Chapter 40
My fingers felt numb as I held the phone to my ear.
“How are you, love?” my dad sang in his charming British accent. “You sound happy, which makes me happy.” Words. Empty words. He was good at them. Good at saying things and making it sound like he meant them. But I knew better.
I swallowed, my eyes darting to the clock in the car. Five. I did some quick mental math. One o’clock in the morning London time. “It’s late. How are you calling so late?”
“It’s seven PM. I’m not that much of an old man yet.”
“Seven PM?” I didn’t understand. My brain and all the thoughts in it seemed to freeze. “Seven PM?” I repeated.
“How is your mother?” he asked.
“Not well,” I said.
“Recovery from an accident takes time. She’s a fighter though. She’ll be back at it again in no time.”
“No, I’m not sure that she … Dad, how is it seven PM? Are you not in London?”
He laughed. “Of course not. I’m at home. In New Orleans.”
“Home?”
“I play the fiddle in a band here. You know this.”
I did not, in fact, know this. “No … I … for how long? Does Mom know?”
“Yes, dear, she knows.” He didn’t answer my “how long” question, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
I wasn’t even sure if the answer he’d provided about my mom knowing his location was an honest one.
How could my mom know that? And if she did, I could see why she’d be more hurt that he hadn’t come after her accident.
“Then why aren’t you here?” I asked. “Helping?”
“I have commitments, love.”
“Stop,” I snapped. “Stop with the endearments, please. We’re not … you’re not … you should be here.”
“You need to have more faith in her. Your mother is a strong woman, she’ll pull through.”
“She’s really not. You don’t know her at all. She still wants you here, needs you here.” I wasn’t sure why I was even asking him to come. He hadn’t come in years and years. Why would any of that change now?
“Oh, I don’t know about all that, but I do know she has you and that’s the greatest thing for her right now. I’m so happy you’re with her. I’m sure it’s aiding in her recovery more than you know.”
“Dad, I’ve never asked you for anything.
Anything at all.” I hadn’t asked him to come to my high school or college graduation (my mom had), I hadn’t asked him for help opening the restaurant, I hadn’t even asked him to call me on my birthdays.
“But I’m asking you now, please, can you come home and give Mom some closure at the very least? Please. I’m begging you.”
“Well…” He paused for a moment, probably trying to put together whatever sweet-talking excuse he could come up with.
“I’ll see. I’ll look at my schedule and maybe…
” As he was saying it, I realized he was only saying what I wanted to hear.
He had never come before. He was not coming now. He would never come in the future.
“Okay, you do that. And while you’re at it, don’t ever call me again.” With those words, I disconnected the call and threw the phone onto the passenger seat next to me. I immediately pushed my forehead to the steering wheel, tears burning behind my eyes. I took a deep breath in through my nose.
No. He did not get to have this kind of emotional power over me. I knew who he was. I always had. He meant nothing to me.
I pushed myself away from the steering wheel and started the car, driving to fulfill my next task, shutting off all emotions.
“That will be about fifteen minutes,” the pharmacy tech said.
“Okay, sounds good. I’m just going to do some shopping.”
“Yes, of course. We’ll call your name when it’s ready.”
I nodded and went to the front of the store to collect a shopping cart.
I still felt numb from the phone call with my dad.
I had always thought that if I just asked him, really asked him, to come visit or come home, he would.
Maybe that’s why I never had, because I wanted to keep that little speck of hope alive that he cared at all.
If I never gave him the opportunity to say no, he would never actually say no.
I guess technically he still hadn’t said no, but my heart knew a no when I heard it.
I picked up a box of spaghetti noodles and placed it in my cart along with a jar of sauce. That’s when I heard voices, floating over the shelves from the next aisle. They were loud, and the man’s I recognized right away as Michael. He was laughing and saying, “So many issues.”
“Daddy issues,” the other voice said. At first, I figured it was Tara, but it didn’t sound like Tara. The voice did sound familiar though. “The worst kind.”
Michael laughed again. “It doesn’t matter. Eli said it’s temporary. He’s just having fun, so stop analyzing.”
Temporary. The word seemed to hit me between the eyes but also right in the gut. I braced myself on the cart.
“Oh, excuse me, I wouldn’t want to interrupt his fun,” the woman said. “Or yours.”
Who was that? I recognized her voice but couldn’t place it.
I finally got my legs to work and pushed the cart down the aisle and rounded the corner.
I stopped just before clearing the shelves.
Did I want to know? Of course I did. I quietly pushed the cart forward and saw someone worse than I was imagining.
The couples therapist. Our couples therapist. Dr. Sara Franklin. Michael was with Dr. Franklin. Was something going on between them? At the very least they were friends, and that meant Michael picked his friend to be our therapist so he could win a bet.
That little shithead! Big shithead.
Then something else hit me. Did Elijah know? This whole time?
He had to know, right? If this woman was Michael’s friend, Elijah probably knew her too. I thought back to our sessions. Had they acted familiar? I remembered a pointed look or two. And there was that time I’d come after Elijah and found them chatting it up in her office.
Shit. Elijah knew too. I was the one who got played. Me and Tara.
I backed up quickly but obviously wasn’t looking because I ran into a display of Sponge Daddys. The cardboard stand fell, and packages of sponges, with their little smiling faces, scattered across the floor. Dr. Franklin and I locked eyes.
I saw her mouth the word “Fuck.”
Michael looked at her in confusion, and then he was also mouthing an expletive as his gaze landed on me. Then they were both rushing toward me, and I was trapped by a floor full of sponges. I dropped down, gathering them up.
The loudspeaker above us crackled to life: “Sutton, your pharmacy pickup is ready.”
“Sutton,” Michael said, “this isn’t what it looks like.”
“I don’t want to hear your terrible excuses,” I said. Then I looked at Dr. Franklin, remembering what she’d said about my daddy issues minutes ago. She was telling people that? What else had she told everyone? “You don’t practice patient-therapist confidentiality?”
“No … I mean, yes. I mean, this isn’t what it looks like.”
“You can lose your license over something like this.” I deposited my armful of sponges onto the nearest shelf and righted the cardboard display.
“Please don’t turn her in,” she said.
“Her? What does that mean?”
“Sara … Dr. Franklin. That’s my sister.”
“What?”
“I was just borrowing her office after hours. She didn’t know. It was supposed to be funny.”
“Funny?” I asked in disgust. “You’re not even a therapist?”
“I will be, I mean, I’m studying to be. I’m sorry.”
My face must’ve displayed how I felt about those statements because she shook her head and added, “I screwed up.”
“You knew? The whole time you knew we weren’t a couple?” I asked. Here I’d been spouting off about how mine and Elijah’s chemistry was so strong that she couldn’t guess we were strangers. Really, it was because she knew all along. “This was some sick prank?”
Her mouth opened, then closed.
“Don’t tell Tara,” Michael said. “Please. I will. I’ll tell her.”
“You have twenty-four hours,” I said, and now that my path was clear of sponges, I wheeled away.
“I’m so sorry!” Fake Dr. Franklin called after me.
I held up my hand. “Save it.” Because I didn’t want to hear anything else she had to say. I couldn’t, not right now. Not with anger bubbling in my chest and tears pooling behind my eyes. They didn’t get to see me like this.