He found our room on day four at five in the morning, our beach towels hanging side by side along the balcony railing, his guide. I heard the knock and sat up in my bed, surprised that I was the only one that had heard it. I should have gotten my mother but instead tiptoed to the door and peered through the peep hole. On the other side, his body distorted as if he were standing in front of a fun house mirror, was my dad, behind him the a of bright pink and orange just rising over the horizon. I told my dad later how we would have missed the sunrise had he arrived any later.

I stepped out and hugged him and told him everyone was still asleep so opened up two beach chairs and there we sat watching the sunrise and eating freshly baked Boston cream donuts. It could have been the onrush of sugar or the exhilaration of sunrise, but I thought at that moment that this was one of the most special mornings of my life and that I’d never forget sharing that with him. I also felt a little smug knowing that non only did my sisters miss the sunrise but that I had gotten first pick of the donuts. Dad told me he would be staying until tomorrow morning and that we were all going to go out for dinner that night. He even told me that if I thought I was ready he’d take me on the roller coaster at the pier.

I told him everything we’d done up until his arrival and he listened to every word, never yawning once and I thought that maybe he had really missed me. I started to feel sleepy by the time I got to day four after what felt like an hour of continuous talking. He heard all the details - the story about the sand crabs we had caught and how if you dug quickly in sand a wave had just soaked that air bubbles would appear indicating sand crabs were somewhere not too far below. He heard about Arielle’s sun blisters and how Lee thought she was too cool to hang out with her sisters. He heard about the stuffed animal I won at the arcade and that I suspected that mom had actually bought it but didn’t want to tell me because I had cried so hard when I hadn’t won anything yet. I didn’t tell him about mom’s plastic orange or that she sneaked out to the ice machine at night. Dad didn’t say much. He mostly listened, his eyebrows raised as he nodded, smiling.

He did ask me about mom but I only said that she was fine and wouldn’t she be happy to see him. I doubted it even as I spoke it but nevertheless secretly hoped that it would somehow be true, that she really would be happy to see him. I wondered if he would really be sleeping in the same bed as her but kept the thought to myself.

Everyone eventually woke up, the sunrise replaced by the already hot sun brightening the hotel room through the thin line where the curtains were parted. One by one, first Arielle, then Lee, then mom, came out to see dad. Arielle actually cried she was so happy. Seeing her cry made me cry, too, and I made sure my dad saw my tears before I wiped them away on my beach towel. Dad got teary, too, and I knew for sure he had really missed us. Lee had already gone back into the room so she missed the tears. She was too cool for us or tears, apparently. Mom saw the tears but wasn’t moved, herself. She did kiss my dad on the lips, though. It looked to me like they puckered up as hard as they could so that when they actually kissed they would still be far apart. I liked seeing them kiss, anyway, and I was certain she was happy that he had arrived.

Once we arrived at the hotel I didn't think about my father for three days. We did get a room overlooking the pool and the ocean - if you looked toward the right and trained your eyes on the bluish triange that appeared at the end of the long balcony passageway. It was pretty even at a distance and we could reach the sand through a special walkway from the hotel.

Our room was next to the ice machine alleyway so it was rarely quiet. Either the ice was clunking down every two minutes or people were noisily scooping out ice to fill the white, plastic containers that came with each room. I figured everyone in the hotel passed by our room at least once that week, and I would peak out through a curtain opening to spy on them as they passed. Most of them looked like they were on a mission but then I started to think that most looked angry that they had been given the task at all; apparently securing ice was not a fun job.

At night when my mother thought we were asleep I heard her sneak out and go the ice machine, too, for her wine. She poured the wine into an orange, plastic juice container that was fashioned to look like a real orange, from Orange Julius, I think. I never actually saw her drink wine in a glass - or in public. She really must have thought she was fooling us into thinking she was actually drinking juice. What she didn't know was that as soon as the wine went into the orange we could smell it, the aroma first emitting from the container and then later, from her. This was probably the perfect room location for her, then, near the ice machine and away from dad.