Since my graduating class had been all of a hundred and twelve people and over half of them had scattered to the winds, it didn’t make sense to have a huge to-do at a big venue. On Friday night, Neil and I left Olivia with my mom at my grandma’s and drove to The Michigan House, a restaurant and bar in downtown Calumet.
“Do I look okay?” I asked as we stepped out of the car. I stood on the sidewalk and straightened the lace trim at the neckline of my black silk and white polka dot Dolce & Gabbana dress. It looked a little retro, cool enough for the editor of a fashion magazine but not too showy.
Neil put on his most patient face, though it appeared quite labored. “Beautiful as always, darling. Just as I told you five times in the car, and ten at the house and—”
“Okay, point made.” I shook my hands at my sides to calm my nerves. “I just haven’t seen most of these people since graduation day. It’s a little intimidating.”
“Once you get inside and start catching up with people, I’m sure you’ll see all your worries were completely unfounded,” he promised. “Now, I, on the other hand, am about to walk into a gathering of people in their twenties and spend the entire night explaining that I’m not someone’s father.”
I took his arm and gave him a little nudge with my hip as we started across the street. “Oh, don’t be like that. I’ll be with you the whole time, and I’m not going to let anyone forget that you’re my trophy husband.”
The Michigan House is a lovely old hotel from the city’s mining heyday that now served as a restaurant, with a few vacation rentals upstairs. The ancient wooden bar sported a mural and tall columns, framing it like some kind of altar, and the patterned tile floor reminded me of the subway. Our party was in a dining room with mint-green walls, an impressive fireplace, and a ceiling festooned with plaster medallions. If not for the antique bric-a-brac all over the walls, it could have been a room from our London townhouse. Small round tables flanked the perimeter, and Rosie Green, who’d barely changed a day since high school, manned the one at the door. Voted “Friendliest” in our superlatives, she’d been the driving force behind the yearbook committee and all of the marching band fundraisers, so it was no surprise to see her heading up the sign-in tonight.
“Sophie Scaife!” she squealed, leaping out of her chair. “I can’t believe it! I saw you on the TV just the other day!”
“Hi.” I returned her hug awkwardly; we hadn’t been close friends in school, but apparently, absence had made her heart grow fonder. “How have you been?”
“Oh, you know. I’ve got the kids, and I’ve still got my Curves franchise.” She beamed proudly, and even though I’d had no clue that she owned an anything franchise, I smiled enthusiastically back. “Let’s get you a name tag!”
She peeled a sticker off a sheet, with “Sophie Scaife” neatly printed in block letters with a sharpie, and patted it onto my three-thousand-dollar silk dress before I could protest. She got another that said simply, “Spouse” and handed it to Neil to put on himself.
“Oh, and I forgot your superlative!” She grabbed a sheet of smaller labels and plucked “Most Tardies: Sophie Scaife” to affix just below my name.
“Most tardies? How very unlike you,” Neil said with a chuckle. I ignored him.
Rosie’s eyes grew wide at his voice. “You’re from England?”
“Yes?” Neil answered awkwardly. Seeing him struggle to understand why anyone would be impressed with his country of origin never failed to amuse me.
“Oh, wow.” Rosie was totally star struck. “That’s exciting.”
“Is it?” he asked, bewildered, and I squeezed his arm.
“I think I see Jessica Martin,” I said to excuse us. “I want to be sure to say hi to her.”
“Of course!” Rosie was distracted by the arrival of another couple, anyway, so I led Neil away.
“I should have prepared something for the England question,” Neil said ruefully. “I knew it would be coming.”
“And that won’t be the last time tonight. Unless Mike Anderson brings his German wife.” I waved across the room to Jessica, and she hurried toward me with her arms open.
“Good Lord,” Neil said, oblivious to her approach as he stared in horror at the top of an antique buffet. “Are those snowmen up there? In June?”
“Sophie, I’m so glad you came!” Jessica squealed. My high school best friend—one of them, anyway—folded her arms around me like it was the day after graduation and no time had passed at all. “I was worried you wouldn’t be able to.”
“Why wouldn’t I be able to?” Besides my crushing fear of inadequacy in comparison to my other classmates.
