The Time Keepers

Chapter 51

CHAPTER 51

T OM HOISTED THE BICYCLE INTO THE BACK OF G RACE ’ S STATION wagon, reassuring his daughter that it was an easy fix to repair the chain.

“Randall will take care of it one-two-three, honey.” Katie forced a smile, her eyes drifted down to her sneakers. She’d been working six days a week and had clocked in fifty hours at $3 an hour, which brought her about $150, and she had already researched and knew Randall’s bike store was selling a new Schwinn with racing-bar handles for $110. Katie really wanted to tell her dad not to spend the money to fix it. Instead, she wanted to use her newly earned salary on getting a new bike.

She wasn’t sure how to stop the repair though, since her father had been so sweet about it. She also knew that asking her parents for a new bike would be out of the question, especially since she was supposed to be pulling more of her weight on things that weren’t really in the household budget. Her dad made a decent enough living, but it was modest compared to a lot of her friends’ parents.

“Dad?” Her voice rose inside her, taking even her a little by surprise. “Do you think I can come with you?”

Tom’s face lit up. It had felt like an eternity since Katie had asked to spend time with him.

“Are you kidding, baby girl? Of course!”

She slid into the saddle-colored seats, the leather cracking beneath her, and as Tom glanced over at his teenage daughter, his heart nearly exploded because it had been months since she had even deigned to look at him. From the time she hit high school last year, Katie’s world seemed to revolve around her friends and he and Grace were planets she had banished to another orbit.

“Do you want to choose the music?”

She reached over and turned the radio dial to one of the popular stations. Blondie, a group he only knew because she had played their latest record over and over, so often that Grace and he wanted to break it in half, was playing. With the music now filling the air, Katie smiled as she looked out the window.

“We’ll get that track fixed, probably while we wait,” he said trying to coax her into conversation.

She didn’t say anything until they hit the traffic light on Salisbury Road. “You know, Dad … I’ve already earned over a hundred dollars this summer … and I’m thinking maybe I should just buy a new bike.…”

The traffic light changed to red. “That’s awfully responsible of you, Kat … but don’t you think it would be more prudent to save the money for something else? I really don’t think it’s going to cost a lot to repair the one you have now.”

She didn’t answer.

There was something very noisy about the silence of a teenager. Tom felt he could have interpreted it in a hundred different ways. But he chose to take the simplest path, which was to just cherish having his daughter sitting next to him. It was a fifteen-minute drive. He intended to enjoy every second and not spoil it with words she didn’t want to hear.

Randall’s bike shop was much like the Golden Hours, a mom-and-pop shop that had been there for as long as anyone could remember. Tom had bought his first bike there from old Randall, who was now close to seventy-five years old. His son, Pete, worked in the front with sales, while the older man still insisted on doing all the repairs. It was bittersweet for Tom to walk inside, not just because the smell of rubber tires and metal made him nostalgic, but because it made him miss his own father as well. He hadn’t truly appreciated those years having his father working in the back of the shop with him, and now it was too late.

“Hey, Tom,” Pete greeted him from behind the cash register. Katie held the door as her father wheeled in her bike. “What can I do for you today?”

“We’ve got a dropped chain on this one.…” Tom pointed to the problem.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Katie standing in the corner near a dolphin-blue Schwinn, with racing handlebars and ten speeds. The bike was a Cadillac compared with what she’d been riding for the past five years.

“That one’s a beaut.” Pete had apparently seen her looking at it too. “The metallic paint just sparkles in the sunlight.”

Tom watched as Katie fingered the price tag.

“How much, honey?” he asked her.

“One hundred and eighty,” she sighed. Her disappointment broke his heart.

“And how much for the repair?”

“Ten bucks. We can have it ready for you tomorrow.”

He hated seeing his daughter look so forlornly at the new bike and he could still get the other one repaired and give it to Molly, who was close to outgrowing her bike anyway.

He looked over at Pete.

“Why don’t you sit on it and see how it feels,” Pete suggested, giving a discreet wink to Tom.

Katie kicked the stand up, moved it to the center of the store, and then mounted it, her tiptoes just grazing the floor. Tom saw her face transform in front of him, her somber mood suddenly lifted, and her face filled with light.

“I have nearly all the money, Dad. If I work just two more days, I’ll have all of it.”

“We can take ten percent off,” Pete offered. “We like to keep those smiles on our customers’ faces.”

“How about we split the difference? I know your mom thinks it important we don’t spoil you too much … but I think I can get away with telling her this is part of an early Christmas present.”

Katie kicked the stand down and hopped off the bike. “Really, Dad?” She walked over and gave him something he hadn’t had in quite a while from her. A hug.

The scent of her strawberry shampoo, her happiness, all of it lifted off her. And as Tom went to pull his wallet out of his pocket, he knew this was one of those moments he had to press into his mind and savor.

They brought the old bike in for repair and wheeled the new one out to the car, the two of them joining efforts to slide it into the trunk. When he again offered her the chance to tune the radio to her favorite station, she deferred to him.

“No, you choose, Dad.”

He felt a pang in his heart. Now he understood what Grace had been talking about, feeling time slipping through her fingers too quickly. He only had three years left with Katie before she went off to college. It felt like only yesterday she was wrapped in pink bunting and he had been so surprised by just how powerful his emotions of being a young father had struck him. It wasn’t just the new and overwhelming responsibility—it was the sheer awe of having created something so perfect with Grace. When he held Katie to his chest that first time, her little finger reaching to touch his, a sense of completeness washed over him that that struck him to his core.

His father was full of wisdom back in those early days. When he’d arrive bleary eyed from lack of sleep, trying to help Grace with at least one late-night bottle feeding as she recuperated from the delivery, Harry would tell him that this time of infancy-related struggles was finite. “Now you think of them as being babies for the rest of your life, but they’re not.”

He didn’t really quite understand it back then, and even now he was trying to figure fatherhood out. No one had given him a map for parenthood, and he knew Grace was still struggling to find a way to navigate the emotions of having a teenager under their roof. But he also knew, even though they didn’t say it aloud to each other, that the full house that Grace and he shared with the girls—with it its messes, the bickering, the constant bills for groceries and new clothes—would one day be over. This future quiet, its very stillness, flashed like a painful premonition.

At the next traffic light, Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey” came on the radio, and Tom’s heart opened in a way that only a good song could unlock. He belted out the lyrics, crooning off key, laughing as he sang.

“Come on, Dad. You’re so corny.”

They crossed over Delaney onto Main Street and paused at the stop sign. His eyes didn’t notice Anh and B?o walking toward Kepler’s with a straw shopping basket, for Tom’s gaze was focused on stealing another glance at Katie. As her giggle filled the chamber of the car, his heart soaked it up like sunshine.