Factoring Humanity

And yet, more than anything, he’d wanted this. He hadn’t prayed, of course, but if there had been one thing that he would have prayed for, it would have been for his daughter to realize her mistake.

“You’re sure now?” said Kyle. “You won’t change your mind again. I couldn’t take it if — ”

“I won’t, Daddy I promise.”

Was it really over? Had the nightmare really come to an end? How many nights he’d wished the clock could be turned back — and now she was apparently offering, in essence, just that.

He thought about poor Stone, standing outside his office, meeting with female students in hallways.

Becky stood still for a while longer, then took a small step closer. Kyle hesitated a moment more, then opened his arms, and Becky stepped into them. Suddenly she collapsed against his shoulder, crying.

“I am so very sorry,” she said between sobs.

Kyle couldn’t find any words; the anger couldn’t be turned off like a switch.

He held her for a long time. He hadn’t hugged her — God, maybe not since her sixteenth birthday. His shoulder was wet; Becky’s tears had soaked through his shirt. He hesitated for a moment — damn it all, but he would probably hesitate for the rest of his life — then brought his hand up to stroke her shoulder-length black hair.

They were quiet for a long time. Finally, Becky pulled away a little bit and looked up at her father. “I love you,” she said, wiping her eyes.

Kyle didn’t know how he felt, but he said the words anyway: “I love you too, Becky.”

She shook her head a little.

Kyle hesitated for another moment, then gently lifted her chin with his finger. “What?”

“Not ‘Becky,’ ” said his daughter. She managed a red-eyed smile. “Pumpkin.”

Tears escaped from Kyle’s eyes now. He swept his daughter back up in his arms, and this time he meant every syllable: “I love you, too — Pumpkin.”

33

Becky stayed for a joyous two hours, but at last she had to leave. She lived downtown and had to be up early to open the store Wednesday morning.

When she was gone, Kyle sat back down on the couch.

Heather looked at him for a long time.

He was such a complicated man — more complicated than she’d ever known. And he was, when all was said and done, a basically good man.

But not a perfect one, of course. Indeed, Heather had been shocked and disappointed by some of what she’d discovered while plumbing his memories. He had his dark side, his shoddy parts; he could be petty and selfish and unpleasant.

No, there was no such thing as the perfect man — but then, she’d known that even before she’d left Vegreville to come to Toronto. Kyle was both deeply great and deeply flawed — peaks and valleys, more and less than she’d ever thought he was.

But, she realized, whatever he was now, she could accept it; the fit between them wasn’t ideal, and probably never would be. But she knew in her heart that it was better than it could be with anyone else. And perhaps acknowledging that was as good a definition of love as any.

Heather crossed the room and stood over him. He looked up at her with brown puppy-dog eye’s, like Becky’s.

She reached out a hand. He took it. And she led him across the room, to the stairs, and up to the bedroom.

It had been a year since they’d last made love.

But it was worth waiting for.

She didn’t tense at all.

When they were done, when they lay holding each other, Heather spoke the only words to pass between them that night after Becky’s departure. “Welcome home.”

They fell asleep in each other’s arms.

The next morning: Wednesday, August 16.

As she reached the bottom of the staircase, Heather looked over at Kyle. He seemed to be staring into space, his gaze resting on a blank spot on the wall between a Robert Bateman painting of bighorn sheep and an Ansel Adams photoprint of the Arizona desert.

Heather moved into the room. On an adjacent wall was their wedding photo, now almost a quarter-century old. She could see the toll all of this had taken on her husband. Until recently his hair had been much the same dark brown it had been on the day they’d married, with only tiny incursions of gray and his high forehead had been relatively line-free. But now — now there were permanent creases in his brow, and his rusty beard and dark hair were streaked through with silver.

He seemed physically diminished, too. Oh, doubtless he was still a hundred and seventy-seven centimeters, but he sat on the couch hunched over, collapsed in on himself. And there was the paunch — he’d fought so hard to lose it after his heart attack. True, it wasn’t back to its former proportions, but Heather could clearly see that he’d let himself go. She’d hoped that now that Kyle had made his peace with Becky, that he’d snap out of his malaise, but despite the joys of last night, it seemed that he hadn’t.

Heather continued into the room. Kyle looked briefly up at her; his face was angry.

“We’ve got to stop her,” he said.

“Who?”

“The therapist.”

“Gurdjieff,” said Heather.