in a vintage Corvair convertible, snuggled up together.

I quickly flip through the pages to see if there are more women, more Mrs. Keils, more paramours.

I get to the last five or six pages in the book, and they’re completely dedicated to Emma and me.

Baby pictures, birthday parties, high school graduations, Emma’s college graduation, one of me walking through the door of Caesars Palace.

It appears it was shot with a long lens not found on a camera phone.

“Where do you think he got these?” I say, my voice hoarse with emotion. “No way did Madge send them to him. She hasn’t heard from him in more than thirty years. Not since I was born.”

“He was either there or hired someone to take them.” Emma points to her high school graduation photo.

“It was held at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in McLaren Park. He could easily sneak in and out without Mom or me seeing him. My college graduation . . . there were, like, nine thousand people there.”

“Could it be that he was keeping tabs on us?”

“There’s no other explanation for how he got these pictures.”

“Why go to all the trouble if you’re just going to ignore us anyway?” I say, feeling a mixture of elation and anger.

“Some people have trouble connecting and committing. I’m pretty sure Willy was one of those people.”

“It sounds like a handy excuse to me. Like something you’d tell one of your sad-ass readers who’s just been dumped by their spouse or partner to make them feel better about themselves.”

“We don’t need to feel better about ourselves, Kennedy. We didn’t do anything wrong. We were babies when Willy left. The fact that he left and never contacted us again but kept pictures of us throughout our childhoods and adulthoods says to me that he wanted to love us but didn’t know how.”

“Because he was incapable of owning up to having two daughters in the world, we’re supposed to give him a free pass?”

“That’s not what I said. You asked why he took all these pictures if he didn’t want to be in our lives?

My answer was that he may have wanted to be in our lives and didn’t know how.

That’s all. Hate him if you want. But I don’t.

I feel sorry for him. He died alone with no one to love him.

You and I, on the other hand, have plenty of people who love us. And we have each other.”

Emma pulls me in for a hug and I don’t know why but I start to sob uncontrollably.

I’d like to tell myself that it’s the stress of a looming deadline that I’m never going to make, or the monotony of living in the middle of a senior mobile home park, or the horrible stench of this trailer, or all of the above. But it’s none of these things.

I’m crying for the milestones in those pictures, the milestones I never got to share with a father who yearned to be part of them enough to put them in a keepsake book, but then locked them away forever.