Chapter 3.

3.

I woke up in a hospital bed with a broken arm, a broken nose, three cracked ribs, and symptoms of moderate heatstroke—but thankfully no one else was hurt. The biggest casualties of the crash were my vehicle and my twenty-six-year streak of accident-free driving. I was visited by a union rep who assured me I was at no risk of losing my job. Then I was visited by a suit from the corporate office who seemed a lot more ambivalent; I asked about my future with the company, and he simply answered, “Well, the investigation is still pending.”

That same day I was visited by a reporter from the local newspaper in Scranton; she was writing a story about the appalling working conditions of delivery drivers. Her theory was that UPS management was somehow responsible for my accident, that the lack of air-conditioning in my truck had nearly killed me, but I told her she had it all wrong. I insisted that I’d been properly trained to work in extreme temperatures, that I caused the accident through my own carelessness, and I wasn’t going to start blaming others for my own dumb mistakes.

The doctors kept me at Holy Redeemer for three nights, and plenty of people came to see me. Drivers, preloaders, and other assorted folks from the warehouse, but also Tammy (who brought me a phone and a charger) and even two of my favorite customers, who’d heard about the crash on the local news. But a full forty-eight hours passed before I heard anything from Maggie. I thought she might rush home to see me but instead she called from Boston, where she was helping the Gardners plan a memorial service for Aidan. She said it would be a small affair, immediate family only, and there was no reason for me or Tammy to attend. And maybe this was just the painkillers talking, but I told her I was fine. “It’s just a couple scratches. Nothing to worry about.”

The next day, I went home with my right arm in a sling and a heavy plaster cast, and for the first time in twenty-six years I found myself with absolutely nothing to do. I tried watching daytime television but, holy mother of God, what happened to daytime television? When I was a kid, it used to be silly sitcoms and The Price Is Right . Now it’s just endless marathons of Dr. Pimple Popper and FBoy Island . The cable news was even worse, with all the patriots hating California and all the progressives hating Florida and everyone hating Congress. All these shows made my blood boil, and I clicked off the TV, convinced that the whole stupid world was going down the toilet.

I never heard another word from Armando Castado, but I suspect his thumb gently tipped the scales of my accident investigation. After a complete review of my vehicle’s many sensors and computers and onboard cameras, the committee voted to put me on “paid leave through pension.” Meaning that I would continue collecting my base salary for the next three years until I was eligible to retire—but I would never drive for UPS again. When I heard the news, I almost wept. I’d spent the last twenty-six years fantasizing about my last day on the job, but I never imagined it would end like this: in a windowless second-floor conference room with a half dozen lawyers, execs, and union reps sitting in hard-backed chairs while I signed my name to endless waivers and releases.

And after that happened, I had no reason to get out of bed in the morning. I had no reason to do much of anything, and I found myself falling into a pretty dark place. I stopped responding to texts and phone calls. I stopped looking after my house—and started spending way too much time looking at my stupid phone. I wasted entire afternoons obsessing over the accident, replaying the details beat by beat and trying to pinpoint the exact moment I’d lost control. I remembered thinking the man on the side of the road looked exactly like Aidan Gardner, and I’d wanted to stop and ask him questions: Did he know if my daughter was okay? And why in the world had he left me $1,000? I still had the envelope of hundred-dollar bills stashed inside my dresser, because I felt too guilty to deposit them in my bank account.

It was late in August, nine-thirty on a Tuesday morning, when my sister roused me from sleep with an unexpected phone call. She’d been offered a gig caring for an Alzheimer’s patient in Pocono Pines, and she needed me to watch Abigail for a couple of days.

“A couple days ?”

“Just until school starts. This job pays fifty dollars an hour, and I can’t say no to that kind of money.”

I hadn’t seen Abigail since we’d left Osprey Cove, and the last I’d heard was that she’d gone back to live with her birth mother. Only there must have been some kind of problem, because a week later Abigail moved to an orchard in Kutztown, one of these family-farm operations where six or eight fosters bunk together and help with chores after school. That must not have worked out, either, because now Abigail was back in my sister’s condo.

“I can’t do it, Tammy.”

“Why not? What are you doing today?”

The answer was nothing—but I was too groggy to dream up a decent excuse. “I’m still wearing my cast. How can I babysit with a broken arm?”

“You don’t have to lift her. She’s not an infant.”

“I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

She hung up, so I thought the matter was settled and fell back to sleep. But twenty minutes later I could hear Tammy unlocking my front door—and when I stumbled out to my living room, Abigail was standing there with a pencil case and a Sudoku magazine, wearing sneakers and shorts and a backpack like she’d just arrived for summer camp.

“Hey, Mister Frank.”

“Where’s Tammy?”

“She just left. She said she’d be back at seven-thirty.”

“Seven-thirty tonight ?”

“I think? Sorry.”

Abigail looked different than I remembered. All the lice were gone and she was growing out her hair; now it was an awkward shaggy length between a buzz cut and a bob. She removed her backpack but stopped short of placing it on the floor. Like she wasn’t sure where to put it, or herself.

“You can have the couch,” I told her. “I’ll take the recliner.”

