Lizzie
Chapter Forty-One
Like a spider crawling on my skin or nails on a chalkboard. That’s what he sounds like.
“Hello, Liz.” A voice I hoped I’d never hear again—Landon.
An annoyed huff escapes my sister, Lindsay, as she sits next to me.
I turn my head and give him a blank stare. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing here? I knew your dad.”
“You may have known of him, but you certainly didn’t know him. So why are you at his funeral?”
He sneers at me. “My, my. You’ve gotten testy since I last saw you. I have to say, I don’t like it.”
“Listen, I don’t really want to do this right now. If you haven’t noticed, it’s really not a great time.”
“How have you been?”
Is he deaf? He’s literally pretending like I didn’t say anything. I ignore him and turn back to face my sister.
“How long do you think we have to stay here?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I think we could go now if we want.”
“Really?” she asks. “It’s our dad’s calling hours, and we’ve only been here for an hour and a half.”
“Father, not dad. These people, the family he built after us, have barely acknowledged us. I don’t see why we need to stay. Let’s go.”
“That would certainly be in poor taste.” Landon. Again.
Why this jerk thinks it’s okay to lurk behind me and then butt into my conversation is beyond me. I pretend he hasn’t spoken.
“Liz.”
The sharp tone with which he says my name grates on my last nerve. I twist my body until I’m facing him.
“My name is Lizette. Not Liz. Lizzie to my friends, which you were never one of, so you can call me Lizette if you need to call me anything. But I’d really prefer that we didn’t even have to speak.”
I turn back to Lindsay. “Seriously, let’s go.”
“We can’t just leave,” she says.
“Why not?” I ask.
“He did.” I gesture toward my father’s urn at the front of the room, where his other family is holding the small memorial.
Her eyes bulge.
“He left us, and then he kept leaving us. He’d make us think he was coming and that we could spend time with him, and then he’d turn around and break our hearts again.” No bitterness comes through in my words, just apathy.
“I know,” she whispers. “You’re right.”
“I hold no ill will toward the man, but we also don’t owe him anything, Linds.”
She nods, her eyes glassy.
Maybe I underestimated Lindsay’s connection to my father. She was already eighteen when he left, so maybe the absence at home wasn’t as palpable for her.
I pick up our purses, grab her hand, and lead us out into the hall. We’re almost at the exit when I hear it again.
“Liz,” Landon hisses.
I continue to ignore him as we walk outside. The clicking of his dress shoes tells me he’s following us. We’re halfway to the car.
“What did I ever do to you?”
I stop dead in my tracks. Is he serious? Lindsay tries to tug on my hand, but I don’t budge.
“He’s not worth it,” she whispers.
He’s not, but the thing is, I’m fed up. I wasted years of my life on this poor excuse for a man. I turn on my heel and face him, just a few feet away. I say nothing at first, but I imagine my glare and the tension radiating off my body speak for me.
I hear rustling behind me, then the jingling of my car keys. Still, I don’t turn back to Lindsay.
“You don’t throw away years together for—”
“Stop! Just stop. It’s been over five years since we were together.” I use air quotes around the word “together,” and I see the familiar fury in his eyes.
He takes a step toward me. I take a step back.
I feel Lindsay tugging at the back of my dress.
“You know, the crazy thing is that I know you don’t really want me anymore. You just don’t like to be told no. And you certainly don’t want anyone else to have me.”
“Because we belong together.” His face reddens.
I roll my eyes and move to turn toward my sister.
Landon stops me with a gross, meaty hand wrapped around my upper arm. His grip is tight, but I refuse to let my expression show him he’s hurting me.
“I was good to you.” He practically spits the words at me.
I’d be shocked by them if they came from anyone else, but this self-indulgent man-child has never lived in reality.
I narrow my eyes at him. “You coerced me into staying with you by threatening the people I care about.”
His nostrils flare, and he shakes his head.
“You started in our senior year of college, and then, when you didn’t have him to hold over my head anymore, you used my mom. My mom, Landon.”
He opens his mouth to speak, but I’m on a roll and can’t stop now.
“You knew getting a job was an important step in managing my mom’s depression. So, you made sure I didn’t forget that she worked at your dad’s company, and you used your veiled threats to make me think her job was in jeopardy if I left you.”
His grip on my arm tightens a little more, and I grimace before I can flatten my expression. It’s obvious in his eyes that he doesn’t care that he’s hurting me.
A car horn honks, followed by Lindsay’s voice.
“Let’s go, Lizzie!”
In a moment of bravado—or maybe insanity—I bend my head just enough to reach Landon’s thumb, and I chomp down as hard as I can. He yelps in pain and jerks his hand back. I take the opportunity and run around to the passenger side of our car and yank the door open.
“You bit me, you crazy bitch!” Landon screams. The rage in his voice might be the worst I’ve ever heard it.
I waste no time jumping into the car and locking the door. Then I stick half of my upper body out of the open window.
“That’s for lying to me about Holden’s scholarship! For keeping me from the only man I’ve ever loved!” I yell at him.
He races toward the car as fast as he can. My adrenaline rises even higher than it already was.
“Drive!” I holler as I pull myself back inside and buckle my seat belt.
Lindsay speeds away as fast as she safely can.
I twist around and watch through the rearview mirror. When we’re far enough away, and there’s no sign of him, I turn forward and slump into my seat with relief.
I peer over at my sister. “You okay?” I ask.
She glances at me for a split second before returning her attention to the road. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just surprised. I haven’t seen that Lizzie since Tommy Lindfort snapped your bra and called you flat at vacation Bible school way back when.”
We both laugh at the memory.
“That’s the only time I’ve ever kneed a guy in the balls.”
“Was it worth getting kicked out of VBS?” she asks with a hint of teasing in her voice.
I grin, more to myself than at her. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”
After that, we ride in silence for a few minutes.
“Hey, Lizzie?”
I pivot my head so I’m looking at Lindsay. “Yeah?”
“The dad stuff... When did you become so... so self-aware?”
Her words surprise me. Mostly because, as I think about them for a few seconds, I see she’s right.
“Uh, I didn’t realize I had until right now.”
Neither of us smiles or laughs—because it’s not funny. I’m thirty-three, and I’ve carried the hurt from my father for almost twenty years.
“I think maybe I just understand now that family isn’t always about blood.”
She doesn’t say anything, but nods. I swallow past the lump that forms in my throat.
“Sometimes the people who are supposed to love you the most, the ones you’re related to, they’re the ones who hurt you the worst. Like… like our father. And then there are people you never expected who come into your life and bring the good things. Like peace and security and love.”
“Have you found those people?” Lindsay’s words are barely above a whisper.
I have.
“Yeah, I think I so. I’ve got you, Mom, and Simon, but then I also have this group of people in Aron Falls who have totally embraced me and Simon. I don’t want to waste any more time pining after a father who didn’t want me.”
“It sounds like the move to Aron Falls has been really good for you.”
I lean my head back on the headrest and smile. “It has. It might sound weird, but I feel like I’ve found the rest of my family.”
Lindsay reaches over and squeezes my hand. “It doesn’t sound weird at all. It actually sounds beautiful.”
I pull my phone from the console. As I stare at my lock screen, a candid photo of Simon and Holden sitting together on my couch watching a spider documentary, my heart skips a few beats.
I touch the screen. I miss them. Both of them. And God, I can’t wait to get home.
“It is, Linds,” I whisper. “It’s really beautiful.”