Father's Day Read Online Free Page A

didn’t last more than a few days.
    She often went in on Saturday morning when the office was empty, then spent the afternoon window-shopping along the rue Saint-Honoré, once the main route for prison carts taking people to the guillotines on Place de la Concorde. Harvey would picture the grim, dirt-streaked faces. The pull of the wagon. The echo of horseshoes on cobblestones. People on the street listening to the cries of those who called out for help or mercy or prayers.
    There was a café Harvey liked with seats near the window,and she often went there. The café was expensive, sandwiched between Lanvin and Hermès, but one of the few places to eat near her office. Harvey sometimes looked out past the tourists choosing cakes from a glass cabinet, and with each bite of her meal imagined the dry mouths of people who were long gone from this world, but whose innocence had somehow persevered. They were remembered now, Harvey thought, not for what they had done but for what had been done to them.
    She would tell her father about it when he arrived. Watch the expression on his face as she explained it.
    Being so far away made Harvey feel their closeness. The physical separation was harder for him because he knew she would never live at home again. But in the two years since Harvey’s departure, he had never once complained about her leaving, nor emailed asking her to come back. She used to think he was too proud, but had come to realize that it wasn’t pride at all.
    So much of her own life had resurfaced on those evenings spent hunched over a language textbook, studying French at Leon’s apartment, watching him sharpen Isobel’s crayons with a kitchen knife, or clean out her school bag, or wash some favorite item of clothing in the sink so it might dry in time for school the next day.
    Like her own father, Leon was always tired and on the verge of some small crisis that could not have been anticipated but which Isobel thought was exciting.
    The toilet is leaking. Isobel: Do you want me to build a boat in my room in case there’s a flood?
    The carbon monoxide detector won’t stop beeping. Isobel: If you die in your sleep tonight, do I still have to go to school?
    The elevator randomly stops between floors. Isobel: Shall we leave cakes and yogurt in there for anyone who gets stuck?
    One evening Leon fell asleep in the middle of Harvey’s lesson, so she tiptoed Isobel into the next room and ordered pizza with her cell phone. While they were waiting, Harvey helped Isobel draw a cartoon cat on her iPad. When Leon woke up, he was angry with himself, but Harvey said Isobel was fed, in her pajamas, and had been teaching her French expressions.
    Later that night, Harvey took out a photograph of her own father from years ago. She touched his face. Could tell he was happy, despite a reluctance to smile.
    After brushing her teeth and getting into bed, Harvey opened her laptop and composed an email to her father, saying she had a free round-trip airline ticket that had to be redeemed soon. She suggested that he look online for times. Perhaps try to make it for Father’s Day in a few months?
    H E KEPT A photo of Harvey on his bedside table.
    She was on her bike at the baseball field. Moments before the picture was taken, Harvey had ridden without training wheels for the first time. She was hot and out of breath. Everything looked dusty. He’d been trying to keep up and was out of breath too.
    That bicycle still hung in the garage at home. It had stickers on the seat and a silver bell that Harvey used to ring with her thumb. Sometimes her father would set it upside down, let her spray oil on the chain. He used to carry her bike to the car with one arm. She marveled at that.
    Harvey imagined him back at home, watching television in bed to fall asleep, or drinking coffee in his socks under bright kitchen lights. She sensed the emptiness she had left behind, a future animated by past—and how