Chapter 4
Karla
It took a solid three weeks for my father to realize I hadn’t been attending school. It probably had something to do with me telling the front office that our family was on a two-month vacation. I forged Dad’s signature on the paperwork, got all my homework ahead of time, and I was set to go.
I knew the jig was up when I overheard Dad shouting at Ellie in his office about the incident. Ellie wasn’t fired right away, which annoyed me. What frustrated me more was that after weeks of sneaking away to visit Mom during the school day, I wouldn’t be able to anymore.
I felt a little guilty for Ellie getting in trouble, but that was her own doing, honestly. A person shouldn’t have been that trusting of an angsty teenager.
I posted myself in the bathroom next to Dad’s office to overhear him speaking—well, snapping—at Ellie.
He was scolding her for being naive and trusting me.
Ellie didn’t say much, but that was probably because she was already mentally beating herself up for allowing me to pull a fast one on her.
After the conversation between the two of them ended, I stared at myself in the mirror.
As I looked into my eyes, I searched for Mom.
She would’ve been onto my little mischievous ways right away.
I couldn’t pull the wool over her eyes even if I tried.
It was like she could read my mind before I had my own thoughts.
Dad couldn’t. He used to be able to, but lately, he barely saw me. He could hardly see anything past his own grief. Maybe that was what grief did: made a person blind to the reality of situations right in front of their face. It made life feel like death day in and day out.
After I finished washing my face, I headed back to my room, where I planned to hide out for the rest of the evening. But the moment I walked into my bedroom, I found Ellie standing in front of my closet with its “Do Not Enter” signs all over it. My heart dropped. “What are you doing?!” I shouted.
Ellie whipped around to face me, and a wave of relief washed over her face. “Karla! Oh my gosh, I thought you ran off. Where were you?” She sounded way too alarmed for a nanny who’d probably be fired soon.
“The bathroom.” I narrowed my eyes as rage shot throughout my whole system. “Why are you about to go in there? Are you stupid? Can you not read?”
“Don’t call me stupid,” she scolded, sounding bossier than she had over the past month or so. Look at sweet little Ellie, growing a backbone.
“Your father wants you in his office,” Ellie said.
“Yeah? Well, I’m busy.” I walked over to my desk and went to grab my headphones. Before I could, Ellie snatched them away.
What was it with this woman? Did my father just install a bossy chip into her brain?
Ellie placed one hand against her hip. “No, you’re not. Now get going to your father’s office.”
“Why?”
“Because we know.”
“Know what?”
“You know what we know,” Ellie said, narrowing her eyes and waving a dramatic finger my way.
“Or . . . I don’t,” I lied. I was such a big liar. I used to be more honest. Maybe that was what grief did, too. Turned a person into something they’d never been before.
Ellie placed her other hand against her other hip. “Karla, come on. You can drop the act.”
I swallowed hard, trying to still be strong when all I wanted to do was melt into a pile of nothingness. It would’ve been nice to be a pile of nothing. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m getting sick of this roundabout accusation stuff, so either spit it out or leave my room.”
“You haven’t been to school in weeks, Karla,” a deep, disgruntled voice snapped.
I looked up to see Dad standing in the doorway of my bedroom.
His eyes were packed with a rage I hadn’t witnessed, well .
. . ever. His chest rose and fell with each breath he took.
“That’s what she’s talking about. That’s what we need to discuss.
” He turned to Ellie, not dropping the intensity of his tone, and said, “I’ll take it from here, Eleanor. ”
Whew.
He used her government name.
She was going to be fired come morning.
About time.
I’d been getting a little irritated at how hard it was to keep being mean toward Ellie.
She might’ve been annoyingly beautiful and painfully naive, but she wasn’t as bad as the other nannies.
Lorelai liked her. My little sister laughed a lot more with Ellie around.
Our house hadn’t had laughter in a while.
The sound almost felt foreign when it filled the hallways.
I didn’t know it could still vibrate off the walls.
Still, I didn’t need a nanny. I needed to be left alone.