Jessica made the face she’d always made when she thought I was being stupid. “Um, big New York life, running a fashion magazine, being, like, a billionaire.”
“Right.” My face burned with embarrassment.
She stuck her hand out to Neil. “Jessica Martin. Sophie’s high school bestie. I even still have the friendship bracelet to prove it.”
“Oh, you do not,” I insisted as Neil took her hand and shook it.
“Neil Elwood. Sophie’s husband.” He gave her his charming half-smile and added, “No bracelet, I’m afraid.”
“The wedding ring counts for something.” Jessica had a big loud laugh that could fill up a room. Her hair was still as golden blonde as it had been in high school, but her highlights were a lot better now that we weren’t doing them in her bathroom hours before an important dance. She was still rocking the salon tan, though, and her teeth were perfectly straight from the braces she’d worn until sophomore year. She waggled her left hand at us, where a diamond sparkled on her finger. “Dan couldn’t come tonight. But look what he gave me for Christmas!”
“Shut up!” I grabbed her hand to admire the ring. “You didn’t post this on Facebook.”
“I can’t, right now. His stupid divorce still hasn’t gone through. The bitch is trying to take half the business, can you believe that?” she asked, as though I knew the entire backstory; in reality, it was a little hard to follow the drama on Facebook. To Neil, she explained, “My fiancé owns a Dodge and Jeep dealership in Green Bay.”
“And what do you do?” Neil asked.
“Pharma rep. I travel around Wisconsin giving away free pens to doctors’ offices.” She rolled her eyes then reached into her purse. “Here, have one for…Celexa.”
“Ah, one of my favorites,” he said with a laugh, and slipped the pen into his pocket.
“Gotta love those SSRIs,” Jessica agreed. Something caught her eye over my shoulder. “Oh my god. Travis?”
My stomach dropped. Travis Johnson. My high school crush. The one that got away—if the one that got away was really a thing for high schoolers.
He walked up to us with a gorgeous brunette on his arm. Her long hair hung straight down her back, and she wore a simple black wrap dress and cute strappy heels. He smiled at us and said, “Hey, Jessica, long time no see. And…Sophie, right?”
A high-pitched giggle erupted from me. He remembered my name! “Yeah, S-Sophie. It’s Sophie. And you’re Travis.”
Neil gave me a strange look.
Travis had been the star athlete of our school. Basketball, football, hockey, if it was a sport, he’d excelled at it. And he still had the wide shoulders and narrow waist he’d had back then, but more manly. His jaw was squarer, too, and his dark hair wasn’t as shaggy. He looked like Prince god damn Eric from The Little Mermaid. Who, incidentally, he’d gone as for Halloween one year with his then-girlfriend, Brianna. She’d been forced by school administration to put on a T-shirt over her seashell Ariel bra. It had been a huge scandal.
He smiled his dazzling Disney smile. “Hey, you remembered.”
“I couldn’t forget,” I blurted.
“This is my wife, Sunny,” he said, then corrected himself, “Susan, sorry.”
She waved him off with an embarrassed roll of her eyes. “Sunny is a stupid family nickname.”
Something about Susan struck me as familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. Neil gave me a subtle nudge of the elbow, prompting me to introduce him. “This is Neil, my husband.”
“Neil.” Travis shook his hand. I noticed from the slight surprise on Travis’s face that Neil had squeezed perhaps a bit harder than necessary.
Men were ridiculous.
“So, what are you doing these days?” Jessica asked Travis.
“Working for Dad.” He looked down at the pint glass in his hand. “You know how it is. After the cancer, he’s just not getting back on his feet.”
“Oh, dear,” Neil said with genuine sympathy. “I had a spot of that, myself. Dreadful disease.”
“Sorry to hear that. But you look like you’re doing well, now,” Travis said, taking a swallow of his beer.
“Your dad owns the construction company?” Jessica asked.
“Still going strong,” Travis confirmed. “The business, anyway.” He nodded to Neil, seeking out the only man in the conversation, the way men infuriatingly tended to do. “What about you, Neil? What do you do for a living?”
“I’m retired,” he said, just as Jessica blurted, “He’s a billionaire.”
