Mistakes We Never Made

22 Friday Afternoon

(One day before the wedding)

FINN’S HANDS CRADLE MYcheek. “Emma, are you okay?” His voice is thick with fear.

I blink twice to reorient myself as everything comes racing back. Our fight. The crash. The driver’s side door is open, and Finn squats on the road beside me. “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? Your head…”

I reach up to my temple—it’s sore, but I don’t feel any blood. I’ve had a concussion before, from a nasty field hockey check in high school—luckily, I don’t feel any of those symptoms now. I’m grateful we were going under the speed limit when I lost control of the Singer. “My head is fine,” I say to Finn.

“Thank god.” His hands drop to my shoulders like he wants to pull me into a hug, but at the last minute, he seems to realize what he’s doing. He pulls back, gives my shoulder a tight squeeze, and stands. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“I can do it,” I say, but I wince as I unbuckle my seat belt and step into the street. The car is on a slant, halfway into a grassy ditch that lines the highway.

“Right,” he says and steps back, burying his hands in his pockets as if it’s taking everything he has not to touch me.

I reach up to my collarbone and hiss. The seat belt rubbed my skin raw and underneath, I feel the soft puffiness of a bruise beginning to form.

“Let me see.” Finn’s fingers move toward the collar of my shirt, but he waits for my nod before pulling it gently to the side to inspect. His fingers hover over my skin. “Hold on.” He rummages through the back of the Porsche and returns with a first aid kit. “I’m sorry I only have alcohol wipes.”

“I can handle it.” I grit my teeth at the sting, but I refuse to make a sound. Finn is efficient, at least. After three quick swipes, he squeezes some Neosporin onto his finger and dabs it along my chafed skin. He’s close enough that through the acrid smell of tire tread and car exhaust I can smell his skin and that familiar mix of woodsmoke and lavender. All I want is to bury my face in his chest, to let him pull me into that hug. I nearly give in to it, but a car zips by, and we break apart.

Once Finn is satisfied he’s tended to all my bumps and scrapes, we inspect the damage to the car. “It looks like the front right tire blew.” Finn points to the remains of shredded rubber hanging from the tire rim.

“I’m sorry. I’m not used to driving a car with the engine in the back. I should have just let you drive.”

“Who’s to say I would have handled it any better?” Finn asks. But I think back to how smoothly Finn moved between gears, how expertly he maneuvered the car, how he held my hand in his and shifted with the other. I wince again, but this time it’s not in pain, it’s in embarrassment. We might still have a blown tire if Finn was behind the wheel, but we probably wouldn’t have careened off the side of the road.

“Do you have a spare tire?” I ask. “I can help change it.”

“I do not.”

“That’s not very prepared of you, Mr. Boy Scout.” It’s a poor attempt at a joke, but after nearly killing us both, it’s either make a joke or break down crying.

Finn shoots me an understanding look. “You’re right. I did not prepare to have my car hijacked by a small elfin woman and run off the road.” He smiles.

“Maybe next time you’ll make better contingency plans.”

“Next time, I will just tie you to the seat.” He’s still smiling, but now there’s heat in his eyes. My skin prickles at the thought of Finn’s hands around my wrists. With gallons of adrenaline coursing through me, all I want to do is reach for Finn and put all this nervous energy to good use. But as the shock from the crash fades, my walls begin to go back up. Our argument from moments before is still echoing in my ears. Finn calling me out on my passive-aggressive behavior, saying I micromanage everyone around me in order to avoid dealing with my own emotional shit. So I wrap my arms around myself instead.

Finn digs his phone out of the car and calls AAA. He makes a second call to Singer.

For the next thirty minutes, we stand at opposite ends of the car, waiting for the tow truck.

When it finally pulls up, the guy who climbs out looks like he’s been towing cars since the Model T was invented, but he’s spry enough to attach the winch to the Singer without any help. We grab our things out of the car and watch while the tow truck pulls the car from the ditch. There’s a loud scrape, and Finn grimaces. It must be more than he can take, because he turns around and drags his hands through his hair again.

“Don’t feel too bad, son. These roads are a mess,” the tow truck driver says through his open window. Finn just nods. When the Porsche is out of the ditch and safely stored on the truck, Finn gives the address of the Singer-approved mechanic to the driver.

“I can give you guys a lift, but only as long as it’s going back toward that repair shop in Flagstaff.”

“That’d be great. Maybe there’s a café or something nearby where we can hang while we figure out our next move.” Finn seems relieved to have something to look at that isn’t the scarred remains of the Singer—or me—and begins to navigate to the search app on his phone, looking for a Starbucks.

