“One night his breathing slowed and his eyes closed and he could not be awakened. The doctors said he had fallen into a coma.”

Eddie remembered that night. Another phone call to Mr. Nathanson. Another knock on his door.

“After that, your mother stayed by his bedside. Days and nights. She would moan to herself, softly, as if she were praying: ‘I should have done something. I should have done something.’

“Finally, one night, at the doctors’ urging, she went home to sleep. Early the next morning, a nurse found your father slumped halfway out the window.”

“Wait,” Eddie said. His eyes narrowed. “The window?”

Ruby nodded. “Sometime during the night, your father awakened. He rose from his bed, staggered across the room, and found the strength to raise the window sash. He called your mother’s name with what little voice he had, and he called yours, too, and your brother, Joe. And he called for Mickey. At that moment, it seemed, his heart was spilling out, all the guilt and regret. Perhaps he felt the light of death approaching. Perhaps he only knew you were all out there somewhere, in the streets beneath his window. He bent over the ledge. The night was chilly. The wind and damp, in his state, were too much. He was dead before dawn.

“The nurses who found him dragged him back to his bed. They were frightened for their jobs, so they never breathed a word. The story was he died in his sleep.”

Eddie fell back, stunned. He thought about that final image. His father, the tough old war horse, trying to crawl out a window. Where was he going? What was he thinking? Which was worse when left unexplained: a life, or a death?

How do you know all this?” Eddie asked Ruby.

She sighed. “Your father lacked the money for a hospital room of his own. So did the man on the other side of the curtain.”

She paused.

“Emile. My husband.”

Eddie lifted his eyes. His head moved back as if he’d just solved a puzzle.

“Then you saw my father.”

“Yes.”

“And my mother.”

“I heard her moaning on those lonely nights. We never spoke. But after your father’s death, I inquired about your family. When I learned where he had worked, I felt a stinging pain, as if I had lost a loved one myself. The pier that bore my name. I felt its cursed shadow, and I wished again that it had never been built.

“That wish followed me to heaven, even as I waited for you.”

Eddie looked confused.

“The diner?” she said. She pointed to the speck of light in the mountains. “It’s there because I wanted to return to my younger years, a simple but secure life. And I wanted all those who had ever suffered at Ruby Pier—every accident, every fire, every fight, slip, and fall—to be safe and secure. I wanted them all like I wanted my Emile, warm, well fed, in the cradle of a welcoming place, far from the sea.”

Ruby stood, and Eddie stood, too. He could not stop thinking about his father’s death.

“I hated him,” he mumbled.

The old woman nodded.

“He was hell on me as a kid. And he was worse when I got older.”

Ruby stepped toward him. “Edward,” she said softly. It was the first time she had called him by name. “Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.

“Forgive, Edward. Forgive. Do you remember the lightness you felt when you first arrived in heaven?”

Eddie did. Where is my pain?

“That’s because no one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed of it. But now, here, in order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer need to feel it.”

She touched his hand.

“You need to forgive your father.”

Eddie thought about the years that followed his father’s funeral. How he never achieved anything, how he never went anywhere. For all that time, Eddie had imagined a certain life—a “could have been” life—that would have been his if not for his father’s death and his mother’s subsequent collapse. Over the years, he glorified that imaginary life and held his father accountable for all of its losses: the loss of freedom, the loss of career, the loss of hope. He never rose above the dirty, tiresome work his father had left behind.

“When he died,” Eddie said, “he took part of me with him. I was stuck after that.”

Ruby shook her head, “Your father is not the reason you never left the pier.”

Eddie looked up. “Then what is?”

She patted her skirt. She adjusted her spectacles. She began to walk away. “There are still two people for you to meet,” she said.

Eddie tried to say “Wait,” but a cold wind nearly ripped the voice from his throat. Then everything went black.

Ruby was gone. He was back atop the mountain, outside the diner, standing in the snow.

He stood there for a long time, alone in the silence, until he realized the old woman was not coming back. Then he turned to the door and slowly pulled it open. He heard clanking silverware and dishes being stacked. He smelled freshly cooked food—breads and meats and sauces. The spirits of those who had perished at the pier were all around, engaged with one another, eating and drinking and talking.

Eddie moved haltingly, knowing what he was there to do. He turned to his right, to the corner booth, to the ghost of his father, smoking a cigar. He felt a shiver. He thought about the old man hanging out that hospital window, dying alone in the middle of the night.

“Dad?” Eddie whispered.

His father could not hear him. Eddie drew closer. “Dad. I know what happened now.”

He felt a choke in his chest. He dropped to his knees alongside the booth. His father was so close that Eddie could see the whiskers on his face and the frayed end of his cigar. He saw the baggy lines beneath his tired eyes, the bent nose, the bony knuckles and squared shoulders of a workingman. He looked at his own arms and realized, in his earthly body, he was now older than his father. He had outlived him in every way.

“I was angry with you, Dad. I hated you.”

Eddie felt tears welling. He felt a shaking in his chest. Something was flushing out of him.

“You beat me. You shut me out. I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand. Why did you do it? Why?” He drew in long painful breaths. “I didn’t know, OK? I didn’t know your life, what happened. I didn’t know you. But you’re my father. I’ll let it go now, all right? All right? Can we let it go?

His voice wobbled until it was high and wailing, not his own anymore. “OK? YOU HEAR ME?” he screamed. Then softer: “You hear me? Dad?”

He leaned in close. He saw his father’s dirty hands. He spoke the last familiar words in a whisper.

“It’s fixed.”

Eddie pounded the table, then slumped to the floor. When he looked up, he saw Ruby standing across the way, young and beautiful. She dipped her head, opened the door, and lifted off into the jade sky.

Thursday, 11 A.M.

Who would pay for Eddie’s funeral? He had no relatives. He’d left no instructions. His body remained at the city morgue, as did his clothes and personal effects, his maintenance shirt, his socks and shoes, his linen cap, his wedding ring, his cigarettes and pipe cleaners, all awaiting claim.

In the end, Mr. Bullock, the park owner, footed the bill, using the money he saved from Eddie’s no-longer-cashable paycheck. The casket was a wooden box. The church was chosen by location—the one nearest the pier—as most attendees had to get back to work.

A few minutes before the service, the pastor asked Dominguez, wearing a navy blue sport coat and his good black jeans, to step inside his office.