Chapter 39
39
He doesn’t tell her that very last part.
He keeps it close to his chest, a secret to hold onto.
Something to tell the kids one day, his momma would say.
“I’m so sorry about your dad,” is the first thing I say, the first thing I can think of to say, after a long, long moment of contemplative silence.
I’m not sure at what point during the story-telling we relocated upstairs, but I know I regret it. It’s too small up here, too warm, too hard to resist the urge to take the few short steps from the kitchen to where Hunter sits on my bed, stroking two snoozing dogs, and hug him. When he lifts his shoulder in a sad half-shrug, I have to clutch the counter tightly to hold myself in place. “Thanks, honey.”
Drawing my bottom lip between my teeth, I contemplate where to go from here. Should I ask what happened? I want to. Call it morbid curiosity. Call it insensitive. Call it none of my business.
Call it written all over my face because without being asked, he softly says, “Heart attack.”
“Oh.”
“It was quick.”
“Quick is good.” My face drops. “Not good . I mean better. Better than—” slow , I was going to say. My mom went slow and watching her fade away was so hard—and I’m an asshole for comparing the two. “I’m sorry.”
With a wave of his hand that’s far too nonchalant for the subject matter, he shrugs again. “I know what you mean.”
Hunter would’ve been around my age when he died, I think. So much older than I was when I lost my mom. They had so much more time together—that must’ve made the loss so much harder. I remember my mom, but I don’t remember her. Not in any kind of vivid detail. What little memories I do have haunt me, and I can’t imagine having—
“Caroline,” Hunter calls softly. “It’s okay. I’m okay. It was a long time ago, and we weren’t all that close.”
I whisper, “He was still your dad.”
“That’s just a title, honey. Not a relationship.”
Is it in my head, or did that sound particularly pointed?
“I loved him,” Hunter continues. “I miss him. But I don’t let him haunt me. And he’s not what I wanna talk about.”
Right.
I drop my gaze, watching myself pick at a loose piece of the linoleum countertop. “That was the last time you saw Cheryl?”
“The day she showed up was the first time I’ve seen her since I left. That phone call I told you about was the first time we spoke.”
“Really?”
I glance up to see him nod.
I think that makes me feel better. It makes it feel… realer. The separation. And more serious; like he actually means everything he’s been telling me. But… God, but . “I don’t know how to believe you.”
He nods again, accepting and un-affronted, no frustration to be found—only sad desperation when he asks, “What can I do?”
I don’t know, I really don’t. I know… I know I want him. I know all I want is to forget this happened. But then I remember how I felt when Cheryl showed up and I remember her face when she wasn’t being horrible—which she does, actually, have every right to be because I’m the villain in this particular scenario, from her point of view, even though she did what she did and I don’t know.
Letting loose a frustrated breath, I turn away, striving for out of sight, out of mind, but God knows that doesn’t work. I still feel his presence. I’d sense it getting closer even if I didn’t hear his footsteps nearing.
Tentatively, something rests on my shoulder—a forehead, I think. Soft hair tickles my neck. A muffled voice murmurs, “I’m so, so sorry Caroline.”
I know. I do. I believe that, at least.
What can only be lips brush my skin, barely there but as warm as the words that leave them. “I miss you.”
My chest rattles with a sharp, shaky inhale as my eyes drift shut. Working on instinct or muscle memory or who knows what, I slowly turn around. Hot breath scorches my collarbone, and I imagine how he must look hunched over me, engulfing me, shielding me.
A huffed exhale makes me shiver when I hook my fingers around the belt loops of his jeans, my knuckles grazing his stomach, and another when I bury my face in the crook of his neck. “I miss you too.”
The big man curled around me trembles . He makes a noise I can only describe as unsteady, and I make a similar one when he slowly, warily, wraps his arms around my waist. He apologizes again, his mouth pinned to my temple as he keeps whispering sorrowful words like he hopes they’ll sink beneath my skin and take root and work .