But we’re in the middle of nowhere. And as I open my phone and look at the map, something dawns on me. Something that feels like a mix of dread and deep certainty. We’re not just in the middle of nowhere. We’re in the middle of a very specific nowhere. Just outside a town name I recognize from return address labels on birthday cards…

“Actually…” I hesitate. This is the last thing I want to offer up, but it’s a logical solution to our problem. And more than that, it feels like fate. Maybe I’m just eager to prove Finn wrong about my supposed avoidance issues. Or maybe it’s something more, like our talk last night broke open a wound that I can no longer avoid tending to. I remember Finn’s words: Parents have to love their kids. Kids get to choose if they love their parents. And then I take a deep breath and tell him the truth: “I think my dad lives around here. We could wait it out at his place.”

“You think?” Finn pauses and looks up at me.

I feel wobbly, and I’m not sure if it’s from the injury just now or the choice inside my heart that seems to be making itself, whether I agree with it or not. “Let me call Liz and get his address.” Because yeah, no, I don’t actually know exactly where my dad’s house is. I’ve never been to it in my life.

For starters, I haven’t been invited.

Liz picks up on the third ring. “What’s up, buttercup?” she asks brightly.

“I just got in a car wreck.” I hate how small my voice sounds.

The playfulness in her voice disappears. “Oh my god, Em. Are you okay? What happened?” It’s weird, hearing her concern—a total role reversal for us. It’s almost always Liz calling me with some sort of disaster I need to walk her through.

“I’m fine. A tire blew, and I couldn’t turn in to the skid like a normal car.”

“Uh-huh.” Liz knows and cares about cars as much as our mom does, which is to say, not at all.

“I’m also, kind of, maybe, near Dad.”

There’s an excited “Oh!” on the other end of the line, and then a heavy pause. “Wait. What are you doing in Arizona? Isn’t Sybil getting married tomorrow?”

“Kind of. I don’t know.” I turn away from the road and look across the desert. “It’s a long story.”

“I bet. Hold on, let me check your location. I’m putting you on speaker.” There’s another pause, as Liz navigates to her Find My Friends app. “You are very close to Dad,” she confirms.

“Can you send me his address?”

“Sure, but you can always just call him to ask for it. Or maybe text. He’s better with texting.” While I’ve pretty much cut all contact with my dad, Liz keeps up with him semi-regularly. For her it’s just as easy to have a relationship with Dad as it would be with any other adult who’s vaguely in our orbit. Like Mom’s coworkers we see at holiday parties, or our great-aunt Lilla, who always brings lemon squares to family reunions. She doesn’t remember Dad as Dad. When he left, she was too young to have formed any memories of him as an actual parent. She doesn’t remember the chili he used to make, or the way he’d let me sit on his lap to drive past the last few mailboxes leading up to our house, or his ridiculous attempts to braid hair. But I do. I have a bleeding space in the shape of a father, while Liz has an amorphous emptiness that expands and contracts. I don’t think that it’s necessarily easier for her, but I do think there are moments when she forgets that she even has a parent other than our mom. I never forget. I had a dad, who I loved more than anything, and he left. The idea of being cordial with him after how badly he hurt me seems impossible, so I just stay away. I’m not going to chase after my dad again. I’ve already, literally, been down that road before.

But now, I’m going to face him head-on. Finn says he thinks parents have no choice but to love their children, but he’s clearly wrong. My dad made a choice, and it wasn’t to love us unconditionally. And I deserve, at long last, to know why.

There’s a ping, and a text from Liz comes through with the address. When I pull it up in the map app, I’m shocked at how close we truly are. That feeling of fateful inevitability sweeps over me again.

Holding my phone out to the tow truck driver, I ask, “Can you take us here?”

He squints. “No problem, kids. Hop in the cab.”

Finn and I cram in together with all our belongings, and I try not to let any part of my body touch his. I call my dad twice on the way there to let him know we’re coming, but he doesn’t pick up. My pulse starts to hammer in my neck as we get closer, every muscle in my body coiling and tense. It’s a good thing I’m not the one driving now, because I’d probably be unable to stop myself from hitting the brakes and turning around. Anxiety crawls up my chest, into my throat.

The driver drops us off in front of a shabby house with a xeriscape front yard and a large collection of terra-cotta turtles arranged atop the crushed gray rock that covers most of the ground. There’s a longhorn made of scrap metal tucked beside the front porch, but it’s an old 3 Series BMW that convinces me we’re in the right place.

I knock twice on the front door before a flash of navy catches my eye, and I freeze. Parked beside the Bimmer is my dad’s old Wagoneer. The same car he drove away in nearly two decades ago.