Wish Read Free

black-and-white TV balanced precariously over the sink. He was kneeling on the counter, elbow-deep in a ceiling light fixture. A wiry man of average height, Mac was always crunching his knotted limbs into tight, awkward spaces, to get a better look at a leak or a plug.
    “Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?” Olivia craned her neck to see her father’s hands, twisting free a broken bulb.
    “Probably,” he grumbled. “How was school?”
    Olivia opened the stainless-steel refrigerator, the only new appliance her father had insisted on buying immediately, her eyes scanning rows of containers of half-eaten takeout, two bottles of ketchup, and a lonely onion.
    “Fine,” Olivia answered, unfolding some leftover Chinese and picking around with her fingers. “What happened to the floor?”
    Her father wiped handfuls of dust on his pants, faded jeans he’d had since college, and motioned for her to pass the lo mein. “What floor?”
    Olivia handed over the greasy container. “The floor that used to be in the hallway,” she said, as he settled on the countertop.
    “Had to get in there to look at some pipes,” Mac explained through a mouthful of cold noodles.
    Olivia grabbed a plastic bottle of water from an opened twelve-pack on the sawdust-covered counter, starting back out into the hallway to her room.
    “Mom’s gotta stay late at work,” he called after her.
    Olivia stopped short in the hall. “Again?” she asked, without turning around.
    Her father nodded and hopped down from his perch. “Looks like we’re on our own for dinner.”
    “Delivery?” Olivia guessed, slouching back against the molding door frame and feeling it sway dangerously under her weight.
    “What do you feel like?”
    Olivia shrugged as her father squeezed behind her to get to the fridge. “You know,” he said, “that’s one thing about this city I might be able to get used to. Anything you want to eat, you got it. Chinese, Italian, Indian, sushi—”
    “You hate sushi,” Olivia interrupted.
    “So what?” her father continued. “I can still get it at midnight. Can’t get a piece of toast at midnight back home.”
    “That’s true.” Olivia nodded, trying for chipper and starting back into the hall toward her room.
    Her dad had always tried to make it better, no matter what “it” was. When Olivia was six and sprained her ankle jumping off dunes at their beach house on Martha’s Vineyard, Mac decorated her crutches with iridescent streamers. When their mother, Bridget, was on a case in North Carolina for three weeks, Mac had given the girls leftover cans of house paint, setting them loose in their rooms and, more important, defending their artistic choices (sky blue for Olivia, a Pollock-inspired smattering for Violet) when Bridget returned.
    One of the most infuriating parts about Violet being gone was that there wasn’t a thing Mac could do to fix it.
    “Hey,” Mac called again. “School. Was it terrible?” Heleaned back against the sink and was gripping the edges of the speckled linoleum countertop with his rough, calloused hands. It was obvious he was trying to lounge, or at least approximate the posture of somebody engaged in casual conversation. But his face was strained and his voice sounded like he’d been swallowing shards of glass.
    “Not terrible,” she said, forcing softness.
    “Make any friends?” he asked.
    Olivia’s stomach tightened. Of course she hadn’t made any friends. She’d gone through her whole life with a built-in social ambassador. Violet had always been a chameleon, able to be anyone at any time, if it meant easy conversation and a fast friend. Olivia thought of herself more like a gecko. Or a newt.
    She opened her mouth to speak but stopped when she looked closer into her father’s bloodshot eyes, hollow and heavy at the edges. His once-red hair seemed to be attacking itself, and the scruff on his chin was tinged with more gray than before.
    He hadn’t signed up for this, either.
    It