**Part 2**
Dad’s childhood home had become unstable when he was a teenager.
Mom didn’t know every detail.
Dad hadn’t told her everything either.
But for several years, he lived with a foster family.
It was a crowded house, with kids constantly coming and going, too many shoes by the door, and too many plates drying beside the sink.
“And that chair?” I asked.
“Kitchen table.” Mom looked at it. “There weren’t enough matching chairs. Gilbert got that blue one.”
“Why keep it?”
“Because it was his.”
The simplicity of her answer stopped me.
Mom said Dad used to joke that the chair leaned as much as he did.
Nobody officially assigned it to him.
They simply began expecting him to sit there.
Dinner came, and Dad had a place.
Breakfast came, and he had a place.
I thought about the photograph.
I went to the drawer and pulled it out.
“Is this them?”
Mom nodded.
For years, I’d seen only a beach.
Now I noticed the people gathered along the left edge.
Teenagers.
A woman beside the cooler.
Someone crouched in the sand.
Dad’s thumb had worn the photograph smooth around those tiny figures.
Not over the ocean.
Over them.
“He wasn’t looking at the beach,” I said.
Mom shook her head.
“Not usually.”
Dad left Hawaii at twenty when an opportunity opened on the mainland.
Nobody forced him out.
His foster family encouraged him to go.
He expected to return.
But one year became several.
Oregon became a job.
The job became a life.
Then Mom.
Then me.
“So why didn’t he go back?”
Mom looked toward the window.
“At first, money.”
That made sense.
“Then?”
“Work.”
“And after that?”
She went quiet.
“He thought he’d waited too long.”
“Too long for what?”
“To show his face.”
I frowned.
“They were his family.”
“He didn’t use that word easily.” Mom picked at the corner of a condolence card. “The longer he stayed away, the more embarrassed he became about staying away.”
It sounded ridiculous.
It also sounded exactly like Dad.
“Where do you fit into this?”
Mom looked at me.
“What?”
“The whole story. Dad told me I’d understand you if I knew it.”
She pushed her chair back.
“When we were first married, he compared everything to Hawaii.”
“Everything?”
“Rain. Fish. Coffee. Sunsets.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
“That sounds like Dad.”
“It was exhausting.”
My smile faded.
Mom stared at her hands.
“I thought every time he called Hawaii home, he was telling me this wasn’t.”
There it was.
“What did you do?”
“One night I told him if Hawaii was so perfect, maybe he should’ve stayed there. That’s when he told me about the foster home.”
Mom looked toward the blue chair.
“I’d thought I was competing with beaches and palm trees.”
Her voice softened.
“I found out I was competing with the first place he’d ever been sure dinner would include him.”
“Mom.”
“I apologized,” she said.
“Did he forgive you?”
“Immediately.”
“So you stopped him from going back?”
Her head snapped toward me.
“No.”
The answer came so quickly that I believed her.
“I spent years trying to get him to go.”
She suggested it when I was ten.
Dad said they couldn’t afford it.
She suggested it after his promotion.
He said work was too busy.
She suggested Hawaii for their twenty-fifth anniversary.
Dad said the people he’d known were probably gone.
“They weren’t,” Mom said.
“How do you know?”
“Christmas cards.”
I stared at her.
“They sent cards?”
“For years.”
“Did Dad answer?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then why would he think they didn’t want him?”
Mom gave a sad little shrug.
“Because every card reminded him how long it had been.”
One summer, she finally told him she’d buy the ticket herself.
Dad said, “Next year.”
Next year became another decade.
I looked at the chair.
“Who sent this?”
Mom didn’t answer.
“Mom.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I know who sent it.”
“Who?”
She took a long time before answering.
Then she said, “I asked her to.”
I stared at her.
“You arranged this?”
“Months ago.”
“Why?”
“The house was being cleared. I called one of the women your father grew up with. We still had her address from the Christmas cards.”
“And she still had his chair?”
Mom nodded.
“She laughed when I asked.”
“What did she say?”
“‘We still have the silly thing.’”
I looked down at the worn blue paint.
Mom wiped her face.
“I thought if he saw it here, maybe he’d finally understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That he hadn’t disappeared from them just because he’d stayed away.”
Her plan had been to put the chair at our kitchen table.
Then ask Dad one more time.
Go home.
See them.
Stop waiting for some imaginary year when returning would finally become easier.
The chair had been shipped three days before the accident.
Dad never knew it was coming.
I looked at Mom.
“Then why did you tell me to throw it away?”
Her face crumpled.
“Because he was supposed to sit in it.”
Neither of us spoke.
The delivery label was still attached to the torn cardboard.
Below the shipping information was a contact number.
Hawaii.
I reached for my phone.
“Annie.”
“Someone there thinks Dad just got his chair back.”
Her eyes moved toward the number.
I dialed.
