After her shift Lily searched the closet in her apartment for the cardboard box of her father’s things. Beneath old tax forms and a cracked tape measure lay a little tin of ticket stubs. Most were for baseball games. One, folded inside a bus schedule, read THE MARINER’S DREAM — FINAL WEEK, BLUE LANTERN PLAYHOUSE, BELLWEATHER.
On its reverse, in her father’s block lettering, were the words: Lily liked the stars. Don’t forget.
She called Daniel. “I found a ticket.”
“Then you should speak to June.”
“Why won’t she speak to your father?”
“Because he told a lie that made everybody’s life easier except hers.”
Lily did not answer immediately. She had no car reliable enough for the trip. She had sixty-eight dollars left after rent. Colin had already threatened to cut her shifts for talking to customers too long.
“Can your father explain it himself?” she asked.
“He will, if you’ll let him.”
“Then have him meet me here tomorrow after closing.”
Walter came with Daniel, his bandaged hand tucked into his coat. He looked relieved when Lily placed the old ticket on the table. He looked frightened when she asked about the blue room.
“It was the most beautiful room in the theater,” he said. “It was also the reason we had to close it.”
“What happened?”
“A boy was hurt. Not badly enough to make the newspapers remember him. Badly enough to change his life.”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
4. WHAT THE THEATER KEPT
Lily stared at Walter. “My father was a mechanic.”
“He was. He helped us build a moving room for a children’s show. He could make stubborn things work.”
“You said he was hurt. My mother says no one was hurt.”
Walter glanced at Daniel, who did not rescue him from the question.
“Your father wasn’t the boy,” Walter admitted. “I said that badly. He was trying to help the boy. He got him out. He hurt his shoulder doing it. The child survived, but he never came back to the theater.”
Lily remembered her father rubbing one shoulder after carrying groceries, but that was not evidence of anything. “Who was the child?”
“His name was Benji. June’s nephew.”
“Then why is June waiting for a Hart?”
Walter set the photograph beside the ticket. “Because your father heard something that none of us understood. We thought a wall had failed. He said it had done exactly what someone told it to do.”
Lily turned the ticket over. “What does that mean?”
“There were six walls in the blue room. They rolled on tracks to make a little stage look like a giant ship. The children stood in the center while the walls moved around them. One wall came too far. Your father pulled the boy clear. The theater shut down. We all told ourselves the mechanism was broken.”
