Chapter 35 #2
“I didn’t raise you to be cruel,” her father said. “He wanted it to be a nice surprise.”
“I’ve had enough of his surprises.”
“You don’t want to see your old man?”
Her love for him stung like a blister, like her skinned knees when he had taught her to ride a bike. She had missed him.
“There’s trouble between you and Jack—that’s plain—but can’t we enjoy each other, you and me? The way we used to?”
She remembered how she would say absolutely to show him certainty that she didn’t always have.
His face had new lines. His mouth had changed shape.
He looked softer, looser. She thought about how grateful she was for Rory’s and Violet’s friendship, how she had abandoned them and they still forgave her. “Okay.”
“I’d been working so hard—trying to save for retirement, gotta have that nest egg, you know?—that I lost sight of how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other.”
“You did?”
“No, I guess I knew. I thought about it. Prayed on it. I don’t know how things went wrong between us. I was always your dad. How come you stopped being my girl?”
Emily’s fingers lifted, bloodless, to her head.
She tightened her ponytail. She looked at her hands, now flat against the table, and was reminded of Gen’s, when they were eighteen—that dinner, everything her father had said, the desperate glance Gen had thrown her grandmother before touching the white tablecloth as though for balance.
Emily had thought that grown children couldn’t fear their parents, but fear churned inside her: choppy, full of bits of hope.
She realized that she had always felt that way about her father.
He gazed at her, and it seemed, maybe for the first time, that she had his full attention. He said, “Know why I call you Ladybug?”
She shook her head.
“You’re my lucky charm. If something’s wrong, tell me. We’ll figure it out.”
She had wanted so much to hear him say that. “I stopped speaking with you because of my birthday. When I was eighteen.”
He frowned, trying to remember. “That was a long time ago.”
“We went to dinner. With your family. I brought my friend.”
His frown deepened. “Uh-huh.”
“Gen Hall. Do you remember her?”
“I’d say everyone in town does.”
“She wasn’t my friend. She was my girlfriend.”
He pulled away. Emily’s body went still and cold, but she had started and couldn’t stop. “I loved her.”
“Nonsense.”
“It’s true.”
His mouth creased in distaste. “You were a child. Confused.”
“I wasn’t.”
“They’re lonely, girls like that. They try to make good girls be like them. I wish—Well. I can see why it’s troubled you all this time. Why you had to get it off your chest. I don’t like to hear it but it’s over. It happened long ago.”
“We were with each other through this past winter and spring. Here in New York.”
“But you’re married.” His voice rose. “You’re married to Jack!
You have two children! You have to fix this!
Does Jack know?” When Emily shook her head, her father said, “That poor man. Trying with all his might. Didn’t you see the pain on his face?
You’re so young. You don’t know how young you are.
Thirty-three. So much life ahead of you.
But you’re taking all that’s good and chucking it out like it’s rotten.
People say it’s harmless. Let them be. But you let them be and this is what they do.
It’s worse than not being normal. They see what’s normal and can’t stand it.
They turn everything normal inside out. It makes me sick. They make me sick.”
“But I’m them .”
“Hi, folks,” said the waiter. “Can I get you started on something?”
“No, thanks,” said her father. “I have no appetite.”
It was all so predictable: what he had just said, how he had said it. How he rose to his feet and told her, “You have no respect for me. You have no respect for yourself.”
Emily should have guessed. She could have written his words, his reaction, her own. She felt as small as a drop of water.
He left the table. He left the restaurant. She stayed alone at the table.
She could have written that, too. Anyone could have written that whole scene at the restaurant and not be satisfied with what was on the page because what her father had said and done was so common.
It should have been obvious to Emily what would happen when she told him…
and it had been, which is why she had avoided him for years, knowing that if he confirmed her fears, if he said out loud the things that she already heard in her head, she would lose a hope that she couldn’t regain.
And yet she also hadn’t known. She had imagined other reactions, different words, ones of comfort—just as common, just as ordinary, because it is ordinary for a parent to love a child.
It is ordinary for a parent to choose a child first. This should be as simple and sure as a rock that looks like nothing and that a child carries home as treasure.
Emily had thought that maybe, if she told her father, he would choose her, but he didn’t.
Jack was waiting for her outside the restaurant. “Your dad wouldn’t tell me what happened. He went back to his hotel. He said that you and I need to talk.”
Emily’s face was wet with tears. “Stop,” she said. “Just stop .”
“Calm down, Em. Hey! Don’t walk away from me!”
She had pivoted. Her back was to him and she didn’t see, only felt, a great tug at the back of her head, hard enough to make her fall. She cried out. She landed on her hip. A tide of pain pushed the breath out of her. He had grabbed her by the hair, she realized—by her ponytail.
“Are you okay?” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. I was reaching for your arm. I guess you must have moved at the last minute.”
“You’re a liar .”
“Keep your voice down.”
The sidewalk was empty. No one had seen what he’d done. She scrambled away from him. She limped into the street, her vision blurred.
“Emily!”
A yellow blob came up the street. She gasped with relief and hailed the cab.
She felt Jack drag at her and she shoved him, not caring if she hurt him, in fact realizing that she wanted to hurt him, that she was filled with trembling anger.
She slammed the cab door and fumbled for the lock.
She heard him through the closed window.
“You’re not yourself.” His voice was muffled by the streaky glass.
“Go,” she told the driver.
The next day, when the bruises had become livid, Emily photographed the continent that mapped her hip and thigh.
She sent the photographs to her lawyer and said that she was done trying to negotiate with Jack.
She wanted a date in court. She knew that putting the case before a judge would drive up legal fees.
She didn’t care. She would spend every last penny.
I want full custody, she wrote to Sophie.
Her hip throbbed. Her thoughts tumbled out in disjointed sentences.
Contest the prenup. Can we get a restraining order?
Do what you need to do, so long as I get my kids. Use the photographs. Make him go away.