Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Delilah
Working from my dad’s office was meant to be an improvement. More desk space for my extra monitor. A large picture window allowing buttery sunlight to filter in and brighten my days. Yet lately I find myself zoning out from the task at hand, letting my gaze wander the spines on the far wall of bookshelves or study the way the light glistens on the brass surface of some of his instruments. They’re beginning to gather dust, aside from the guitar and keyboard, which he still uses often enough. It’s the sight of that thin layer dulling their glow that squeezes my heart.
I want to be a good employee. And I do try my best. But some days real life gets to be so overwhelming that the idea of logging into a meeting and dragging a group of strangers through a tutorial they’ll forget the details of in mere hours gets to be a bit much. It all feels so meaningless. Why waste my breath on some corporate bullshit when what I really want to say is: My father is suffering from dementia, and even the good days aren’t easy because I spend them dreading the bad days to come.
Or, My mother might actually be a horrible person, and yet I love her, so what does that make me?
And finally, The last man in the world I should want is the only one I do. And I’m still grappling with the fact that he wants me, too.
But I can’t say any of that. Instead I have to repeat, “Click the X in the right corner. No, your other right,” ad nauseam until my voice cracks from overuse.
Emails are stacking up in my work inbox, but I find myself staring at my phone where it rests on the smooth, dark oak of Dad’s desk instead. There’s an automated message from the office for Dad’s speech therapist, letting me know she’s sick and needs to reschedule. A text from Truett asking what Dad and I would like for lunch from the Grille. And finally, the latest in a long thread of unread messages from my mother.
Why should I read them when I know what they’ll say? Line after line telling me I have no right to be upset. That it wasn’t even that big of a deal. That she wouldn’t have had to lie if I loved her as much as I love Dad, so really it’s my fault that it all happened in the first place.
Months ago I might have believed her. Those words would have torn me up inside until I lay at her feet, eviscerated by guilt and begging for forgiveness. Now all I feel is the exhaustion filling my head. Seeping into my bones.
At what point do you stop hoping your parents will change and finally start to accept them for who they are? People who are equally as damaged as you, and doubly as set in their ways.
At what point are you justified in saying that their love isn’t worth having if you must cut yourself open and bleed in order to keep it?
I lock my phone and push back from the desk. My joints crackle as I rise and stretch my arms toward the ceiling with a groan. I yank open the bottom drawer of Dad’s filing cabinet, where he used to house cleaning materials for the instruments. Spare bottles of valve oil rattle in protest as I search the contents. I retrieve a microfiber cloth from a stack at the back and a half-empty can of cleaner, then use it to dampen the cloth in my hand.
It doesn’t take long to wipe down Dad’s trumpet and return it to its case, which is worn at the edges and rusted at the clasp. I dust off the other leather cases and his music stand for good measure, then drop the cleaner back into its drawer. When I turn toward the door, prepared to discard the rag in the laundry room down the hall, my gaze catches on the box of items Alicia gathered from his office at the school. He still hasn’t gone through them, or at least, hasn’t bothered to put them away.
Guilt spears me. I should’ve offered to do it for him. I press my thumbs against my temples. The lemon scent of cleaner lingers on my skin, burning my nose and making my eyes water. I blink, trying to clear it. Sometimes it’s so hard to remember that the person I once needed help from now needs it from me. Even in these small, seemingly insignificant ways. It tangles the map I’d drawn from my parents to me, and leaves us with something far less direct. With no beginning and no end. Just a never-ending loop of give-and-take until, one by one, we disappear altogether.
There are a few trophies in the box, no bigger than the palm of my hand, for superlatives given out by his fellow teachers at the end-of-year staff parties that Dad always volunteered to DJ. I flip one over. On the base they’ve engraved the words Most Likely to Bail You Out of Jail . Laughter bubbles in my throat, effervescent. Another reads Band Teacher of the Year . It’s Dad’s favorite. I remember it being displayed proudly on his desk, the first thing you’d see when you walked into his office. Never mind that he was the only band teacher in the school. The sentiment still meant the world to him.
How badly he must have felt about what he’d done, to have left it behind.
Looking back, it’s so easy to see how he was a different person at school than at home. Completely in his element. Outgoing and playful in all the best ways. Other students used to tell me how much they wished he was their dad, and my chest would swell with pride. But at home? He made himself so small. We both did. We cut our edges into the exact pattern of Mom’s roughest ones, just to make it all fit a little better. Keep the peace a little longer.
I blow out a long, weary sigh. I take the trophies to his bookshelf and add them to the few already there. Maybe it’ll make him smile to see them again. It doesn’t begin to make up for all the years he spent compartmentalizing those parts of himself, but it’s something.
In the bottom of the box are binders of music sheets with my dad’s signature scrawl coating the pages. I turn them over, smiling at each enthusiastic reminder to pause a little longer, draw a note out beyond the cliff of its stanza.
Savor it, he’d always tell me. Hold the music on your tongue and really let yourself taste it.
