“Thank you.” Blackheart nodded at her and said:
“It’s only five miles up the road. Follow us, and we’ll stop at the storage facility first.” She nodded again and that time, almost imperceptibly, Gabe thought maybe she gave her father a smile too. It gave him hope to think that maybe the two most stubborn people in the world could forge some kind of treaty...maybe there was hope for world peace yet.
On the short drive from Lincolnville to Camden, Maine they were treated to the sight of beautiful, green mountains lurking behind the entrance to a state park, and Gabe found himself missing his bike. This would be an amazing ride on his Harley, especially with Patrice hugged up behind him. The entrance to the little seaside village is marked by a sign that announces that it is known as the “Jewel of the Maine Coast” and as they drove further into it, it was instantly apparent that the sign wasn’t exaggerating. Gabe didn’t know much about architecture, but the buildings looked old and well kept. The little business district looked like a place that even he’d like to take a walk, buy an ice cream cone, and do some shopping, and he had never been much of a shopper. There were lots of restaurants too, advertising steak and seafood and homemade clam chowder. They passed a harbor with some of the nicest-looking boats Gabe had ever laid eyes on. He hadn’t told Patrice, but he had never been any further out of Louisiana than Mississippi, and looking out at a blue bay filled with yachts and sailboats was slightly surreal to him.
“This place is incredible,” he told her as she made a right turn, still following Blackheart, Lowlife, and Le Pirate. She smiled and said:
“It is. Since I found out about my mother I’ve hated that I didn’t get to meet her...but this place is making it worse. She was definitely full of life, and far from the stuffy conservatives the rest of her family was. I’ve read about this place. It’s where they filmed Peyton Place.” Gabe didn’t want her to think he was stupid, but he had no idea what that was. He was glad when she added, “It’s an old soap opera. They made it into a movie here, but originally in the fifties when the book came out, it was scandalous. All about things like unwed mothers and other kinds of what they thought was ‘illicit sex’ back in those days. I wonder if my mother picked it because of that?” Gabe didn’t say anything; he just smiled at her. He knew she was just speculating about her mom and he didn’t feel like anything he had to say would help. He wished he could do something for her, though, and he hoped like hell the things she was about to find at the storage facility would help her, and not just make her feel worse, about not knowing the woman who gave her life. They made another right turn and then a left before coming to a storage facility that was as picturesque as the village it sat on the edge of. Blackheart pulled over to the side of the road in front of the place and Patrice pulled up behind him. Gabe’s president got off his bike and walked over to the car. When Patrice rolled down the window, he handed her a card and said:
“The codes you need are all on there. We’re going to give you some privacy. Meet us at Cottage Inn on 2nd Street at 2, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, and as he was already walking away she whispered, “Thank you,” again.
“Hey, you want me to go with the guys?” Gabe asked. “Or I’ll just wait in the car, whatever you’d rather.”
Patrice looked at him and his heart fluttered as she said, “I want you with me, if that’s okay?”
“Always,” he said. She leaned over and kissed him and then to him she whispered, “Thank you,” before putting the car back in drive and heading up toward the gates.
The storage space was small, but it was packed from top to bottom with plastic storage containers. From the looks of it, Paul had taken great care to pack up all of Kasey’s things, even labeling the boxes with what they were. It didn’t look like he’d thrown anything out, and the look in Patrice’s blue eyes bordered on awe and overwhelmed, as if she didn’t know where to start. Gabe sat propped against the hood of the car and watched her pull the top off the first box. The label on the lid said, “Personal Things.” As she began to look through it, his mind went back to when his parents died. As a sixteen-year-old kid, you think you know your parents. But the day that Gabe went to the house with his Paw Paw and had to sort through his parents’ things, he began to realize he hadn’t really known them at all. He knew them as Maw and Paw. His maw worked hard around the house and in her garden every day. She made sure things were clean and in order. She made sure there was food on the table three times a day, and she made sure that Gabe didn’t do anything too stupid and kill himself before he made it to his teenage years. He knew she loved animals, and she liked to watch her soap opera at exactly 12 p.m. every day. He knew she volunteered at a women’s shelter and he knew she canned enough food for twelve families every summer, so that when winter came if any of their neighbors were in need, she could help out. He knew his paw worked from before sunup until after sundown most days. His big hands were calloused sometimes and other times they were so raw from the ropes attached to the cages he lowered and pulled up every day that they bled. His paw was funny too, always cracking jokes. He taught Gabe how to fish and hunt and throw a ball and work on an engine...all of the things a father should do. But as Gabe began sifting through their private “things” he discovered so much more.
He found out that his mother had been a dancer before she married his dad. She was a ballerina, and from the programs and pictures he found, she’d been a good one too. He found a letter from a school in New York, dated about the time that she would have been pregnant with him, accepting her for a semester of study. Obviously she hadn’t gone, and she’d never mentioned it, not to him anyway. His mother had been just like any other girl. She’d had dreams, big ones. She’d been talented, and she’d had a future far away from the swamps she’d grown up in...but she’d chosen him and his father over all of that and she’d never once acted like she was sorry.
Gabe also found out his father had plans of his own. In his high school yearbook there was a photo of his dad in his baseball uniform with the words “Most Likely to Succeed” typed underneath them. Gabe grew up knowing his old man loved watching baseball on television, and when he had time to throw and hit a ball with Gabe, he was really good at it...but his dad never told him he was a star in high school. He was the captain of his team. He pitched four years straight, varsity all the way and his junior year the recruiters had come out from several different universities, and one major league organization, and talked to him about his future. Gabe knew all of that from newspaper clippings he found stuck inside of the yearbook, and things that his paw’s friends had written about “not forgetting the little people” when he went pro. But none of that had happened, and all Gabe had to do was simple math to figure out that once again, he was the reason why. It was that day that he realized his parents had been real people, and how much they’d given up for him. It was that day that he realized how lucky he’d been to have them for sixteen years, when some people—like Patrice, he reflected now—didn’t have theirs at all.