The desk clerk greeted me and announced that he had only a few rooms available. “You’re lucky,” he said. “If you’d come in next week, we would have been booked for the rest of the summer.”

“I thought this was a ski town.”

“Oh, it is, but summer is even better. We’ve got film festivals and jazz fests. What are you in town for? Just visiting?”

“That’s right.” Visiting my father.

When I got up to the room, I dropped my bags and immediately called Tess from my cell phone. Seeing those women had made me want to reconnect with her, even if it meant confessing my indiscretion with Evan.

“’Lo?” her son, Sammy answered. In the background, there was a clatter, then a shriek that sounded like it came from Joy, Tess’s youngest.

“Sammy, it’s Aunt Billy. Is Mommy home?”

The phone was dropped on the floor, and I could hear Tess’s exasperated voice saying something to Sammy.

“Hello?” she said, in a tired voice.

“It’s Billy.”

“Hi, hon, what’s up?” She didn’t sound too interested but I could hardly blame her.

“Bath time?”

“Yep. Sammy wants to wear his red pants in the tub, so I can’t get him in and Joy doesn’t want to get out, even though the water is about as cold as Lake Michigan.”

“Oh, sweetie.”

“Don’t feel bad. This is par for the course. What’s up with you?”

Oh, not much. Just left my husband and got on a plane to find my father.

“Well, this is kind of out of the blue,” I said, “but-”

“Sammy!” Tess screamed. “Put that down! Billy, he’s going for my curling iron. I forgot to unplug it. I gotta go. Call you later.”

I sat in the silence of my hotel room, praying that the gods of electrocution would spare Sammy. I thought about calling Chris. I wanted to hear his kind voice and tell him where I was and what I was doing, but he’d made it very clear that he would call me when he was ready. I got out my PalmPilot and found Hadley’s number in London. I dialed but there was no answer, just a message and the voice of her husband, Nigel, in his clipped, British accent, asking me to “kindly” leave a message. I tried Dustin in San Francisco. No one home there, either. I tried her cell phone. It went immediately to voice mail.

I flopped back on the bed, wanting desperately to talk to someone, to tell someone I was here. I thought of my mom. Until recently, she was often the person I turned to when I needed a chat. But what would she think if she knew I was looking for him? The note I’d left at her house simply said I’d call her soon. But I couldn’t do that now; I felt like I was cheating on her. Yet I knew being here was right. Finding my father was something I needed to do.

Then I found myself sitting up, picking up the phone again and dialing a number I barely knew, finding the digits from somewhere in the haze of my brain.

“Hola,” someone answered.

“Is Alexa there?”

“Un momento.”

I stood and walked across the room, unsure what I was going to say to her, unsure why I was even calling except that I felt like talking to a friend, and she had appeared in my mind.

Alexa answered.

“Hi, it’s Billy.”

“Hey, Billy,” she said, and she actually sounded pleased to hear from me. “I’m glad you called. You won’t believe what I did today.”

“What?”

“I started working on a business plan for the PR firm I want to start.”

“That’s wonderful!”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. After the last time I saw you, I decided to ask for help, and I found this woman here in my community who started her own law firm, so she’s walking me through what needs to be done.”

“Wow. I am so impressed.” I held myself back from saying that I was proud, too. Proud of Alexa and the way she was turning her firing into something better for her life. It was exactly was I was trying to do. Take what the frog had brought into my life and make the best of it.

Alexa and I talked for twenty minutes about her business plan and ideas, her fear that she would never find capital to start the thing, but how she was happier working on this than she’d ever been.

“There’s just so much that has to happen if this is going to work,” she said.

“You’ll do it.”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to try. Enough about me. What’s up with you?”

“I’m actually in Colorado.”

I gave Alexa an abbreviated version of my decision to look for my dad, leaving out the fact that Chris had tossed me out of the house.

“My God,” Alexa said. “This is huge for you. Shit, I’ve never even met my father.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nah, he was some white guy my mom dated many moons ago. When he found out she was pregnant, he took off.”

“Have you ever wanted to look for him?”

“No. He’s not my father-not in any true sense. My mother and my aunt and these kids over here are my family. But you grew up with your dad, right?”

“For seven years.” Seven very short years. Years that were decades ago now. Suddenly, this seemed a very rash, bad idea to be in this town.

“Billy, you’ve got to give it a shot,” Alexa said, as if sensing my doubts. “You’ve obviously been wondering for a very long time, and now you’re there. It’s what you’ve got to do.”

Her words reminded me of Odette’s. And they were both right. It was time for me to take some action.

chapter fifteen

T he next morning, I called work and asked for Lizbeth. “I won’t be in again today,” I said. “And I’m not sure about tomorrow either.” I was supposed to fly home the next morning, and wasn’t sure what time I could make it to work.

“Still sick?” Lizbeth asked.

“Mmm,” I murmured.

“Well, Roslyn wants to talk to you.”

I coughed. “Lizbeth, I can’t right now. Can you just let her know I’ll try to be in there by tomorrow afternoon? Thanks.”

I hung up before she could say much else, and looked at my watch-9:50 a.m. My father should be at the store now, and Cover to Cover would be open in ten minutes.

At five minutes after ten, I pushed open the door of Cover to Cover with shaking hands. Just like last night, the door creaked and then a lilting strain of classical music washed over me. But this time, Kenny wasn’t standing at the desk to the left. This time, it was my father.

He looked even older than he had in the picture on his Web site. His hair was thinner and more gray. His chest looked slightly sunken, and he was shorter than I’d remembered. But his clothes were youthful-jeans and a brown T-shirt. His skin was tan.

He was studying something at the countertop computer, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. “Morning,” he said, still looking at the screen. Then he looked up, directly at me.

“Good morning,” I said. I felt ridiculous, wishing my own father a formal good day.

“Can I…” But his words died away. He took off the reading glasses.

The classical music came to the end of the song, and silence filled the store. It was the loudest silence I’d ever heard. I struggled to find words to speak. My father seemed to be having the same problem.

“Billy?” He said my name quietly, with a question mark at the end, but there it was. I felt jolted. How did the asshole who’d taken off recognize his youngest, the girl he hadn’t seen since she was seven?

I nodded.

“Come in. Please.” He hurried around the counter toward me. I drew back in surprise.

He halted. “I’m sorry.”

I was still too shocked to say anything.

A door slammed at the back of the store, and a woman came into the front room. Lillian. Her hair wasn’t as frizzy as I’d thought. She also wore jeans over her wide hips and a thin, light blue sweater. “Brandon, we need to fix that sink again,” she said. “Oh, hello there,” she called when she saw me.

“Good morning.” These seemed to be the only words I knew how to utter.