The Time in Between by David Bergen

anything like that, would you? Run off with a man twice your age?”
    “She hasn’t run off, Dad.”
    “She will. I can see it.” He drank his coffee, put the mug down, and said, “I want to burn the man’s shop down. But like you said, that would be like torching my own income, seeing as I supply him with all his metal. And so, here I sit, believing that money is more important than my younger daughter.”
    “It’s not.”
    “No?” Charles loved Ada’s confidence, the fact that she didn’t trust the obvious. Whereas Del was enthusiastic and gullible, Ada was skeptical. She would suffer for it. He didn’t tell her that, but he could see that hers would not be a naïve existence. He said, “The man’s too damn smug.” Then he sighed and asked Ada about Claire Toupin. What did she think of her?
    Ada made a face. Said that it was unfair to ask, because obviously he liked her and it didn’t matter what Ada thought.
    “Oh, it matters. It might not change anything, but it matters.”
    “She’s plastic,” Ada said.
    Charles lifted an eyebrow and said, “Well.”
    “At least she looks that way. And even when she talks, everything’s so exciting. She’s too happy. She doesn’t seem very”—Ada moved a hand, looking for the word—“very aware.”
    “She’s good for me.”
    “I know.”
    “I could use some happiness.”
    “I’m glad for you, Dad. Really.” She stood and kissed his forehead. She had just showered and he smelled the shampoo and her hair was still damp. Its length fell forward and brushed his cheek and he recalled Claire’s hair falling against his chest. He wanted to hang on to this brief moment.
    CHARLES DID NOTHING ABOUT TOMAS AND DEL. HE THOUGHT about it. One night, he left the house around 3 A.M. and he walked up the hill, carrying a jerry can of gas. He went directly toward Tomas’s workshop and he stood and imagined what havoc would transpire as the building went up in bright flames. There would be the fire trucks arriving too late from the valley, and the police would come and questions would be asked and of course everything would point back to Charles Boatman and, in the end, Charles couldn’t imagine leaving his children alone. He would be put in prison and Ada would have to take over the house and the responsibilities, and so, he couldn’t act. It wasn’t cowardice. He was a practical man.
    He was aware of Del’s movements back and forth between the two places, but he did nothing, and it grieved him that Tomas had been right. And then, one day, Del moved in with the artist. She pulled up in Tomas’s pickup, loaded her things, and drove back up the mountain. Charles watched her, and just before she left, he said, “At least he could come down here and talk.”
    “He’s scared of you, Dad,” Del said.
    Charles thought about this and it didn’t surprise him. What surprised him was Del’s acceptance of this fact, as if she knew that her father was capable of some sort of madness. It was as if she had thrown up a mirror before him and he hadn’t recognized himself.
    Still, after a month or so, Del brought Tomas down to the caboose for a visit. She’d made a cake and sat beside Tomas and urged him to eat. She clung to his arm and kissed his big head and put her hands against his neck and the side of his face. He was brash and full of bluster and talked about his projects and the money he was making, but he never looked Charles in the eye.
    Later, Charles asked Ada, “What did he think I was going to do?”
    “You’re unpredictable, Dad.”
    “Ach, that’s bullshit. Anyways, Del sure seems fired up for him.”
    And then, within the month, Ada moved to Vancouver. She was studying culinary arts at a local college. And then Jon moved out as well. He found a place in Abbotsford where he planned to finish high school. Only later did Charles learn that Jon had moved in with an older man, a high school history teacher, but by the time Charles heard about this, his own