This Is What Happy Looks Like(64)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“Oh, El,” Mom said, scooting closer, so that they were side by side. “I didn’t know. I had no idea you wanted to meet him.”

“I didn’t either,” Ellie said, feeling suddenly miserable. “Not really. I guess it was stupid to think he might know who I was.”

Across the lawn, the band finished their song with a trilling crescendo and then fell silent. There was an air of anticipation as people found their blankets. Pretty much everyone here had been coming to the festival for enough years to know that when the sky turned a soft denim blue, and the band finished their last number, and the clapping petered out in the warm evening air, the fireworks would soon begin.

“Do you know how I first started talking to him all those years ago?” Mom asked, and Ellie nodded.

“You were his waitress.”

“Right, and I always just took his order, and that was it,” she said. “But there was this one week when it rained every single day. He’d come in each morning with his coat dripping and his hair soaking wet, and slide into that booth that never seemed like it was big enough to fit those long legs of his. And then one morning, it just stopped.”

“The rain?”

She nodded. “As I was taking his order, I looked out the window and said something about how it was a miracle. And you know what he said?”

Ellie shook her head.

“He said, ‘There will be no miracles here.’ I remember we both looked around the table, and I was thinking he was right. I mean, it was a diner, and kind of a crummy one at that. We were surrounded by overcooked eggs and water stains and torn plastic seats and pies that had been sitting out for way too long. But when I asked what he meant, he told me a story about this town in France in the seventeenth century that was supposedly the site of all these miracles. When too many people started flocking there, all of them filled with hope, the authorities posted a sign: THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE.”

Overhead, the first firework went whistling past the roof of the hotel and into the night sky, a tiny bead of light; as it sailed higher, it grew quieter, and Ellie lost sight of it entirely. But a moment later it exploded into the air with a fizzle, its spidery golden legs arcing down toward the ground again.

“But that’s the thing,” Mom said, her voice soft amid the noise. “There was a miracle. We just didn’t know it yet.” She smiled. “The miracle was you.”

“Mom—” Ellie said, but she was cut off.

“He might not have recognized you today,” she said, shaking her head. “But he loves you. I saw the way he looked at you when you were little. He always wanted a daughter.” She reached out and gave Ellie’s hand a squeeze. “And staying out of our lives? That wasn’t easy for him either. You have to know that. It was my decision—I was the one who cut it off. He was ready to go public about you, even though it might have ruined his career. But I wouldn’t let him do it.”

“Why not?”

“That wasn’t what I wanted for us,” she said. “Him with his wife and kids in Delaware, sending us checks while we were stuck in D.C. with all the press. I wanted you to have a real life. This kind of life.” She swept an arm around at their friends and neighbors, all of them cheering, and Ellie felt her chest swell at the sight of this town that she loved, and that she’d never trade for anything, especially life as a senator’s daughter.

All this time, she’d wondered if things would have been better if she were part of his family, but she understood now that it was the other way around. She wasn’t the one who’d missed out. Maybe she hadn’t grown up with money for summer camp or trips to Europe or a new car every year. But he’d never watched the sunset from the cove near their house. He’d never spent a winter’s morning at Happy Thoughts, warming his socks by the radiator. He’d never eaten at the Lobster Pot or tried the orange sherbet at Sprinkles. He’d never seen her win a soccer game or a spelling bee, and he’d never met Bagel. He’d never had dinner at Chez O’Neill.

“He didn’t abandon us,” Mom said. “He gave us a gift.”

“He let us go,” Ellie said quietly.

Mom nodded. “And we’ve been fine,” she said. “But believe me: he still loves you. I don’t have to be in touch with him to know something like that.”

It was getting harder to see, and the people still looking for places to sit were silhouetted against the streetlamps. A few kids with glow necklaces ran past, laughing, and Ellie squinted to make out the solitary form settling onto the grass not far from their own blanket. Her heart gave a little thump as she recognized him.

It was Graham.

He sat down alone on the grass, folding his legs beneath him and tipping his head back to look up at the sky, and she realized he had a phone pressed to his ear. She hoped he wasn’t talking to his manager or his lawyer or his publicist. Something about his posture, the relaxed expression on his face, made it seem like maybe he wasn’t. He was alone, as usual; he had a way of being in a crowd of people and still somehow apart from them, and tonight was no different.

As each firework exploded and then disappeared, she closed her eyes, preserving the memory in glowing lines on the backs of her eyelids, thinking about the day behind her, the memory of her dad’s hand in hers, the comfort of her mother’s presence, and mostly—mostly—the boy sitting not ten feet away, watching the very same sky.

She thought of the words her father had spoken all those years ago: There will be no miracles here.

He was wrong, she was thinking, the words arriving with a fierceness that surprised her. Even in that diner, there must have been a sense of possibility. You just had to know where to look. Even a dirty window or stale apple pie could be a kind of miracle.

“So what happens now?” Ellie asked. “If it’s all over the news, he has to know we’re here. Do you think he’ll try to find us?”

“Do you want him to?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Maybe someday. Or maybe not. I don’t know.”

“That’s okay,” Mom said. “We’ve got time to figure it out.”

“I’m really sorry,” Ellie said again. This time, she wasn’t exactly sure what she was apologizing for; there were so many things to choose from.

“Hey,” Mom said, reaching over to cup her chin. “It’ll be fine.”