The Son of Every Man

Chapter 5.3

Gabe burrowed his feet into the earth at the edge of his multicolored towel. Gabby toiled endlessly, shoring up his ankles with hot sand, attempting to pack it down.

"That only works when it's wet," Gabe told her.

She looked up at him, offended. "It's working, okay?"

Lydia had been trying to get Gabby to take a bite of sandwich for over five minutes, but her daughter kept shaking her head, ruffling her dark-brown hair, repeating, "I don't want it, I don't want it."

"Fine, starve then."

"Where's Jackson?" Gabe asked.

"He's with my mother," Lydia replied, not looking at Gabe, but toward the shore, where Eddie played with the twins. "We came in through Odinberg and dropped him off. He's too young to be out in the heat this long."

Gabe watched Eddie through the crowd of bare stomachs and legs, leading the toddlers onto the hard, wet sand. The twin boys were small and unbalanced, toppling over every time even a small amount of water ran over their feet.

"How are things at home?" Lydia asked him.

"Quiet," said Gabe. "Empty." He realized how easily these words could be misread, adding, "I just mean the house. I took everything out of it that belonged to my parents."

"And you're selling it?"

"That's the plan. Supposedly the agent has a couple people lined up for the day after tomorrow."

"And then what will you do?"

"Rent a smaller place, I guess."

Lydia brushed dried sand from her feet. "Does it excite you that the future is so open-ended?"

It seemed like an awfully optimistic way to look at things. "A little, I guess."

"I suppose not a lot of time has passed yet."

"No, not really."

Lydia's skin was extremely pale. It was unvaried in texture, and looked very soft. He noticed she had applied a liberal amount of sunscreen. Gabe had so far observed her directness, as well as her unwillingness to feign interest in empty topics. Perhaps she detested small talk as much as he did. Based on this trait, he considered her compatibility with Eddie, the enigma, and realized what a favorable matching it really was.

"Look at them," she said.

Eddie wore a huge grin that Gabe had never seen before. When the ocean water washed over his feet, he jumped excitedly up and down, prompting the tiny twin boys to do the same. Gabe could hear his muffled shouts rise just barely above the din of the crowd and the roar of the waves breaking one hundred feet out.

"Parenthood has changed him a lot."

It struck Gabe as an extremely personal observation—not quite on the level of gossip, but still not something he was meant to hear. It made him wonder, though: Had his own father changed at all after Gabe was born? Gabe recalled no childhood memories of the kind of play Eddie now engaged in with his sons. What he did remember was a stern presence, never mean, but serious almost all the time. He had long imagined Eddie to be this kind of father, too, but the last few weeks had revealed someone very different from that.

Gabe helped Gabby pack down the dry sand. "How did you meet him?"

"On a flight from Salt Lake," Lydia said. "I was in the process of moving down here from Idaho. He had some business in the city. I thought he was the most handsome guy I'd ever seen. He took me out to dinner that night."