Chapter 19
Chicot ignored the crowd for the entire performance.
Thanks to all of the practice, she was able to easily make her way through without a single issue.
Save for one moment where she moved wrong and her already sore ankle gained a newer, sharper pain.
It had largely faded by the time they took their bows, walking the crowd to collect tips afterwards as they always did.
Chicot swapped the jigs she did for people when they tipped her with a cute waggle of her head.
It looked cartoonish, and people seemed to understand it was a thank you.
The crowd had mostly cleared and Chicot hadn’t seen her dad, so she hoped that maybe he had just been there to confirm and now he was gone. Guess he needed to know for sure his daughter had grown up to be a clown.
It was as she was leaving to do crowd work and promote their show that she saw him again.
He was waiting by a large tree, his hands in his pockets.
His eyes were green, face no more wrinkled than it had been the last time she’d seen him, but he’d grown his mustache back out to the thick, fuzzy brown caterpillar that he’d had when Chicot had been in elementary school.
Chicot tried to walk by him like she hadn’t really noticed him, but he sighed and followed her.
“Listen—” He was jogging to keep up. “Gen—Ah, Chicot, was it? Is that what you’re goin’ by now?”
His footsteps were loud, but his voice was low enough that no one really looked their way.
Chicot stopped when he called her chosen name, her thoughts completely scrambling to the point that she felt like she couldn’t walk.
She nodded once, blinking at him. She had never expected to hear him say that name.
She’d thought he’d keep calling her Genevieve even if hearing that made her want to crawl out of her skin.
But here he was, calling her Chicot and staring back at her.
He seemed to gather that he had a chance, pushing his hat up as he took a breath. He wasn’t out of shape necessarily, but he had a beer belly and he didn’t exactly run much on the farm.
“I just wanted—Wait, I wrote this down.” He stopped and held up a finger, as if asking her to humor him.
Then he pulled a note card from his pocket, his voice changing slightly as he started to read aloud.
“I don’t know what your mom said to you, and I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, but I don’t care if you want to date girls.
You’re my kid and I love you no matter what. ”
Chicot’s mouth dropped open, but now with him reading like this, people were looking.
In particular, some of the performers were signaling at Chicot to see if she needed help.
She made the hand sign to let them know she was okay, then grabbed her dad’s wrist, yanking him along so they weren’t in the very middle of the faire.
He went with no fight, just following, and let Chicot push him basically into the bushes along one of the fences.
“What?” Chicot was ninety percent sure she had hallucinated some part of what he had just read to her. Or maybe all of it. Her dad looked at the note card he was still clutching and then he frowned.
“Did I not phrase that well? I got it online from one of those Reddit forums,” he admitted.
Chicot pulled her mask off now, her brow furrowed.
What had her dad been doing? It sounded like he’d been on the parenting forums or something, which was weird because he’d always said parenting books were useless.
It seemed to Chicot like that would apply to Reddit forums as well.
“You know what Reddit is?” Chicot asked, her mouth hanging open slightly. It seemed to have been open since he’d started reading from the notecard. Her dad huffed, his mustache wiggling.
“Yeah, where do you think I look when I need to fix our thirty-year-old tractor?” He crossed his arms. “Listen, focus. I’m trying to tell you something important.”
Actually, that was a fair point. Chicot looked up at him again, his face and jaw so much like hers, but with a mustache under a nose much larger than her own.
His shoulders were stiff, his palms turned up, one hand still holding the notecard.
This was genuine, but Chicot still had a nagging little voice in the back of her head telling her that this road could lead right back to her mom.
She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted her dad to mean the things he’d read.
“What did Mom tell you?” Chicot hugged herself tight around the middle. Her dad sighed and kind of spun his hands in a circle as he tried to come up with words.
“The details aren’t important,” he said. “But she said you were gay.”
“I’m not gay. I’m bi,” Chicot clarified on instinct. Mostly because it was something she normally had to correct people on. She did like men. She found herself attracted to them. Still, it was probably best to be honest and straightforward.
“Well, that’s fine too.” Her dad rubbed his neck, shuffling on his feet. “I know you left because of it either way, so when I saw you here, I just wanted to tell you that I’m not like your mom. I don’t care.”
