The plate shattered, sending jagged shards of the dish and bits of the sandwich shooting in all directions like shrapnel. Angie ducked and covered her ears, startled and scared.
“Enough!” Gabriel yelled again. “I will not be spoken to this way!”
“You’re hiding something!” Angie screamed back at him, pointing her finger at his face. “What the hell are you hiding?”
Gabriel turned and stormed out of the kitchen. He went to the TV room and turned on the television, cranking the volume.
“Talk to me, Dad.”
Gabriel wouldn’t respond, so Angie went back to the kitchen and cleaned up the mess.
Time passed, and Angie’s hopes that her father would relent began to dim. She went into the living room and sat on the sofa. The announcer for some History Channel documentary was the only one talking.
After some time, still not having said a word, Gabriel rose from his favorite chair and Angie trailed him into the spacious first floor office adjacent to the living room. Sun spilled inside through a bank of windows overlooking the backyard—a yard still in need of mowing.
Unwilling and unable to endure the silence a moment longer, she decided to press him again. She touched his shoulder. A connection made. “What are you hiding from me, Dad?” she asked in a gentler voice.
Gabriel kept his back to his daughter, sorting through some papers on the desk, pretending not to hear her. He was breathing hard.
“Did Mom have an affair? Am I Antonio Conti’s daughter? What is it? What?”
“No,” Gabriel said harshly, turning to face her. “It’s none of that.” His voice carried less of an edge, suggesting to Angie that he might be softening.
“Then what?” Angie’s eyes were pleading as she reached for her father’s hand. “It’s enough. Just tell me.”
Gabriel titled his head slightly and gazed at his daughter with love in his eyes. “Enough is right,” he said in a quiet voice, almost to himself. “I should have known you wouldn’t let it go. I had hoped, but . . . maybe it’s time. Maybe all this has happened for a reason. You’re safe now. That’s enough for me.”
“I don’t understand.”
Gabriel touched Angie’s cheek with two plump fingers, one of which still carried his wedding ring. He set his hands on her shoulders. His back was turned to the bank of windows, and sunlight streaming in lit him in an angelic glow. Angie saw herself reflected in the lens of her father’s glasses. She looked misshapen, not unlike how she felt.
“You would figure it out one way or another. I have no doubts about that. None whatsoever. But no matter what happens, no matter what I tell you,” Gabriel said, “please know I love you very much, and I’m so incredibly proud of the woman you’ve become.”
“Daddy, what is it?” Angie’s chest tightened. Dread overwhelmed her.
“I’m so sorry,” Gabriel said, sputtering his words as tears welled in his reddened eyes.
To Angie, it looked as though he had aged a dozen years in a matter of seconds. “Tell me, please.”
Instead of her father’s voice, the next sound Angie heard was a whip cracking noise, followed by the sound of breaking glass. The noise startled her. It was loud and unexpected and it sounded very close by.
Gabriel lurched forward, knocked off balance. He fell hard into Angie and his momentum carried them both to the floor where they landed in a tangled heap.
Did he have a heart attack? Angie’s thoughts were reeling and her father’s weight felt crushing. Using her arms and legs for leverage, she rolled her father off her body. He spilled onto his back, breathing erratically, eyes glued to the ceiling, head not moving.
“Dad, are you all right?”
Angie felt a stab of fear when her father didn’t respond. On her hands and knees, she leaned over her father’s face and tried to get a look into his eyes. She felt something warm and wet spread against her fingertips.
She looked behind her and saw that the floor around her father’s lower back was coated in red where blood was seeping out. Her fingers were sticking into the blood.
Angie screamed and rolled Gabriel onto his stomach, seeing for the first time the hole in his denim shirt, singed around the edges as though the fabric had been burnt. Blood gushed out the hole and spread across Gabriel’s denim shirt.
Angie pressed her hand against the wound, but blood pulsed through the cracks of her fingers. “Dad! Dad! Oh my God! Oh God!”