Travis choked on his drink.
“Neil owns two multi-media conglomerates,” I explained sheepishly. “And I run a fashion magazine.”
Susan suddenly looked like she’d swallowed something unpleasant. Her eyes fell to my nametag, and the color drained from her face. “Excuse me a moment.”
She stepped away, and I felt inexplicably like I’d done something wrong. Oh, god, I’d sounded stuck up, hadn’t I? But I wasn’t the one who brought up the billionaire thing. A quick glance at Neil confirmed that he was as uncomfortable as I was.
“Is she okay?” Jessica asked Travis, nodding in the direction Susan had gone.
He turned slightly, then back to us, his smile reassuring, but his eyes grim. “Yeah. She just hasn’t been feeling well today.”
“She looks so familiar.” I searched my memory for underclassmen, but I couldn’t remember every face, and the ones I did hadn’t looked like her. “She didn’t go to school with us, did she?”
“No, she grew up in Iron Mountain.” He drained the rest of his glass. “Neil, can I buy you a beer?”
He declined with a shake of his head. “No, but thank you for the offer. I don’t drink.”
I was still stuck on Susan. “I’m sure I’ve met her before.”
Travis shrugged. “You ran cross country, didn’t you? Maybe that’s how you met her? But she was a few years behind us.”
Oh, man, I could have gone all night without someone mentioning cross country. The sport that had made me notorious after a badly timed bout of diarrhea had caused the single worst day of my high school life.
He added, “Her maiden name was Tangen.”
The floor went out from beneath me. My throat was suddenly dryer than it had ever been in my life. “Is her dad Joey Tangen?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “So, you must know her, then.”
Neil’s hand went to the small of my back, and it was reassuring to know it was there, because the possibility that I might pass out was very, very real.
No, I didn’t know Susan Tangen.
But she was my sister.
****
Using a sudden migraine as an excuse—I didn’t suffer from migraines, but nobody there knew that—I hightailed it out of the restaurant and straight to the car. Neil steered me; my brain was so foggy and my legs so numb, I might have just tried to walk back to the cabin on autopilot.
“Sophie, can I trust you not to hyperventilate?” he asked gently as we drove through town.
“Yeah. I just…” I needed time to think. Maybe to cry? My entire body was encased in ice from the neck down. From the neck up, I was pretty sure my brain was going to boil. “Can you drive me out to the cabin, first? I need to not see my mom, right now.”
“Certainly,” he said, and we made the rest of the drive in silence.
The cabin we’d rented was just down the road from the smokestack in Gay, right on the lakeshore near the Tobacco River. Situated on a hill that sloped down to a pebble- dotted beach, the cedar-sided house wasn’t super fancy, but it was definitely one of the less-weathered properties in the area. We pulled into the paved drive, and I launched myself from the car.
“Sophie, wait!” Neil cursed and turned off the car, then charged to the door after me.
My hands trembled and fumbled with the key, and I couldn’t keep the tears out of my voice. “You have to go pick up Olivia.”
“Olivia is fine, we’re not expected back for another hour, at least.” He gently took the house key from my hand and opened the door. “I want to make sure you’re safe.”
“I’m safe! Why wouldn’t I be safe?” I snapped, kicking my shoes off as I stalked through the entryway. “I’m just upset. And stressed out. And I’m pissed off that I just ran out of my class reunion. That was the whole reason I took time off and we came all the way out here—”
“Not the whole reason,” he interjected.
But I was on a roll. “—and I didn’t even want to go in the first place! I knew something awful was going to happen. I should have listened to myself!”
“You didn’t know something awful was going to happen, you were worried about what people would think of you,” he reminded me. “Certainly not this. It’s one in a million—”
“Let’s not get hyperbolic. There aren’t even a million people in the U.P.” I raked my hand through my previously flawless hair and dropped full-length onto the couch. “What the hell do I do here, Neil?”
He sat in the space between my feet and the end of the sofa and slumped forward with his elbows on his knees. “You have a few options at your disposal. The first, which will involve the least amount of conflict but may create further emotional difficulties, would be to put this all behind you and never think of it, again.”
