Paul and Nora remained at the counter with Ruby while father and daughter began talking. Ezekiel showed Beth a photograph of Hazel on the porch in a blue cotton dress, smiling into the sunlight. Beth touched the corner of the picture but did not take it from his hands. "She was real," she said, then shook her head at how strange the words sounded. "Of course she was real. I just mean, I spent so many years wondering whether I made her up." Ezekiel told her that Hazel had been fierce, funny, and impossible to beat at cards. He also told her about the days she had not been fierce at all, because grief had made getting out of bed difficult, and Beth deserved a mother who was human rather than a figure carved out of memory.
Beth asked whether Hazel had been angry with her for disappearing. The question hit Ezekiel harder than any accusation could have. "Never," he said. "Your mama was angry with people who wouldn't listen, and sometimes she was angry with God. But she was never angry with you." Beth covered her face, trying to silence a sob, and Ezekiel slid a clean napkin across the table instead of reaching for her. When she lowered her hands, she whispered, "I thought you both let me go." He shook his head. "We spent our lives trying to find the door they took you through."
He opened the suitcase and brought out the little wooden boat. Its edges had been sanded smooth, but one side remained unpainted, just as it had on the night of the flood. Beth held it in both hands, and suddenly she remembered a tiny paintbrush, a cup of red paint, and her father's promise that she could name the boat after any place in the world. "I was going to call it Far Away," she said. Ezekiel smiled through his tears. "That's right. You said boats were supposed to go places." Beth looked at the unfinished side and said, "Maybe we should finish it now."
They did not embrace immediately. There were too many questions between them, and Beth needed to be sure that her wish for closeness was her own and not something required by the audience of sympathetic strangers. They talked about her childhood with the Sanders family, about the books she loved, about Nora's stubbornness, and about the way Paul burned toast every Sunday. Ezekiel told her about repairing railway signals, learning to cook after Hazel died, and keeping his daughter's drawings in a tin box. At last, when he asked whether she wanted another coffee, Beth reached across the table and took his hand. "You can call me Bea sometimes," she said. "I think I'd like to hear it again."