Page 71 of Double Exposure

Chapter Twenty

Jade Choi

I hated leaving Carter at the hospital, but my parents are leaving tomorrow and I want to have an evening with them.

It's a romantic setting, I'll grant you. The Westons are all up at the cabin, the woodstove blazing, the power is out so candles are lit. Dad is at one end of the large, overstuffed sofa with his leg up on a wide ottoman.

Earlier, I watched my mother put both hands on Dad’s shoulders. Then she graciously allowed Ryan to help my father stand on his feet and get his crutches under him so he could get himself to the dinner table. But it's my mother who took the crutches and helped him into the chair. After he settled, she touched him once just below the ear as if to make sure he was still there. His eyes closed slightly.

Now, sitting and watching them through the evening, I realize I never allowed myself to see this because I was scared. I was scared that one day I’d meet somebody and I would have to make the same decisions they did . . .but I would screw it up. Maybe I wouldn't be strong enough—maybe my love wouldn't be strong enough. So instead, I kept it simple.

Mom comes around with a dessert plate of chocolate cake and sets it in Dad’s lap. Her hand lingers on his shoulder for just a moment. He tilts his head back slightly and she touches him again below the ear the base of the jawline. He closes his eyes once more.

I've never seen her touch him so much or so frequently. Their physical exchanges always seemed by accident, passing car keys for example, or holding the door open.

But to see real affection, never. It's one of the reasons I thought that they didn't love each other. This new version of my parents doesn’t fit with the world I knew—it didn't fit with the world I constructed.

My dad tells a good story and here he can hold court. Mom sits down next to him. The fire light dances around them, between them and I realize there’s something both awkward and marvelous at the same time about seeing them together.

Mom, with her new love of jeans, is wearing a pair with the cuffs rolled up about four inches. Her feet are small and brown with gold nail polish. At one point she puts her feet in my dad's lap. He stiffens slightly and then relaxes. Then he places his hand lightly across the top of her foot.

Maybe a foot rub isn’t quite ready for primetime, but the fact there could be one offered? Staggering.

“I just feel lucky enough to have survived and made new friends,” he says. “And I didn’t lose any equipment.”

“I'm just glad you're safe,” says my mom, “I don’t care about those lenses.”

Ah, there it is. That's what I’m used to.

But then my father does something odd. He smiles, “I could tell you every single lens you've bought me, where it came from, and the date you gave it to me.”

“Oh, you can, can you?”

Brock hands one over. Dad picks it up and rolls it around in his hands. “December 11, 1992. Nairobi.” Again, it's as if I've been struck by lightning.

Maybe Carter’s right. I need to talk to them.

“I can’t help but notice no one’s signed that cast yet,” says Ross coming over with a uncapped Sharpie.

Oh, this ought to be awkward. But instead of feeling like I have to protect my parents from, in the case, ridiculous things being written on my father’s leg, I just sit back and watch.

The Westons descend on my father and for the first time ever, I see my parents together, being social. But I also catch their looks to each other and love there.

Maybe that love was always there and I couldn’t see it.

΅

On the drive back to The Lotus Crane, my dad drops a bombshell.

“You got the assignment in Bali,” he says from the back seat. Mom made him a litter of blankets to lay in for the fifteen-minute drive.

I grip the steering wheel.

“What?”

“She’s driving, Ken.”

I see him grinning from the back seat. “You got the assignment, because I clearly can't do it.”