They do, for a while. With each apology, I find myself slumping a little more, wilting under the weight of his regret. When they turn into featherlight kisses that skitter along my forehead, down the bridge of my nose, across the apples of my cheeks, I seek them out. I cup his cheek with a shaky hand. I turn my head.
I let him kiss me. Cautiously, then urgently. Determinedly, like he can fix things this way. Like if he kisses me enough, I’ll forget—if he kisses me enough, I might.
I can’t, though.
Using every ounce of my strength, I pull away. “I can’t.”
Through his panted breaths, I hear him say, “Okay.”
I hear him sigh, and I feel it too, a heavy exhale against my cheek that precedes the lightest brush of his lips. I hear him walk to the door and I wrap my arms around myself, I squeeze my eyes shut, I curl my toes in my shoes like that might keep me in place. I hear the door open, the creak of the top step, a hesitant breath and then the sharp inhale of a sentence cut off. If he says goodbye before leaving, I don’t hear it.
As soon as the telltale chime of the front door sounds, I sink to the ground, knees pulled up to my chest, my head hitting the counter behind me with a thud. The breath I blow out hurts my lungs with its ferocity, my scalp tingling with how hard I rake my fingers through my hair.
“What the hell are you doing?” I whisper to myself, and I’m actually disappointed when I don't have an answer.
How long I sit there, staring at nothing, I’m not sure. When my phone rings, it takes a whole minute for the noise to even penetrate the numb abyss that is my mind—and another minute more for me to frown at the unusually enthusiastic attempt to contact me. Without getting up, I blindly reach for where I left the device on the counter.
A handful of missed calls light up my lockscreen from the same unknown number as earlier—a voicemail, too.
I shouldn't listen to it. I know I shouldn’t. I should delete it, block the number, turn off my phone and sleep the rest of this awful day away.
I should know better than now; I should’ve learned.
Clearly, I haven’t.
My mind, body, soul, every single part of me is in full agreement; I should not be here. I shouldn’t even entertain the notion of clasping that familiar rusted handle and easing open a door in desperate need of painting.
Yet here I am. Pausing halfway when the door creaks like it always does. Creeping down a dark hallway. Ignoring the ominous pit in my stomach.
Where ya been, Linny? he said. Linny . No one’s called me Linny in years. Not since I was a scared child cowering beside a hospital bed, holding a frail hand attached to a frail woman, and feeling pretty frail myself. It sucker-punched me in the gut, that one single word rasped in a voice thick with cigarette smoke and beer-fuelled tears and… something different .
There were no drunken ravings, no belligerent snarls, no venom. Just Linny and I miss you and a non-apology, an I don’t know what happened, an I didn’t mean to , that’s a month too late, that I know he doesn’t mean; that I know wouldn’t make up for everything, even if he did mean it.
I know better, yet I fall for it anyway. I get worried anyway, spooked by his tone, forlorn and defeated and lonely, emotions I know all too well. I race over here and use the key I promised I would throw in the trash, to check on him because a voice in the back of my head won’t stop asking ‘ what if he’s not okay?’
What if he needs you?
What if he really means it?
A loud crash in the kitchen makes me jump. As I tiptoe towards it, my keys bite into my palm, every part of me tense with anticipation—with fear, really, but I won’t let myself acknowledge it. I won’t let myself be afraid of him, of my dad, in my house, not even if passing by the stairs makes me break out in a cold sweat.
Not even if the sight of him sitting at the kitchen table next to a cardboard box labeled with my mother’s name, scrawled in the handwriting of the mourning kid who packed it up, makes it so hard to breathe. “Dad, what’re you doing?”
I flinch when his gaze swings to me, taking an instinctive step back, stumbling another when his hand lifts in a jerky movement. For a second, he brandishes the item in his grip—just long enough for me to recognize the glass rose I haven’t seen for years, to confirm who left that poppy on my doorstep if I wasn’t already positive—before it falls to the ground and smashes into smithereens.
