“What I don’t get is…you seemed so happy. You were all about the food and the wine and I even caught you smiling at each other a few times.”
He rubs a hand down his face in a weary gesture. “We were happy. That was probably the singular bright spot in our marriage since you were born. Once we decided to give up the ghost, it was such a huge relief.”
“But, why? I still don’t understand,” I say, tossing a hand at her book, as if it were a conduit back to the past her. “You never fought or anything.”
He lowers his head and gives it a sad shake. “We both made mistakes. After a while, mistakes have a way of piling up and becoming an insurmountable obstacle between two people. We hadn’t been happy in a long time.”
“What mistakes?” I ask.
He looks a long time into my eyes before saying, “I made mistakes. There was someone…” He rubs his eyes. “I was having an affair. It had been going on for a few years.”
Now I’m the one shaking. There are so many answers I need—Who? Why? Did Mom know?—but I can see Dad shrinking into himself. I go to the window and stare out over the parking lot.
“I’ve spent the last two years trying to drown the truth in scotch and shift the blame, but it was always me. What happened was my fault.”
His voice breaks on the last word and when I turn I find his face in his hands.
“No, Dad,” I say, taking a tentative step his direction. “It was mine. I was driving. I should have pulled over, or...” The pulsing lump in the back of my throat chokes off my words.
He looks at me with damp, pleading eyes. “I don’t understand why she picked that moment to tell you. Why would she bring it up then?”
It’s only when he asks that I realize this is the first time we’ve had any sort of conversation about the accident. He’s needed answers all this time, but I can see he’s been too scared to ask—scared I’d take more pills, maybe, or just go for the razor to the wrists this time.
“It was me. She said she was going away again on book tour and I…” My face crumbles into despair. “I yelled at her…told her she’d abandoned us for her imaginary friends.” A tear trickles over my lashes and I scrub it away with my hand as I swallow the lump in the back of my throat. “I told her I hated her and if she left, she shouldn’t bother coming back…that we didn’t need her.”
As the words leave my mouth, I feel the black sludge that I’ve hidden away in all the dark corners of my soul start to ooze out through my pores, poisoning the air and making it impossible to breathe.
I brace myself against the window, but it’s not enough to keep my legs from giving way under the weight of my words. I slide into a heap at the base of the wall. “And then I killed her.”
There’s a choking, hiccupping sound, and when I lift my eyes, Dad’s head is in his hand and he’s sobbing.
I tip my head back against the wall. Tears stream across my temples into my ears as I do battle with the memory.
“I shouldn’t have…let you believe that all this time, Addie,” he chokes out between sobs. “I…should have…been there for you.”
I close my eyes and focus on breathing. In. Out. “The last thing she ever said was my name. She was begging me to try to understand, but I wouldn’t even listen. I just kept yelling at her.”
“While you were driving on a learner’s permit,” he says, heaving the book across the room with all his might. It smashes against the wall and drops with thud to the floor. “Why the fuck would she do that?” The question is a raw wound.
The answer is, because I forced her hand.
“Is everything okay in here?”
I look up as a woman comes rushing into the room.
“Bruce?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
He breaths a shaky breath and erases his tears with the heel of his hand. “My daughter and I are talking. Can we have a minute?”
She looks between us then shakes her head slowly. “Whatever this discussion is, I can see it needs to happen, but I think your focus right now needs to be your personal recovery, Bruce. I can refer you to an excellent family therapist once you’re discharged and you’ll have all the time you need to work out your issues with your daughter.”
She must be his therapist. I pull myself off the floor. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” I shake my head. “I’m sorry,” I say, snatching up the shopping bag and jogging out the door.
“Addie!” Dad calls to my back, but I don’t stop until I’m out the doors into the parking lot.
I sit on the bus stop bench, and while I’m waiting, I work on my normal mask. But Dad’s words crash around in my brain, shaking loose everything I’ve so carefully tucked away.
Pick a task and focus. Another of my anger man-agement techniques that seems to help.