“That sounds good.” I flung a forearm over my eyes.
“The second, which will involve confrontation of the issue, would be to return to New York, look up Susan, and email her. If the interaction is unpleasant, you’re not in any position where you’ve had to meet her face to face, or don’t have an excuse to avoid her. However, if it is favorable and you’d like to get to know her better, you’re in New York.” There was a charged silence as he considered the third option, the one I knew was coming and which I didn’t really want to hear about. “The third—”
“Look her up while we’re here, discuss everything on some kind of neutral ground, and then go back to New York and have a potentially awkward relationship from afar, wherein we have to acknowledge each other’s existence, but we’re not sure how to proceed with that knowledge.” I pushed myself up to sit beside him, but I wouldn’t look him in the eye. “She knew who I was, Neil. It’s why she ran off to the bathroom.”
“What?” He sat up straight, like he was mortally offended. “You mean she was going to fake sick and leave? We could have stayed. They had a nacho bar.”
I elbowed him, but I wasn’t mad. I couldn’t be, when he was sitting there trying so hard to make me feel better. “Don’t. I’m not going to be able to just laugh this off.”
“I know you won’t.” He put an arm around me and pulled me close. “But this situation is uncharted water. Here, there be monsters, and they need to be dealt with. You can’t forget I’m on your side.”
“Never.”
“And being on your side will occasionally involve me trying to make you laugh, even when things seem dire.”
That was something we certainly had experience with.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I know I won’t do it tonight. I don’t even want to think about it.” I reached up to take off an earring and stopped. “But it might not be up to me.”
“I didn’t want to say. I was waiting for you to get there on your own,” Neil said with a grimace.
My throat tightened. “What if she tries to get in touch with me? What if she knows that I’m a billionaire, now, and she tries to get some money out of me?”
“I don’t think there’s a reason to assume this situation is going to naturally lead to extortion,” he said cautiously. “And I think you’re savvy enough to know if someone is taking advantage of you.”
Oh god, I did just assume that, didn’t I? Here I’d been worried that people would think I was a self-important jerk, but I really had changed into some kind of paranoid, money-hoarding Scrooge McDuck who thought—
Neil put his hand over mine on the cushion. “You’re not a terrible person for worrying about that, Sophie, so please stop mentally berating yourself.”
“You don’t know that I’m mentally berating myself,” I snapped, but it was no good. He knew me too well, just like I knew him too well.
“That’s something I’ve had to wonder about with every new person I’ve met in my entire life,” he reminded me. “There’s nothing wrong with protecting your emotions. If you’re too trusting, you feel like a fool when someone disappoints you.”
I couldn’t imagine having that kind of life. Growing up, there was never any chance that someone would like me for my vast wealth. I was often grateful they liked me despite my poverty. Luckily, Calumet was a blue-collar town, and you were more likely to get bullied if your family had money than not. But Olivia was going to grow up on Long Island, probably at some stuffy prep school where all the kids knew exactly what their parents had in their off-shore accounts and lorded it over each other. That wasn’t what I wanted for her. She deserved to be happy, not automatically suspicious that someone’s kid was trying to network their way into a post-college job while they were still in elementary school.
The train of thought reminded me. “You should go get Olivia.”
“Have you changed your mind? Do you want to come with me?” he asked, almost hopeful. I knew he didn’t feel confident driving around out there, but he’d be able to find his way to town and back, and at the moment, I couldn’t show up and pretend I’d been at the reunion having a good time when I’d only stayed fifteen minutes. I didn’t have it in me.
I shook my head. “No, if you don’t mind, I’ll just stay here.”
“Okay.” He kissed my forehead. “Do please keep your ringer turned on. If I’m lost or kidnapped by a gang of moose, I’ll call.”
I waited until the headlights left the driveway before I hurried to my laptop. Though I was technically on a vacation, I couldn’t let myself go anywhere without at least some connection to work. After some fighting with the wireless, I did something I hadn’t let myself do in a long time.
I Googled my father.
I typed in Joseph Tangen Michigan and held my breath.