And with one extra person—Ellie—out of the picture, I could go back to fully embracing my miserable self again without a happy-go-lucky puppy of a person always trying to smile at me and ask me how I’d been doing.
Uncle Landon already texted me daily asking me how my heart was doing.
I didn’t need Ellie doing the same check-ins with me.
I did feel a little bad for Lorelai, though.
Ellie was good for my sister. Out of Dad, Lorelai, and me, my little sister was the one who was the most .
. . normal. She was probably thrilled to have another normal-ish person around with Ellie.
Even though I was a crappy person, I didn’t want to be a crappy sister, too.
Lorelai deserved at least a little bit of light in her life.
And I just diminished the light by getting Ellie in trouble.
Oh well. Hopefully the next nanny wasn’t as much of a pushover.
After Ellie saw herself out of my room, Dad kept his eyes on me. His arms were crossed over his broad chest, and his nostrils flared with every weighted breath he took.
“Where were you going, Karla?” he questioned.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” he said with an edge to his words. “You’ve missed so much school! You’ve been God knows where doing God knows what—so tell me! Tell me where you went!” he yelled, but the words almost came out as a plea. As if he was begging to understand me, which threw me for a loop.
Since when did he start caring again?
I felt sick as my dad stared at me like he was my dad again. My mind didn’t know how to wrap itself around that concept, because for months now, it had felt like he was nothing more than a man with a title, not a man who actually performed the task of being a parent.
Now with Dad scolding me for my bad behavior, I felt conflicting emotions. I was annoyed with him for thinking that after all this time, he could punish me. At the same time, for a split second, I had my dad back again, even if it meant him being filled with rage and disappointment.
His jaw tightened with tension as his frustration filled the room. I felt tiny beside him. Minuscule. Almost nonexistent.
“Karla Marie East, where were you?” he asked again, using my full government name.
I was going to be grounded. But who cared? It wasn’t like I had a booming social life.
I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged. “None of your business.”
That was enough to send Dad over the cliff as he started shouting.
He tossed his arms up in irritation, asking me if I was doing drugs, or drinking, or getting in trouble.
He started saying how disappointed he was in me, how frustrated he was with the whole situation. He yelled, hollered, and raged.
I fought back, too, because the more we shouted, the more alive I felt.
It had been so long since I’d felt anything.
It was going well, our screaming match, until my heart felt so overwhelmed by all the emotions I’d worked hard to pack down deeply.
It was all too much, having it all fly out at the speed it was shooting, so I snapped.
“Dad, stop,” I cried out, my voice cracking like a branch. It wasn’t anger I felt toward him anymore. I was only left with heartbreak. We never yelled at each other. Not the old us, at least. “Please,” I said as tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I couldn’t.
He took a few deep breaths before his voice dropped to a low whisper as he said, “You’ve been skipping school, Karla.
Do you know how irresponsible—” His voice cut off, as if the syllables splintered and got stuck in his throat.
His chest rose and fell as he took a few deep breaths.
When he released them, I could tell he wasn’t angry anymore, either.
It was something heavier, something that made him appear smaller, even with his broad shoulders.
Maybe we weren’t angry at each other.
Maybe we were both just sad.
There was a long beat of silence after his words faded away.
The air between us felt thin, as if it would slice us into pieces if we moved too quickly.
His shoulders slumped down. He couldn’t even look at me anymore as his hands dropped to his sides.
His whole persona deflated like a withered balloon.
All that was left was our unstable energy in the space.
When he finally looked toward me, I didn’t see him as my dad, just a lost human who was trying his best. His eyes were glassy and tired.
My heart pounded at a speed that made me think I was on the verge of a heart attack.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to hug him and say sorry for being a standing memory of everything that he’d lost. I wanted to apologize for being the reason his wife was dead.
I wanted to fall at his feet and tell him I was so fucking sorry for all the pain I’d caused him.
He was failing Lorelai and me as our father, but for a moment I didn’t blame him for that, because I was failing him as his daughter, too.