I could almost think it was an accident, that it just slipped from his grip, if the red shards didn’t join a rainbow of other broken pieces on the floor. If he didn’t stare at me while it dropped, gauging my reaction to the destruction of the floral figurines my mother spent years collecting, cherishing . If his mouth didn’t tilt in a sardonic grin that matches a slurred, “ Oops. ”
I don’t move. I don’t say anything. I don’t cry either, despite the tears burning my eyes. And I don’t stop him when he reaches in the box again, plucks out another fragile flower and tosses it near my feet, close enough that a piece of shattered petal hits the toe of my hiking boots. The third one he retrieves, though, makes me stand a little straighter—maybe because I remember the day my mom got it, because she gave it to me. The last birthday we ever spent together, she gave me the delicate orange daisy.
He knows. I see it in his face, his cruelly twisted face, that he knows . And when I take a feeble step towards him, the sound of glass crunching beneath my boots almost drowning out my weak plea to stop, he knew I was going to do that too, and he laughs . Devoid of humor or joy, rife with something so deeply unsettling, he laughs and slumps back in his seat, and he slurs, “I knew you’d come home.”
I’m not home , I want to say. This hasn’t been home in a while, and it’s all your fault.
Instead, I repeat, “What’re you doing?”
Another smash makes me wince. “Unpacking.”
“Where did you get those?”
I was so sure he threw them away. I was positive he did. I saw him throw them out, didn’t I? Or did he just tell me he did and then hide them away? I can’t remember, but seeing them, shattered and whole, makes my chest ache, melancholy and relief fighting for dominance.
In lieu of a response, he lets another slip through his fingers.
“Dad, stop it.”
He doesn’t. He fishes a crystalline blue iris out of the box and my heart pounds, my eyes itch, I retreat until my back hits the wall as I try to breathe, because that one was my mom’s favorite. “ Stop .”
“Why? It’s not like she’s coming back for them. She’s dead , Caroline. She doesn’t care about the fucking flowers.”
“Don’t you?” I find myself retorting, find myself almost yelling . “Don’t you care about anything ?”
Dad blinks, slow and dazed. “What the fuck do I have to care about, Caroline?”
I inhale sharply as the worst thing he’s ever said to me claws its way inside me and spreads like poison. He doesn’t care about me; I knew it. I’ve never heard it, though. I’ve felt it, I’ve experienced it, but I’ve never heard it.
The confirmation makes me shake.
“You’re pathetic,” I hear the words I’ve heard so many times before except, for once, they’re not aimed at me. For once, I’m the one saying them. I’m looking at my father, my drunk, despondent father, and I’m saying, “You are pathetic .”
“I didn’t do anything,” I’m saying too, I’m screaming . “I didn’t take her from you. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t do anything , so why do you hate me? ”
“Because you are her,” he’s yelling back, getting to his feet, clutching that damn iris—more coherent than I’ve seen him in years. “You’re a walking fucking reminder, Caroline. I can’t even look at you.”
“ Fuck you .”
It all happens so fast.
It doesn’t sink in, at first. I think I start crying—I think that’s why my face is wet. And then I bring my hand to my face, I touch the weird stickiness just below my eye, and I realize it’s not tears.
When I look at my fingertips, they’re stained red.
Because that iris? He threw it at me. It shattered against my face.
The next one he throws, I don’t see what it is, but it explodes on the wall beside my head, and a shard slices my cheek. My forehead too, I think, because I think that’s blood dripping in my eye.
“Why did you do that?” I whisper, and I feel so uncharacteristically numb when my dad simply shrugs. When he simply stares, almost indignantly, defensively—like a child, I realize. Like a child caught doing something wrong, but they don’t want to admit it.
I say, “You could’ve blinded me,” and he doesn’t care about that either, and I find myself not being myself, not crumbling or crying or running.
“Okay,” the girl who’s not quite me, the girl who’s infinitely braver than me—if only because she can form coherent words—says as she, as I , wipes a bloody hand off on her t-shirt. “I’m going to go now.”
The girl goes. She walks out the front door. And, with blood dripping down her face, she goes to the only place she’s ever felt safe.