The vacation flew by too quickly. I had never felt more like part of a family and hated to see it end. Although Daddy was sweet to all three of us, he once again singled me out to take me for a walk on our last night of the vacation. We had driven down to Santa Barbara, and after dinner, he had come to Marla’s and my room in the hotel. Ava had her own room. Marla was already in her pajamas in bed watching television.
“Step out with me for a while,” he told me, and I did. We were staying at a hotel right across from the beach, so it took us just a few minutes to be there.
He reached for my hand, and for a while, we just walked quietly, the two of us. I imagined that people seeing us might think we were lovers instead of father and daughter. Maybe that was wishful thinking. The moon painted a silvery sliver of light over the ocean. I remarked about it, and Daddy said it reminded him of an old Japanese haiku, a three-line poem about a butterfly that died on the water but thought it had died on the moon.
“You understand?” he asked.
“Yes. It died on the reflected light. Fish out there probably think they’re swimming on the moon tonight,” I added, and he laughed.
“You are brighter than any other daughter I’ve had, Lorelei,” he said. I blushed with pride.
To the right and left of the moon, the stars blinked, and the lights of a commercial jet flickered as it crossed the sky to head east. Toward the horizon, we could see an oil tanker moving so slowly that it seemed painted on the ocean.
“When you were little, you told me the night sky was a dark blanket with tiny holes in it. You said that behind it was this second sky of bright light.”
“I did?”
“It made sense to me,” he said.
We never spoke about heaven and earth, God and the devil, or anything religious that other families discussed or believed. It was part of Daddy’s philosophy that everything just is, and it’s futile for us to try to explain it.
“We don’t need to go to a house of worship or read a Bible to learn what is important to us. There is only one place to get your morality,” he said. “The family. All comes from that. What you do for the family is good. What you do to hurt the family is bad. I am the family,” he quietly added. “It all comes from me.”
“I’m happy with the way you handled our recent crisis, Lorelei,” he said as we walked farther down the beach. “It gives me the faith in you that I need. Soon all responsibility for our survival will be in your hands.”
“Ava will be leaving us,” I said. I was resigned to it now.
“Yes. Her time will come very soon.”
“Where will she go?” I asked. “To join Brianna?”
Was he finally going to tell me that?
“In a way, but that’s thinking too far ahead for you right now, Lorelei. Think only of the near future.”
He paused and turned toward the ocean.
“There is so much out there,” he said. “So much that awaits you. It’s important, however, that you never think of yourself as less than anyone or anything, that you never think of yourself as evil. Everyone out there does things others disapprove of, but they have to battle for their own survival. Everything living does.
“In fact, Lorelei, everything living feeds on something else that lives. No living thing on this earth is above doing that. If that’s wrong, then all that lives is wrong. We all participate in survival of the fittest. We didn’t decide that was to be our overriding rule. We were born into it. Every nation, every people, every tribe or religion, struggles to survive and in the end will do whatever is necessary to protect its own existence. They may pretend to care about some higher morality, but when it comes right down to it, it’s every man for himself. Understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
He looked at me. The moon made his face look as if it was on fire, with his eyes two hot coals simmering within the flames. Just as a candle flame could hypnotize a moth, I was hypnotized by his glow.
“Do you love me, Lorelei?”
“Oh, yes, Daddy, very much.”
“Do you want me to go on?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Is your heart big enough to conquer anything and anyone who stands in the way, then?”
I nodded.
He didn’t speak. He stared at me and then started to walk again in silence, holding my hand. I walked along, but I felt as if I were trailing behind, caught up in the soft light that came from him and followed us along the beach, to take us quietly back to our beds and our comfortable and contented sleep.