Growing up without a father, I’d always had this weird thought that, someday, he would realize what he’d lost by not loving me. That, someday, I would get a tearful phone call, wherein he would beg me to be a part of his life. Part of that fantasy was the thought that I might have a relationship with my father, after all, thus confirming I wasn’t as broken and unlovable as his rejection had made me. The flip side of that fantasy was the idea that I could reject him and make him feel the way he’d made me feel for my entire life so far.
The first search result destroyed that.
Joseph Tangen, Jr. Obituary – L’Anse, MI.
I stared open-mouthed at the link. No. It couldn’t possibly be him. I clicked on it, my chest suddenly unable to rise and fall with breath. When the picture loaded, I wanted to not recognize him. It should have been easy. I could remember two times in my entire life that I’d actually seen him in person. Ten years had gone by. He should have aged. He shouldn’t have looked so much like me. But there he was, and I couldn’t deny it.
I devoured the words beside the picture, still not quite grasping what I was looking at.
TANGEN, JOSEPH JR. – Beloved husband and father Joseph Tangen passed away Tuesday, August 19, 2012, after a long illness. In his career as a forest fire officer for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Joseph received commendations from the National Association of State Foresters, the International Association of Wildland Fire, as well as the Bronze Smokey Bear Award, for his outstanding contributions to the field. As a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Joseph volunteered his services as a firefighter and as a passionate advocate for the preservation of Ojibwe language and culture. He is survived by his parents, William Tangen and Sally LaPointe, his wife, Sasha Tangen, and their daughters, Molly, Susan, and Renee. Services will be held at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Baraga, Saturday, August 23 at 11:00 AM. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation.
I read it, again. Over and over. My eyes kept finding “survived by”.
“I forgot my phone,” Neil called, startling me. I hadn’t heard the car come back or the door open. Now, every step he took sounded like an avalanche approaching. I held still, like maybe he wouldn’t notice me. I didn’t want to be noticed by anyone. I didn’t want to be seen. Not existing at all would have been ideal.
“Happily, I evaded the roving gangs of moose,” Neil joked, scooping his phone off the coffee table. He turned to leave, and I willed him to go. But he paused and asked, “Is everything all right?”
I raised my eyes guiltily. I didn’t know why I felt guilty. Maybe because I was intruding on a life that I clearly had no business trying to be a part of? It was like I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t have.
“Sophie?” Neil prompted, again, appearing more alarmed. He looked down at the laptop in my hands and gently took it from me, frowning as he read the screen. He lifted his eyes to meet mine and said, “Oh, Sophie. Oh, I am so terribly sorry.”
“They didn’t…” I couldn’t breathe. “They didn’t even put me in the obituary.”
Pressure built in my chest so hard and tight, the only way to keep from bursting was to let all of the pain out, and it wouldn’t come without sound. My wail hurt. It hurt my throat, and my eyes, and my chest. It hurt my heart; twenty-eight years of agony balled up into one long, aching sound. I bolted to my feet and slapped the laptop out of his hands; it hit the corner of the coffee table on the way down.
Another painful cry welled up in me. I looked to Neil, helpless to stop the hyperventilating sobs that collapsed and expanded my chest. My tears burned my eyes, and my shoulders shook. My everything shook; I couldn’t stop shivering.
Neil stood paralyzed beside me. “Sophie, what do you need?” He searched my face. “What do I do?”
That only made me cry harder, because usually, Neil knew exactly what to do.
“I think I’m having a heart attack!” I gasped, my palm pressed to the center of my chest. I grabbed both of his hands, squeezing them way too hard. I couldn’t let go, though. If I did, I’d start slapping myself or pulling out my hair. I was completely out of control, screaming and sobbing.
That’s when he knew what to do. “You’re not having a heart attack. You’re having a panic attack.”
He guided me to the bathroom, holding my wrists. So, he knew exactly what my impulses were demanding I do. That made me feel ashamed, and I cried harder. I tried to twist away from him, actively fought against him, and he pulled me in closer to hold me with one arm as he turned on the tap and filled the sink with cold water.
“No, no,” he admonished softly. “Calm down.”
“How can I calm down? Don’t tell me to calm down!” I pushed at his chest, but he was stronger than I was.