I set those binders in one of the drawers of his filing cabinet. When I glance back at the box, amid a few framed photos and loose cards from students through the years, I notice a cluster of papers wrapped in a rubber band. Some are torn at the edges, others folded into squares. Dark pen marks bleed through the thinner sheets. I can just make out my dad’s handwriting on the top one.
I grab the stack and take it over to the desk. The age-weakened rubber band snaps when I go to remove it. The top paper is thin and soft to the touch. When I unfold it, a back-and-forth exchange fills the page, starting with my dad’s chicken scratch and followed by a loopy cursive that feels two degrees shy of familiar, like I’ve seen something close before but not quite the real thing .
To my co-composer,
So, what did you think? I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to hear how much you loved the man, the myth, the legend. PHIL COLLINS!!!
-Mozart (this will never not be weird to write)
To the next Mozart (just accept it),
Ok. You were right. I listened to the CD you made and Phil Collins is totally incredible. Against All Odds was my favorite, as you predicted. Are you psychic?
Love, your co-composer
To my co-composer,
If I were, I’d have seen that pop quiz coming in English. So much for going out this weekend with the guys. I’ll be grounded once Dad sees that grade.
-Mozart
To the next Mozart,
Let me know if you ever need a tutor. I’m more than just a pretty face, despite what my father seems to think.
Love, your co-composer
Beneath that note, my dad’s handwriting starts and then stops a few times. A dark line has been scratched through all the random letter combinations that never made it into words. What remains is a simple thank you to Co-Composer, followed by a scribbled smiley face.
A knock on the door shatters the silence cocooning me, and I jump, sucking in a breath through my teeth. “Yeah?”
The door cracks open, and Truett peers inside. As soon as I see him, that tightness in my chest melts away.
“I brought lunch.” He grins. “You didn’t answer, so I got you a shrimp sandwich. Hope that’s okay?”
“You didn’t have to get me anything.”
My stomach growls in disagreement. I clamp a hand over it. He steps into the room, chuckling, and slides an arm around my waist. His nose dips into the space where my neck slopes into my shoulder, and he inhales deeply.
“I didn’t have to. I wanted to.” His lips brush against my skin, which breaks out in goose bumps. “Whatcha looking at?”
I hold out the note for him to read. It only takes seconds before he’s letting out a breathy laugh, something like nostalgia softening his features.
“What?” I ask.
“That’s my mom’s handwriting.”
I glance at the page again. That nagging sense of familiarity suddenly clicks into place, and I see it so clearly, our parents as they must’ve been twenty-something years ago, scrawling notes to each other on torn notebook paper.
He reaches for the stack and removes another page, filled with more of the same. “Where did you get these?”
I point to the box on the ground. “It was in the stuff from the school.”
“Were they passing notes at work?”
“No.” I shake my head, glancing back at the note in my hand. “ He talks about his dad being mad about his grades. They were kids.”
Truett laughs, a warm smile illuminating his face. “That’s cute.”
“Cute? I didn’t even know they knew each other back then.”
His smile falters. Gray eyes widen, opening up so I can see them clearly. “You still haven’t talked to your dad, have you?”
“No, I—” I catch my bottom lip with my teeth and roll it. “I guess I’ve been scared.”
“Scared of what?”
I shrug, letting my hand fall to my side, note still clasped tight. “Scared I’ll upset him. Or myself.” My gaze roves his face, taking in the sun-darkened freckles on his nose and the split in his lip where he bit it too hard. What’s new, and what’s always been there. Though it all feels familiar just the same. “For years I told myself it was this one-time ordeal. But what if it’s worse? What if everything I believe about my life is a lie?”
“You believed me wanting you was a lie.” He smirks, but it’s soft at the edges. “Look how much better the truth turned out to be.”
My responding laugh is harsh. Fragmented.
He catches my chin between his thumb and forefinger, holding my gaze. It’s unnerving to be seen like this. Up close and personal, and completely out of control. When you’re the one taking care of things, you get the benefit of standing back. Holding it all at arm’s length. Letting someone in, letting them take a bit of that burden from you… It also means letting them close enough to see you clearly. Trusting them not to run when they do.
His gaze dances from eye to eye. He clicks his tongue like what he finds there breaks his heart.
“I’m not gonna pretend that I know everything that happened between them, but I do know this.” He leans forward and brushes his lips over mine, soft as a whisper. “There’s a lot to be learned from it. A lot we could do differently, to spare ourselves the heartache our parents endured. It’s not a bad past, Delilah. Just a past. We’ve all got ’em.”
I rise up on the tide of him pulling away, stealing one more painfully gentle kiss before he’s standing upright, out of reach.
“Now, there’s a shrimp sandwich out there with your name on it, but if we linger here any longer, your dad might eat it and his both. He’s in a feisty mood today.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Feisty?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry. We’re gonna channel that energy into something productive.”
The intensity of our conversation slowly leaks from my bones, and I relax into him, my worry momentarily forgotten. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans. There’s a shuffling noise of something being removed, and then he holds up a brand-new deck of cards, still in their packaging. “We’re gonna play Rummy.”
I purse my lips, not wanting to burst his bubble.
“What?”
“It’s just, what if Dad doesn’t remember the rules?”
