Begin Again

Every now and then I still get emails to my defunct “Bed of Roses” email account, and forward them over to the new columnist who took over at Little Fells. But a few days later on my way out of class I open it to an email from an address I recognize on sight. Trying to get my very accomplished, extremely busy daughter at Blue Ridge State to call her old man back, it reads. Any pro tips?

My entire face flushes, embarrassed and oddly touched at the same time. I haven’t intentionally drawn this out to be some kind of test, but it’s still reassuring to know that for once he’s not taking the excuse to stay away.

I wait until after my first class to call him back. He picks up on the first ring.

“A-Plus!”

He sounds so happy to hear from me that for a moment I feel absurd. All this apprehension, all this overthinking, and he’s just glad that I called in the first place.

“Hey, Dad,” I say, rounding the corner to a quieter part of the quad. “How are things?”

“Busy and good. Just like you with all those ribbons, huh?”

I blink, surprised to hear him mention them so readily. We never discussed them before—not when he decided to put my mom’s in storage and certainly not since I got in here. I can only assume my grandmas filled him in.

“Yeah,” I say, slowing my pace as I process.

“You having fun on the hunt?”

I blink, the image of that falling tree and Professor Hutchison’s stern gaze a little too fresh in my mind.

“Yeah,” I say. “Mostly.”Please check at N/ôvel(D)rama.Org.

“Those were some of my best memories there. Aside from . . .” He trails off, his voice taking on that soft quality it always has when he seems to sink into a memory too far to take me with him.

“Mom,” I supply, the word sharp.

It’s a challenge, in its own way. A rebuff. But my dad doesn’t go quiet the way he usually does.

“Yeah,” he says instead. “I’m glad you’re getting to enjoy it, too.”

“Definitely,” I say tightly. I take a second to compose myself, and it occurs to me that I never knew my dad did the ribbon hunt, too. I’m about to ask him about it, but he beats me to the punch.

“Listen, I—well. The last time we talked, you seemed a little thrown off. So I just wanted to check in with you.”

A few other students vacate a nearby bench, so I decide to walk over to it and plop myself down despite the late March chill. “Thrown off,” I repeat. “Dad, I had no idea Kelly even had a kid.”

I can practically hear him wince through the phone. “That’s my fault. Her name’s Ava. She’s eight. I should have told you. I just figured it had come up that time you and Kelly met, or that your grandmas had already mentioned it.”

I feel an unfamiliar twinge of paranoia. “Did they meet her or something?”

“No, no. I just asked them for some advice on things.”

“What things?” I ask too quickly.

“Well—mostly asked your Grandma Maeve about dating someone with a kid,” he says sheepishly. “Since she’s had a few boyfriends with kids of their own. It’s new territory for me.”

There’s a pinch of relief. I thought maybe he was asking for advice on kids in general. The rub would have been a little too close—the idea that he can do better this time because he’s willing to learn in a way that he wasn’t for me.

But that’s the thing. When I was eight, he was everything he must be for Ava now: someone funny and dependable and kind. Someone who cut shapes out of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ate my crusts. Someone who drove circles around the park during Christmas because I couldn’t get enough of the lights display. Someone who was there.

So it’s not like he doesn’t know how to be someone’s dad. He just forgot for too many years, and now that he’s remembering, I don’t know whether to trust it or not.

“That makes sense,” I say. “So. Ava. Is she . . .”

I’m not sure what I’m asking, really. If he likes her? If she’s at all like I was when I was her age? I’m still so unused to the idea of her that none of it feels natural in my head, let alone coming out of my mouth.

“I’d love for you two to meet at some point,” he says. “I’ve told her a lot about you. She thinks you’re pretty cool. And I think you’d get a real kick out of her, too.”

That’s the first time the word “stepsister” floats through my mind. It isn’t accompanied by any kind of jolt, though. Because the weird truth in all this is that I’d be happy if my dad married Kelly. I may not know her well, but I’m a good enough judge of character to know she’s a good person. And even if I weren’t, the evidence is right here: in this new version of my dad, or more fittingly, this version of my dad she’s helping bring back. Someone I recognize.

But I’ve been let down too many times to pin my hopes on anything. Too many missed holidays and broken traditions and memories shut up in a storage facility outside of town.

“Yeah,” I say anyway, steeling myself for a future that may or may not come to pass. “I’d like to meet her, too.”

Just then there’s a very loud beep on my phone, and I let out an “oh” of surprise.

“What’s up?” my dad asks.

“Oh. Um—an alert from the campus app.” I pull the phone away from my ear to read the notification. After the thundersnow debacle, Shay personally marched me into the student office to get someone on the tech team to sync my phone to the campus alerts. “A ribbon scavenger hunt event in the library. I should . . .”

I shake my head. Not one week ago Milo was reminding me that the ribbons should be an Andie thing, not a compulsively-getas-many-as-I-can-for-Connor thing. And not five minutes ago my dad inadvertently reminded me why we are all hunting for ribbons in the first place. Not as something to cross off a to-do list, but something that’s meant to be fun.

“Always there for the hunt, just like your mom,” says my dad with a laugh.

The frankness of the words knocks me off-kilter. The warmth of them. The confusion of hearing them at all.

“I won’t keep you. But take a look at your calendar, okay?”

I’m too stunned to push back. I should keep him on the phone. See if he’ll say anything else about my mom, now that we’ve gotten this close—almost closer than we ever have.

But I’m too overwhelmed by it to think of anything to ask. Just like your mom, he said. The words are already pressed somewhere too deep to reach.

“Yeah. I will,” I tell him.

“Love you, A-Plus.”

I press the phone closer to my ear. “I love you, too.”