She moved to sit down and tripped on a plank of wood, part of the homemade coffee table that I still hadn’t finished assembling. I apologized for the mess and opened the curtains to let more light into the room. And this just made everything look worse. I’d let my housekeeping slide, and there were little drips of coffee and Chinese food all over my furniture. I handed the TV remote to Abigail and told her we could watch anything she wanted. “Or you can go play outside but stay off the train tracks.”

She took a walk to scope out the neighborhood and came back after twenty minutes, claiming there was no one around. You used to see lots of kids on my block riding dirt bikes or just farting around, but now I guess they all stay inside and look at the internet. Abigail turned on the TV and we spent the day watching shark documentaries on the Discovery Channel—hours of exclusive interviews with marine biologists and shark attack survivors. Sometimes Abigail would work on her puzzle book, and when she got bored of that I gave her a roll of paper towels to draw on. And when she got hungry, I sent her down the street to the Exxon Mobil with money for a hot dog and pretzel, because I couldn’t motivate myself to cook anything.

The next day was more of the same, but sometime in the afternoon I fell asleep in my recliner—and when I opened my eyes, Abigail was gone. On my television screen, a shark was silently prowling through cloudy red water in search of its next meal. I wondered if maybe Abigail had walked to the gas station for another hot dog. Instead, I found her in Maggie’s bedroom, going through my daughter’s dresser and quietly inspecting all her things. I watched from the doorway as she touched the old sports trophies, then sifted through a drawer of neatly folded sweaters. Then she knelt beside a wicker basket full of stuffed animals and pulled out the Build-A-Bear that Maggie had designed some fifteen years ago, on our trip to the King of Prussia Mall near Philadelphia.

“You can have that, if you want,” I said.

Abigail hadn’t realized I was watching. She was so startled she dropped it. “Really?”

“Anything in that basket, you can take. You might as well. Maggie’s never coming back here.”

I didn’t know it was true until I said it out loud. In the month since the wedding, my daughter’s job had taken her all over the world—to Singapore and London and Los Angeles—but nothing was drawing her back to Stroudsburg, not even the accident that shattered my ribs and landed me in the hospital.

I opened the closet and gestured to all the colorful dresses on hangers. “This stuff is fair game, too. Help yourself.”

Abigail had zero interest in the clothes, but she dragged the wicker basket out to the living room and began to inventory its contents: SpongeBob, Curious George, lots and lots of Beanie Babies. She marveled over every item before setting it on the couch. Shark Week was still playing on the television, but I switched it off and just watched Abigail play with the toys. I hadn’t seen her this excited since Osprey Cove. I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to escape the funk of my house and leave it all behind. I stood up and grabbed the keys to my Jeep.

“Come on,” I told her.

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere.”

That first afternoon we just drove around the neighborhood. I took her to the patch of highway where I crashed my UPS truck and showed her how I went off the road. And then we drove past St. Luke’s, the church where Colleen and I were married, and Silvio’s, the Italian restaurant where we’d had our wedding reception. I didn’t expect Abigail to be interested, but she had scores of questions: How many guests did we invite? What was the song for our first dance? What was Italian food, anyway? This last question blew my mind. How do you get to be ten years old without tasting Italian food? So we went inside and I explained the situation to the waitress. She was happy to bring us little sample plates of all the house specialties: gnocchi, bruschetta, risotto, lasagna, chicken parm, broccoli rabe. We ate until we were stuffed and then Abigail said she’d never had tiramisu, she’d never even had gelato, so we had to order those, too. It made me happy to see her looking so happy. Honest to God, it felt like the first meaningful thing I’d accomplished all summer.

So the next day, I tried to do it again. We made a whole long list of things she’d never experienced, and then we spent the rest of the summer experiencing them. We toured Crystal Cave and the Hershey chocolate factory. We ate dinner at Shady Maple, the largest smorgasbord buffet in America, and at Shogun Palace, one of those Japanese places where they cook everything right in front of you. We even drove down to Philadelphia, so she could attend her first Major League Baseball game. It was a lot of traveling but it felt good to be back on the road, driving with the windows down and the music way up.

For the last day of summer vacation I wanted to do something really special, so I brought Abigail to Casey’s Canoes on the Delaware Water Gap. I hadn’t been there since Maggie was a kid, but the place was just like I remembered. They rented watercrafts and provided transportation up the river, and they even sold brown-bag lunches with sandwiches and apples and juice boxes. Within the hour, Abigail and I were riding on a big yellow school bus full of rowdy teenagers. With my arm still in a cast, everyone looked at me like I was crazy. The bus driver asked how I planned to make it down the river, and I explained that Abigail would do all the work.

The Delaware River is long and wide and most of the year it runs really slow; if you’re looking for white-water action, it’s a massive disappointment. But if you’re a ten-year-old just getting started, it’s the perfect place to learn. After thirty minutes of coaching, Abigail was paddling with confidence and steering us around boulders and bridge piles. For lunch we found a little island full of families and stopped there to eat our sandwiches. I found a nice seat in the shade of a weeping willow while Abigail splashed around in the water with some kids. And to my great surprise I found myself wishing that summer didn’t have to end.