Adam's Daughter Read Online Free

sudden, pressing need to get out for a while and walked quickly out the front door, not pausing for a coat. Outside, the late afternoon air was cool and moist. She got in her car and raced out of the driveway. Driving aimlessly, she thought about many things, but kept coming back to Tyler and how h e had looked when he said, “I'm all alone.”
    It was exactly how she now felt. She had no one.
    The car screeched to a stop. She turned off the motor. Without thinking, she had driven out to Fort Point, below the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a spot she had often sought out when she was younger, when she needed to get away and think. She got out of the car and walked out onto the concrete abutment along the rocks.
    The waves crashed against the rocks and the wind blowing in from the bay was chilly. The sun was nearly gone, its last light casting the city in an ochre glow. She watched as the fog moved in from the ocean, curling up over the orange spans of the bridge.
    The fog spread slowly eastward over the bay. She looked toward Berkeley and thought of the photograph of her father standing on the dock. She tried to imagine how he had felt that day, waiting for the ferry that would take him across. He had told her the story, told her of growing up with nothing, always dreaming of someday living on the west side of the bay.
    But he never had told her how he felt that day.
    Had he been afraid, she thought, like I am now?
    The yellow lights of the East Ba y glimmered through the fog. In her mind she could see her father clearly now, standing on the dock waiting for the ferry. Just dreams, that was all he had had forty years ago, dreams he had now passed on to her. Dreams he had made her promise to protect.
    “I can’t do it,” she whispered. “I can’t do it alone, Daddy.”
     

 
     
     
     
     

    PART ONE
    ADAM, 1925

 
     
    CHAPTER ONE
     
    The bay waters churned, green-gray and white, and the flat, slate sky was broken only by a flock of gulls straining against the wind. Adam Bryant pulled up his lapels to protect his neck, so nakedly exposed by the fresh haircut, and tucked his hands into his armpits. He watched the last car roll onto the ferry.
    The men on the pier began to cast off the lines. The ferry was behind schedule. He glanced at his wristwatch. Still plenty of time. But he did not want to be late, not this mo rning.
    Finally, t he ferry sputtered away from the pier and although his teeth were chattering, Adam stayed on the stern and watched the slow retreat of the East Bay waterfront.
    He had lived across the bay from San Francisco nearly all his life yet he had never really looked at his East Bay home from this vantage point. On the few times he had been on the ferry he had always looked at the San Francisco side, where the view was so enticing.
    Now he searched for landmarks, anything that would pinpoint Ocean View, the west Berkeley community where he had grown up. He was surprised, and slightly amused, by the nostalgic pull he felt. For the last ten years, he had done nothing but talk about leaving, and now he was feeling...what?
    He wasn’t sure. Not sad, certainly. He had no regrets about leaving the blue-collar Irish neighborhood. Still, there was something bittersweet about the part of his life that was coming to an end with this ride across the bay.
    Adam thought again of the scene in the Oakland Tribune office yesterday. He had gone in to pick up his final pay and the city editor, Joe Davenport, had pressed him again about why he was quitting. Adam told him it was just for the bigger salary.
    He didn’t have the heart to tell Joe the truth. Joe had, after all, taken him on at the Tribune six years ago when Adam was twenty, and he had taught him everything he knew about newspapers. And now Adam was repaying him by jumping across the bay to the San Francisco Times.
    Adam shivered, watching the Oakland shoreline shrink away , thinking about the scene in Joe’s office.
    I’m sorry, Joe . But the truth