Truett’s sigh bleeds into a laugh. He slips an arm around my shoulders and guides me toward the hall. “Not to worry. I have it on good authority he’s been whooping Roberta’s ass at this game on the regular since she started. They used to play a lot when Mom was sick, and your father held a grudge because Roberta took him to the cleaner’s every. Time.”
My dad? Hold a grudge? “This I’ve gotta see.”
“Oh, Henry!” Truett singsongs.
Dad glances up as we step into the kitchen, his hand poised over a takeaway box from the Grille. Another sits empty to the right. He flushes, drops his hands, and glances away like a child caught in the act of shoplifting.
Truett lifts a brow. “Were you about to eat Delilah’s sandwich?”
“N-no.” Dad shakes his head, still staring at the ceiling. “Yours.”
I snort. Truett’s jaw drops. Dad pauses for a moment to reconsider, then reaches forward to pop open the container, steals a fry, and walks away.
“Feisty indeed,” I mumble.
“You were warned!” Truett quips. He grabs one of the containers and follows Dad to the table. “This one’s yours, Delilah.” He sets it down across from Dad, then points at him. “I’m watching you.”
I pour two glasses of water, take them to the table, then fix a third while Truett shuffles the deck. He’s placed his meal in the center of the table, and he and my dad take turns plucking fries from it. They squabble over an extra crispy one, but ultimately Truett lets him have it. I laugh as I set the final glass in front of my seat and slide in beside my dad.
“Do you…” Dad rolls his lips. The word is on the tip of his tongue. Satisfaction glints in his eyes when he seizes it. “Play. Do you play, sweet pea?”
“I have once or twice, years ago.” I study the hand I’ve been dealt, then the card on the discard pile. “You’ll go easy on me, right?”
Tru snorts but doesn’t look up from his cards. “Not a chance.”
Dad chuckles, then offers me a shrug. “It’s Rummy.”
I scowl at the two of them in turn. “What does that mean?”
“All’s fair in love and Rummy,” Truett says.
I roll my eyes. “No one says that.”
“Your dad says that.”
I glance at my father, and he nods. “I think I do say that. ”
“Good to know.” I elect to draw a card from the stack and add it to my hand. The two men watch me. Dad is outright staring, and Truett is gazing over the top of his cards. When I gather a four-card run of spades and flatten it on the table, Tru’s mouth pops open.
“Your turn, Dad.”
“Ridiculous,” Truett scoffs. “We’ve been bamboozled!”
Dad shakes his head but keeps his eyes on me the whole time. “Well, fuck.”
I giggle nervously, then swallow hard. “Beginner’s luck.”
“Nah.” He nudges me with his elbow. “Talent. So talented.”
“We’ll see about that,” Tru says. His lips curve upward, and he cocks a brow at me in a clear challenge.
Dad draws a card and, just like me, gathers four cards together to place on the table. A six in every suit.
Truett’s gaze widens. “What are the freaking odds?”
“Pretty good if you have a shit dealer,” I say, shrugging.
Dad loses it. He holds his cards to his chest as he succumbs to wave after wave of laughter till there’s no sound left. Just the shaking of his shoulders.
Meanwhile, Truett’s shaking his head at me with mischief glinting in his eyes. “You’ll pay for that later.”
“Later?” I do my best to sound coy. Which will only work if Tru can’t see the tremble in my hand when I reach for my water. The blush creeping up my neck as I take a sip.
For a moment I swear I can feel his lips on my skin. His hands roaming my curves. I’m lying in his bed, legs spread wide for him, feeling him everywhere and yet endlessly craving more.
Tru winks like he knows exactly what I’m thinking. The swell of his cheek hollows out his dimple. He is equal parts man and mischief. Every inch of him rugged and rough-hewn, yet boyish in the most charming way .
“I’m taking you dancing.” He turns to Dad. “If that’s all right with you, Henry?”
“Sure.” Dad waves a hand. “I’m all good.”
I shift in my seat. “Are you sure…?”
Dad leans into me and smiles. It’d be reassuring if it weren’t tinged with such sadness. “Feel right as rain. Those…um…new meds. They help.” He swipes a hand over his lower abdomen and winces. “Just give me a hell of a stomachache.”
“Probably all those extra fries you ate,” Truett says.
Dad makes a pfft sound and waves a hand at Truett. “Take your turn, boy.”
Truett snickers. Dad joins him. Some of that tension releases from my shoulders.
Truett draws, then discards. “Roberta will be here too, Delilah. I already asked her.” His gaze meets mine, full of warmth and knowing. “I owe you a date. One that doesn’t involve childbirth.”
“I said that to my wife once.” Dad shakes his head at his cards. “I lied.”
I’m laughing so hard tears pool in my eyes. I point at Dad, but my eyes are on Tru. “See where I get it from?”
Tru shakes his head, but his shoulders are rattling with laughter. “Can’t take you two anywhere.”
“Except dancing,” I clarify.
He meets my gaze once more, expression serious as sin. “Except dancing.”
I draw another card, and this time it’s not luck that brings me my third ace. I have to believe it’s karma. That after so much bad, I’m finally getting some good.
I lay down my cards.