“Proud of what you did out there, son. Eli said you had his back and shot true, even when you were injured.”
I join my hands together and continue to scan the woods. I’m not quiet because I’m proving a point. I’m quiet because I have no idea what to say to the emotions tearing me up.
“You scared me.” His voice is so low I can barely hear it. “There were a few minutes this weekend I was scared I was going to lose you...like I lost your mom.”
There’s hurt in his tone. The same agony mirrored within me.
“I don’t want that.” He talks like the words are a struggle. “I don’t want to lose you. Not to death... Not in life. I miss you here... I miss you at home.”
“Do you remember when Mom would laugh?” Because I’m not sure I can continue to listen to him. He’s saying what I want to hear, but it’s stuff I’m not sure how to process.
“What?” He’s confused and I understand why.
We don’t talk about Mom... I don’t talk about Mom. “Do you remember when something would hit her as funny and she would laugh?”
Because sometimes when I dream, I remember, but as each year passes, the memories become foggier and her laughter seems too far away.
“She’d get the hiccups, then she’d laugh harder.”
I smile at the memory that’s a mixture of a balm and acid on my heart.
“Your mom liked to laugh,” he says.
She did, and I hate I can barely recall the sound. “She cried that last month she was alive.”
Dad drops his head and doesn’t deny it.
“I tried to make her better before she left for work that day.” I clear my throat as I tell Dad something I never told anyone. “I gave her flowers I had picked outside.”
I half expected her to be mad. Three of them were from her flower box, but they were red and that was her favorite color.
Mom hugged me. Longer and tighter than she had before. She hugged me like she’d never hold me again and I held on to her believing that a ten-year-old’s love was enough to fix any wound. There’s a burning in my eyes and I fucking hate the loss of control.
Mom peeled me off her, grasped my shoulders and said those last words. Words that have haunted me since. Your father is a man worth forgiving.
I lower my head and scrub my hands over my face. I don’t know how to forgive him, Mom. Not if he hurt you. I don’t know how to forgive him for disrespecting the memory and love I had for you by bringing a parade of trash through our house. He kicked and spit on every good memory I had, and if you left me on purpose, then you destroyed anything that was good in me to begin with and I’m not sure I can forgive you for that.
“I miss her,” Dad says. “Every damn day.”
“Then why did you do it?” I demand. “If you loved her, why did you bring those women to her house? To my house? To our home?”
Dad grimaces and the fading rays of the sun hit the red in his hair. Mom loved his hair, saying they should have another child—a girl—so they could have one with hair like his.
“I wanted to forget the pain,” he says like he’s broken. “I wanted someone to erase the hurt, but the sad part was, they never did. Not one of them did.”
“Until now?” The pain leaks out of my voice before I can stop it.
There’s hurt in his eyes and I’m not sure why. Because he’s still in love with my mother, because he’s fallen in love with someone else, or a combination of both, I don’t know and after what’s taken place between us it’s hard to find a reason to care. But fuck me, I do. I do care about my father. He’s all the blood family I have left.
“Can we put away the shit that’s between us?” Dad asks. “For tonight. I promise our problems will be there in the morning, just like they have been since your mom died.”
I nod, and when I straighten, Dad hugs me high. Hands off my patch and he’s careful of my arm. It’s fast and strong and I hug him just as quick and with the same amount of emotion.
Dad keeps a hand on my neck as we walk in, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he had wiped his eyes. The door shuts behind us and Dad calls out, “Let’s eat!”
Breanna
THE DEFINITION OF AWKWARD: riding home with a girl who knows my boyfriend better than I do and yet we have absolutely nothing to talk about on the twenty-minute drive.
Violet is pretty. Fire-red hair, a bit taller than me. She has this bohemian look I’ve envied since middle school. Why it works with her—the ton of bracelets on her wrist, the whimsical way she can wear a pair of ripped jeans and a tank top with gemstones in a way I can’t pull off—is because she has the I-don’t-care-if-I’m-not-going-the-same-way-as-the-world outlook.
Pathetic thing? I just now realize it’s not the clothes she’s wearing that make me envious, but the attitude. I wish I could be in every aspect of my life what Razor says I am—I wish I could be fearless about telling Kyle that his pictures have no power over me, but in this area, I’m drowning in defeat.