“Sophie.” His voice cut through the wild, frantic pounding in my brain. There was a sternness to it that wasn’t exactly my Sir’s voice, but the edge that was there snapped me into obedience, or as much as I could muster. He flipped the tap off and eased me to bend over the sink. “There, get your face in. That’s a good girl.”
He held my hair and lowered me in. For a split second, I was terrified that my erratic breathing would suck in water and I would drown, but the moment it hit my skin, I couldn’t breathe, anyway. I came up gasping, and Neil gently urged me down once more with a hand on my back. I dunked myself and came up dripping.
And he was right; it helped. It didn’t make everything better, not by a long shot. But I could breathe, and I didn’t feel like smashing anything or harming myself, anymore.
He handed me a towel and rubbed my back as I bent over the sink to blot my face dry. “I got snot on the towel,” I said, and that made me cry, again.
“There’s a washing machine,” he reassured me. “I’m sure I can figure out how it works.”
I laughed. How the hell could this man make me laugh when all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and die?
“I didn’t even rate a mention in his obituary,” I said, but this time, my heart didn’t pound like it would burst. Instead, I just felt a debilitating, crushing sadness. “They knew I existed. But they didn’t bother to contact me to tell me. They didn’t even acknowledge me.”
“I’m not saying that it was excusable or that it wasn’t in poor taste,” he began cautiously. “But perhaps things are more complicated than a simple rejection of your existence? We have no idea if they even knew about you at the time. Secrets often emerge en masse after someone’s death.”
I hadn’t considered that. It wasn’t until after my grandfather had died that we’d found out that one of my uncles had a secret child in Indiana. But it didn’t comfort me to know that my father might have kept me a secret in the same way.
“I don’t understand.” I reached for some toilet paper and blew my nose. “Was I not good enough? Was I weird or troubled or unlovable?”
“As the father of a very weird, very naughty daughter, I can say unequivocally that whatever prompted your father to abandon you, it was not a defect in your character.” Neil’s voice went very soft. “And I must admit, I am quite furious at the notion that anyone would reject their own child.”
When mine was taken from me, I mentally added for him, because I knew that would naturally follow in his mind. Neil had been an extraordinarily loving, if wildly overprotective, father to Emma. The fact that he’d outlived her was the most unfair thing I could imagine.
He held me close, but now that the worst, most emotionally and physically draining part of my reaction was over, I felt oddly stable.
That probably wouldn’t last.
“You know, I’m feeling all right, now.” I sniffed against his chest.
His voice rumbled beneath my ear. “That’s how they happen. I think they simply wear you down until you’re not able to be hysterical, anymore. And then, you sleep for hours.”
My stomach roiled with nausea at the casual authority in his tone. He’d been hospitalized for months at a mental health facility after Emma had died, but he didn’t talk a lot about what had happened there. “Did you get these a lot?”
“Quite often,” he admitted uncomfortably. “And would still, I imagine, if not for my medication.”
“Thank god for pills.” I hated that Neil had ever felt the way I felt at the moment, and I hated knowing that he’d felt worse.
“Seconded.” After a moment, his hold loosened. “Would you like to come with me to pick up Olivia? Or would you like me to see if your mother would keep her overnight?”
I leaned back, frowning. “There is no way you’d be able to handle leaving her with someone for an overnight.”
“Of course I would,” he said, and I reached up to check him for a fever. He dodged my hand. “It’s fine, really. She goes off for a bloody week with bloody Valerie—”
“Wow, that’s a lot of blood.” I whistled, impressed. “You’re really looking forward to that, aren’t you?”
He didn’t address that. “I trust your mother. And Olivia knows her. It isn’t as though we’d be leaving her with a stranger.”
Neil was so cool with the idea that he couldn’t be faking it. He wasn’t a great liar. And I didn’t really want to be alone, but I didn’t want to see my family. “Only if you’re absolutely positive. I’m sure my grandma won’t mind.”
“I’ll call. I’ll tell them you’re not feeling well.” He kissed the top of my head and stepped away. “They’ll just think you’re tragically intoxicated.”
Which would be far better than the alternative. I didn’t know how I would face my family, now, or if I should even tell them. But whatever happened, it didn’t have to happen tonight.