Returning to Shore Read Free

for.”
    â€œI miss Peter,” said Clare, and she closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the cold glass of the window.
    â€œYup,” said, Eva, and she reached across and gave Clare a one-armed hug.
    â€œI wish I could have stayed with him now. I know he’s living with someone, and he and Mom aren’texactly talking to each other, but still …”
    â€œYou can understand how Vera wouldn’t want to be dealing with Peter at this time.”
    â€œShe could have let me stay with my friends, then. She didn’t have to ship me off this way.”
    â€œShe’s not exactly shipping you off,” said Eva. “She’s sending you to visit your father. He’s been wanting to see you for years. And this—well, this worked out.”
    â€œHe’s been wanting to see me for years?”
    â€œYou didn’t know that?” asked Eva.
    â€œNot really,” said Clare.
    â€œWell, I didn’t think it was any big secret. I thought you talked to him on the phone.”
    â€œOn Christmas. He calls every Christmas. But we don’t really talk. He asks me what I’m doing in school and I tell him. That’s about it.”
    â€œHe supports you,” said Eva. “You knew that, didn’t you?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œPays your tuition at snooty-tooty academy, pays for your oboe lessons, your tennis camp, your orthodontist, your computer, your clothes, your food. Until Ian came along he paid for a lot of Vera’s stuff, too. Youcan’t say he hasn’t been generous all these years.”
    The word “generous” was not one Clare had ever heard used about her father. It made him seem more like a real person. Vera rarely talked about him much, and if she ever did, the adjective she relied on was “smart.” Clare had always assumed that the checks he sent were simply a legal obligation, not that he’d had a choice about any of it.
    â€œDo you hate him, too?” asked Clare.
    â€œHate him? Nobody hates him!” said Eva.
    â€œMom does.”
    Eva shook her head furiously. “She thought she did, once, but that was long ago.”
    â€œDoes he hate her?”
    â€œYou’ll have to ask him that,” said Eva.
    â€œHe did move to the other side of the whole country.”
    Eva actually seemed to think about her answer before she spoke. “He didn’t do that to get away from her,” she said. “From what I understood, he wanted to be out in Silicon Valley, where things were happening in his field. And she didn’t want to move. That’s when marriages often fall apart,” said Eva. “One spousewants to move and the other doesn’t.”
    Clare could easily imagine her mother saying, “I don’t want to move.” When Vera said something, she stuck to it. Still, that didn’t explain
him
.
    â€œHe never came back to visit, not even once,” said Clare.
    â€œCalifornia does that to people,” said Eva. “It sucks them in and frazzles their brains, and they never make it back to the right coast again.”
    Clare turned in her seat so she could look at Eva straight on. “So how come he came back now?”
    â€œI have no idea,” said Eva. “And I don’t think Vera does, either. All I know is that he took some kind of early retirement and decided to move back to Cape Cod, where he owned a house, and got himself involved with something to do with reptiles.”
    â€œReptiles?”
    â€œReptiles, amphibians. One of those things, thank God, that we don’t have in New York City.” Eva took her hands off the steering wheel and waggled them in the air for emphasis.
    â€œHow come he owns a house on Cape Cod?” asked Clare.
    â€œIt was his parents’ place. He inherited it, and I guess he decided to hold on to it. I don’t know what it is exactly. A house, a cottage. A tent.”
    â€œAnd this is where