Chicot looked down at her feet, chewing on her lip.
When she looked up at him again, he was still staring right at her, his posture rounded as he leaned toward her slightly.
She didn’t really understand. If he didn’t care, then she should have heard from him.
It had been almost a year before her phone had broken. He’d had plenty of time.
“But you didn’t call?” The corners of Chicot’s eyes started to sting. Her dad fumbled for a second and then he shook his head.
“Your mom told me you didn’t want to hear from us.” His jaw was set now, his hands balling into fists, crushing the notecard. “That you said not to call until you called us.”
Chicot’s breath caught in her throat, a sob threatening to escape. Her dad hadn’t taken her mom’s side. He hadn’t decided his wife was more important than she was.
“No.” She shook her head. “Mom told me you’d never want to see me again. She told me to get out and never come back.”
“God, I—” Her dad rubbed his temple. “I’m sorry, Chicot. I didn’t know. I thought that maybe you just wanted some independence.”
Chicot had assumed her whole family was gone. That at most, she’d get to be with her siblings again once they were old enough to get out from under her parents’ thumbs, but that hadn’t been the case at all. She hiccupped, wiping at her face as her vision swam.
“No!” Chicot wrapped her arms around her middle, clutching her mask tightly as she shook her head. A sob slipped past her lips. “No, I went to Elijah’s. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“I owe that boy and his parents so much.” Her dad sighed. “I’m so sorry, Chicot. I should have called. I—Here.”
Her dad stepped forward, pulling her into a tight hug.
Chicot settled herself against his chest, the bells on her head jingling slightly.
He held her there, and the world felt less like it was going to slip right out from under her.
She pressed her face into his shoulder, the off-putting scent of his sweat oddly comforting.
It felt like every hug he’d given her at the farm, when he’d come in from tending the cows, stinking slightly but still very much wanted.
When they separated, her dad kept his hands on her shoulders, making sure she was steady as she wiped the tears from her face. She slipped a hand under her hood, adjusting her hair so it laid smoother and swallowing a lump in her throat. Chicot needed water.
“Listen, I know you’re at work, but one more thing.
” He pulled out his wallet, starting to rifle through it.
Eventually, he produced a debit card, offering it to Chicot.
Genevieve Laurens written out in sharp letters on it, but it wasn’t for a bank she had an account with.
He handed her the notecard he’d been reading from too.
“I wanted to give you this,” he said. “It’s the college fund we set up for you when you were just a baby. The rest of the info is on the back of the notecard. I figured it could do you some good now.”
Chicot stared, her mind blank as she held them in her hands, flipping them over to see the information on the backs. Even if it was just a few hundred dollars, it would probably help so much.
“I know it’s not a real apology for everything, but it’s something, I hope,” her dad hedged.
She looked up at him again, her eyes glistening with tears, so much that she couldn’t really see straight.
Chicot flipped the notecard back over, reading at his scratchy handwriting with the words of acceptance he had read to her.
They were more important to her than the money.
Before Chicot could move to hug her dad again, a presence appeared at her side, the jangle of tiny bells on Sunnie’s belt alerting her to who he was as he set a hand down on her shoulder.
“Chicot, is everything okay here?” Sunnie didn’t look at her, instead locking his eyes on her dad. She lifted her fingers to her face, trying to get rid of the rest of the tears.
“Ah, I’m sorry.” Her dad held up his palms. “I just wanted to give her some money. I didn’t want to get her in trouble or anything.”
“No, it’s—” Chicot squeezed her eyes shut.
Her dad probably didn’t even realize that Sunnie was worried he had cornered a young female performer or how what he’d just said sounded.
Not that Chicot was slacking off at work.
“It’s fine, Sunnie. This is my dad. He was just giving me my college fund since, well, I’m not going to college. ”
Sunnie relaxed slightly, looking down at Chicot, and he nodded. “Oh, I see. Sorry I misunderstood. It’s nice to meet you.”
He shook her dad’s hand, and for a moment, Chicot felt very strange about the two of them meeting. Sunnie and her dad were alike in many ways, and so different in others.