She froze. The framed photo of her and her sisters was gone, a dust-free patch where it used to sit. Sam’s heart hurled itself into her throat. No one would have broken in to steal a dorky picture, and their dad wouldn’t have moved it, unless…
“Where are you going?” Gil yelled as she sprinted past him.
Sam didn’t reply. She was too busy chanting a steady mantra of ‘fuck, fuck, fuck.’
She made it to the house side of the building in record time, unlocking the door and hurtling herself up the stairs. Nothing looked different, but the panic in Sam’s chest told her something was very, very different. She ran to her dad’s room and flung open the door. The majority of his things were still there—the books, the penguin statues, the yoga mat, but his coat was missing and when she opened his wardrobe, she saw his overnight bag was gone. She turned, fear pulsing in her blood like poison and she saw the folded note he’d sticky-taped to his mirror. She snatched it off, tearing the paper in her haste to read her father’s words.
Dear Sam, Nix and Tabby,
I’m sorry to leave like this, but if I’d told you what I was planning, you would have wanted to know when I was coming home and the truth is, I don’t know when I’m coming home. I’ve been talking about going on retreat for years and now’s the time to push off and do it.
“Fine,” Sam muttered. “A bit random, but fine. Now, where are you, old man?”
I can’t tell you where I’m going. I know if I do—if I even say the country—my clever girls will track me down and that’s not what I want. I’m almost certain that’s not what you want, either.
“Dad,” Sam whispered. “You’re not serious?”
A month ago, I reread Kahlil Gibran’sThe Prophet.This time the words felt like they were opening up new spaces inside me. Raising you girls has been the center of my life, but you’re women now and I don’t think I’m helping by keeping us in the same dynamic we’ve had since your mum left.
Anger stabbed at the well-worn place behind Sam’s navel. Her mum? What did her mum have to do with anything? She was gone. She’d been gone for years and they werefine.
You girls need change. Radical change. I am your dad, I taught you how to ride bikes and drive cars. I gave you your first tattoos and showed you how to move through the world. Unfortunately, when you became adults, I got self-satisfied. I thought I was done leading by example, but I was wrong. We all need to continue to grow, both you girls and I.
Tabby, I love your confidence and wit. I love how you can make anyone your friend and every new place your home, but I can’t send you money every timeSplendor in the Grasshas a good line-up.
Nicole, I’m so proud of all you’ve accomplished. Your dedication to self-improvement is truly impressive, but you shouldn’t try to boss me or anyone else around, even if you think it’s good for us.
Sam snorted, wondering how Nicole was going to react to this critique of her character. By compiling a ten-point list on why their dad was wrong, probably. But the roasting wasn’t over, yet.
Sammy, my eldest, my beautiful talented girl—you’re getting complacent, not in your work, but in life. You need to strive for something or you’ll never be happy.
“What the fuck? I’m happy! I’m very happy!”
The room was silent. Condemningly silent. Feeling raw and unnerved, Sam returned to the note.
I am yesterday, my beautiful girls, you’re tomorrow. I want your lives to be as good as the world can make them, but I can’t do it for you. You’ll need to do it for yourselves.
Sam—I’ve put everything in your name. The business, the deed to the house and all the rest of it. You’ll find the paperwork in the brown cabinet in the shed. The box is labelled erotic nudes, but that was just to stop you from looking. Please don’t be mad at me for this decision, Nicole. Sam is the eldest and she still lives and works here. That means from this point onward, she’s the head of House DaSilva. All decisions regarding its assets rest on her capable shoulders.
Believe me when I say I trust you, Sam. I also want you to know you can go down any path you choose. If I come back and you’re still tattooing in my old chair, wonderful. If you sell up, then that’s wonderful, too. All I ask is you go forward with your eyes and hearts open. You might be surprised at what you find.
Dad.
PS. try to water the plants.
He’d drawn a picture beneath his signature, a symbol she knew as well as the McDonald’s logo—four daisies on an unbroken chain. It was the tattoo each DaSilva daughter had inked into their wrists on their eighteenth birthday, the one their dad had given himself at their age.
“We’re blood,” their dad said as the needle kissed their skin for the first time. “It binds us and it cannot be broken.”
“Fuck,” Sam said as the backs of her eyes prickled. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
She sat down on her father’s bed and stared at the letter for a long time, as though hoping to change the words around, make them something they weren’t. Her dad might be in an Indian ashram, or a Balinese temple or a commune in Queensland, but she had no way of knowing. It was ridiculous, she knew, to feel so sad. She was twenty-seven, the same age her dad had been when she was born. She was hardly an orphan and as far as running the house and business went, how hard could it be?
Hard enough dad had to leave to get me to do it.
Sam knew she should call her sisters and break the news or even go downstairs and tell Noah and Gil, but she couldn’t handle the idea. She sat on her dad’s bed, remembering the last time she’d gotten a note full of bad news. A note left in a tree by a pretty, stuttering boy who liked King Arthur. Considering Scott Sanderson had grown up to be her worst enemy, it was strange to finally get a note that topped that one on the ‘sucking so hard it was a black hole’ scale of sucking. Then again, she and Scott had only been friends for a week before he left the letter saying her mother was a slut. She’d known her dad her whole life and she still hadn’t seen this coming at all.
“Fucking hell.”