Mel looked at her, shocked she’d blurted out the question like that. It hadn’t been the plan, mainly because Summer said she’d never be able to ask him directly, that she’d chicken out.
But she was standing there, holding on to Mel’s hand for dear life, and from the looks of it, Caleb’s as well. Holding on to their strength and doing something that just hours before she’d claimed she couldn’t.
There was probably a lesson in that, if Mel wanted to look for it, but Dad’s answer interrupted any lessons.
“Yes.”
Summer’s grasp loosened, but Mel held on. Held on because…well, she didn’t know. For the first time in her life, holding on to someone seemed like the right thing to do, the thing that would get them through the other side.
Yeah, definitely a lesson.
“Dad, you need to explain this to us,” Mel said, her voice far more authoritative than she felt.
He’d turned away from them, his wheelchair halfway out the other entrance toward the hallway to his room.
A sigh, silence, his body kind of slumped. “I knew your mother was pregnant when she left.” He let that hang in the air. “What more do you want to know?”
“Why?” Caleb demanded, finding words Mel couldn’t. “How? How could you have never told us? How could you have let that happen? How could you, when she…”
Dad glanced at Caleb, and the look they shared hinted at all kinds of deeper secrets. Dear God, what on earth was happening with her family? What had happened that she’d never known about?
“She told me she was leaving. That she couldn’t stand being here for another second, and when I argued…” The first flicker of emotion crossed his profile, his hands tensing on his chair. There was a long pause before he finally spoke again, raspy and uneven. “She said she’d take Mel and disappear if I tried to stop her.” Then he shrugged, all hints of emotion gone. “So I didn’t.”
Take Mel and disappear. Take her and disappear. Mel glanced at Caleb, the flicker of an emotion she’d seen many times and never understood on his face. She still didn’t understand, but Mom only wanting to take her didn’t make any sense. Surely Dad misspoke.
“But…that was over twenty years ago,” Summer said, her voice small and wavery but there, ringing out. “You had all this time.”
“To do what?”
“Find me. Be there for me.”
“You had your mother.”
“But I could have had this.”
Dad looked around like he didn’t understand what this meant, and Mel thought maybe he didn’t. Maybe the paralysis had taken away all his love for this place, or maybe it had been gone long before, only she hadn’t wanted to see it.
Or maybe, worst of all, he’d pushed away all the love and good because he was afraid it would break him. Because it had so many times before.
It was hard to breathe past that thought, because it struck a chord so deep it roused all the feeling she was trying to ignore. Push away. Forget.
All to end up like her father? No, no she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be the one in a roomful of people begging for her love and pushing it away because it was too much, too hard, too scary.
She’d take that burning lance of pain every time someone left or disappointed her over this…not living. What was the point of being alive, so many years stretching before her, if none of it mattered? Not her family, not Shaw, not…
Love.
She loved Dan. Her heart ached for him. Even when she tried to push thoughts of him away, even when she tried to pretend he didn’t exist, he was there. In her heart. She couldn’t muscle through that or pretend it away. She just wasn’t that strong, and for the first time in her life, she was glad she was weak.
“I did what I thought was right,” Dad said, his tone flat and emotionless. “I’m sorry if that hurt you.”
“That’s…it?”
“I can’t move my legs and I can’t even take care of myself half the time. I am and have nothing. What else would you want from me?”
“A father.”
Summer’s answer repeated in Mel’s head. It reminded her of all of the things she’d ignored and pushed away for five years. Ever since the accident, she’d just been so glad he was alive, so much so that she’d accepted the emptiness he’d become, because at least he wasn’t dead.
It wasn’t enough anymore, and being afraid of saying that, of hurting him…it didn’t matter anymore.
Better to break and fix than ignore, or lie, or pretend.
“I would like that too,” she said, squeezing Summer’s hand.
“Same for me,” Caleb said.
The three of them, standing in a line, holding hands and asking for their father back. It was like nothing that had ever happened to her, and the hope hurt as much as it lightened the heavy load she’d been carrying.
“He’s gone,” Dad said, and their breaths seemed to collectively whoosh out as Dad wheeled out of the room.
There was no denying the sting of hurt and betrayal and abandonment, but they had asked, and Mel wanted to believe that it was the first step. That they would try again and receive a different answer.