34. Dana #2
I’d never been as angry at Dad as I was with Mom. He was guilty by association, yes, but he wasn’t the one that ruined my childhood. He was the highlight of it, other than my sister. But I didn’t understand why he was here.
“I’ll go if you want,” he said, his wrinkled hands raising as he took me in.
I wasn’t used to seeing this older version of him yet.
The gray in his hair was harsher, his goatee shorter, his mustache thinner.
He’d lost weight since I’d last seen him, and that was the biggest hurdle to come to terms with.
“Why are you here?”
“The nanny called me. She had a family emergency and you weren’t answering,” he said.
I did have a few missed calls from her but she’d followed them up with a text message saying, “Sorted!” so I didn’t think anything of it. “How did she get your number?”
“Well, she called Veronica first, and she directed her to me,” he said sheepishly, pushing himself up from the carpet with a grunt. “I figured you wouldn’t want Drew at our house so I came here.”
I sighed and shut the door behind me, dropping my bag and keys on the little table beside it. “It’s fine. You can stay.”
“Are you?—”
“Don’t question me, Dad. I’ve had a hard day, and if I say you can stay, you can.” I plucked Drew from his mat on the floor and tucked him into my chest as I collapsed on the couch. He giggled and wrapped his arms around my neck, trying to kick his way up my abdomen to get closer to me.
“Do you… want to talk about it?” Dad offered. He stepped behind the kitchen island that divided it from the living room, opening cabinet after cabinet until finding a kettle and pulling it out.
“You know what?” I laughed, the chaos driving me, Drew’s little face cheering me up as he tried and failed to plant a kiss on my cheek. “Sure. You’re probably the only one that could actually understand.”
The candidness with which I spoke surprised even me.
I told him everything as he sunk onto the couch beside me, two cups of peppermint tea in his hands.
I told him about how Cole and I had started, how I’d met him at Lottie’s as her father was dying, how we’d had an incredible time until that horrible night, when I’d left in a fit of rage, promising myself I wouldn’t see him again.
I told him about the turmoil I’d gone through when I’d found out I was pregnant, how I cried thinking about how the man who fathered him was a fucking dick, how I hadn’t put the pieces together.
I told him about my job and how Cole had returned, that I’d given him a second chance purely because of Drew.
The highs of it, the lows of it, and everything in between.
Dad listened, really listened, for the first time in years.
He let me talk about all of it, holding Drew when I needed a moment to calm myself.
He offered up his own anecdotes, his struggles in trying to get mom back to rehab, how he would kick himself every time she fucked up with us because he knew damn well we’d remember it.
He talked to me about how difficult it was loving someone with alcoholism, how hard it was to watch them fall when he knew she didn’t want to.
“It’s not something that’s fixed once and for all when you go to rehab,” he explained, his hand on my shoulder, his brown-eyed gaze boring a hole in my soul.
For once, I didn’t flinch. “It’s… sweetie, it’s a lifetime.
It’s always there. Your mother, she’s been sober for six years, and although it gets easier, the fight is always going on. For both of us.”
“I remember every time she stumbled,” I admitted, pulling Drew back from my father’s lap and watching as he desperately tried to reach for the giraffe on the coffee table.
I handed it to him. “Every time she forgot something, every time she made our lives a living hell. I don’t want Drew to have to go through that. ”
His lips pursed. “I understand that too,” he sighed.
“I thought about leaving your mother many times, for the sake of you and Vee. The possibility that this, what we have now, would happen. It haunted me. Sometimes I wish I’d done it.
But I couldn’t. I wasn’t half the person you are, Dana. I wasn’t strong enough for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I love your mother with every fiber of my being. I have since the moment I met her. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to function without her, at least not enough to bring up two hell-raising daughters on my own,” he laughed.
“Maybe I was selfish for not trying. But your mother… she’s my person, sweetie.
I didn’t think I could handle life alone, and I chose to fight it with her so I wouldn’t have to. ”
————
By the time Dad left, the sun had long since set, the street lights kicking on and bouncing off the shimmering snow.
I shut the door behind him, the only sound left in the house that of Drew’s little snores from his bassinet on the other side of the living room.
His breaths were back to normal, finally.
I was alone, for better or for worse.
I’d made my decision.
I leaned against the broken wood of my door. Everything I’d shoved down since I left work came bubbling up, every emotion, every tear, every drop of anger. I tried to stuff it down again, tried to keep myself from waking Drew, but the broken sobs took hold.
I slid down the door, burying my face in my knees, containing the sounds as best I could to keep him from waking. This was for the best. It had to be. But I felt like I was making the biggest, worst decision of my entire life.