31. Abbot #3
No. Of course not. Why would he go there? Why would he even want to? He hasn’t been once after that awful day, and he won’t, not ever.
Except…“Did you want to?” It’s too hard to ask this and too awful to let her stand here and not. “Together?”
“Well now I don’t.” She sniffs once, hard. “Dad said you’d take me.”
“He didn’t tell me that,” Abbot says, but the weakness of the excuse feels awful. No, of course he hadn’t, not when Abbot did his level best to not talk to him even once over that month. “I—I will. This summer.”
He can’t.
He has to.
Ned, he thinks again. He could manage to, if Ned came with him.
“Whatever,” Liesl mutters.
“I will,” Abbot says, stronger this time. “Liesl, I haven’t forgotten her.”
“Seems like you want to.”
“I wouldn’t. I can’t.”
“I was there too,” Liesl says.
She wasn’t the first time, when their father had shoved Beverly at him in a poor attempt at solace. When first his mother had been gone from the house, and then his father too, with no real explanation and he’d been left so wholly on his own.
And then, of course, Liesl was there, born in those happy years between hospitalizations, and when Mom got sick all over again, their father was suddenly present. Talking with Liesl, hovering over her. Helping her.
What had Ned called that once? A do-over kid? And Abbot the rough draft who’d been pushed aside.
It takes an effort to say, “I know.” Because he wants to rail that she endured so much less than he did, and at least had one parent while she did so. Their father taking time off work, picking her up from school, being sure to be home for dinner with her.
But he can’t say all that and watch her face crumple again. He’s never been able to hold that anger against her, and can’t begin to now. “Yes, you were there,” he says gently. “And it was awful for you. But Liesl, being with Ned—I’m just…”
Happy, for once. Can’t she understand that?
No, because despite her earrings, her iced coffee, her phone always in her hand, she’s still thirteen. He knows how very little he grasped at that age.
What would Ned do? He’d defuse this somehow, and do it better than Abbot could even guess. Though Ned would have intuited the problem long ago, he’s sure.
And talked to her. The very thing he’s pushed Abbot toward, again and again.
Maybe, had Abbot taken him up on it sooner, he’d know what to say right now. “I don’t want to see him more than I want to see you,” Abbot tries. “I love you both.”
“But you see him more. And he doesn’t even care. Dad said he’d come visit, and he didn’t.”
“He cares about you. And he will. He is coming, this summer.”
“He said he’d come over winter break, and last summer too.”
“I know,” Abbot says. “He was busy, he had work, and Peggy, but he wants to, and he will, I promise.”
“Really, this time?” She sounds so very young. Scared too.
“He’ll tell you himself,” Abbot says. “Of course he’ll come, and I’ll be back too even before then, if you’d like. Later this spring.”
“Whatever,” she says, but he can see the relief in her face.
How did he let her get to this point? And not even notice?
He can only step forward now, hugging her despite the stiffness of her frame, the points of her shoulder blades under his hands.
“You’ll come with me to look at Steve’s house?” Abbot asks, which isn’t an explanation or a comfort or what she needs, he knows, but it’s at least something.
“I’ll get my own room, if you buy it?” She doesn’t soften, exactly, but she doesn’t elbow him away, either.
“Yes,” he says without stopping to think it through. He hugs her tighter. Well, why not? It’ll be his house. Ned is a someday Abbot will have to wait for, and Liesl is here right now, and he’s let her down. “Whichever one you’d like.”
“The best one.”
“Well, no, because that will be mine.”
“But you said.”
“Then we’d have to share it,” Abbot says, trying to get a smile from her. “Bunk beds, in that case.”
“What? No way.”
“Then you can sleep on the floor.”
“You’re the worst,” she says and shoves at him, but the push is as light as her words are and that’s better than her misery.
Though that heavy sadness sits on her face still. He has to fix this. How, he doesn’t know, but he’ll have to sort it out before he hurts her any more.
The door to the stairs opens with a squeal. Abbot tenses, ready for a student he’ll have to be polite to, an answer he’ll have to come up with.
But Chris greets them with a raised hand and a cheerful smile. “I was just coming to find you two. How’s married life treating you?”
Complicated, apparently.
“Fine,” Abbot says and pictures Ned’s look of frustration at that word, not so different from Liesl’s resentment toward him. “I mean, good. It’s good.” Oh, he is really not skilled in offering details, is he?
Chris just accepts the words, clearly not expecting him to add anything else.
But Ned expects more. Has asked for it, again and again as Abbot has held him away as surely as he’s done to Liesl.
And her anger waited for him, all this time. The edge of tears in her voice.
How very easy it has been to let himself keep on like he has been, and how very unfair that is to those he loves.