His expression twisted, not just with pain but confusion, disbelief, and betrayal. “Because they’remy friends,Noelle. You were supposed to beoff limits.You were supposed to have better than this. You’re my little girl.”
“Better than men you call family?” I’d asked softly because I couldn’t help it. “Better than people who’ve never hurt me? Who’ve only ever protected me?”
He couldn’t answer.
Or maybe he refused to.
When he looked at me again, something in his eyes had gone dull.
The anger was gone, burned out, leaving only exhaustion behind.
He’d wiped the tears from his face with the heel of his hand, his voice hollow as he stood. “I need space. I can’t…I can’t look at you right now.”
And that was it.
He turned and walked out, leaving the front door unlocked behind him.
I remember standing there, staring at the spot where he’d just been, my fingers gripping the edge of the counter just to stay upright.
That was three days ago.
The silence since then has been deafening.
No calls, no texts, just the memory of his voice breaking when he said “my little girl” and the echo of that door closing behind him one last time.
It’s strange how something that was supposed to be freeing, like telling the truth, has ended up costing me everything.
Eli’s confusion makes it all that much worse.
Every morning since the fight, it starts the same way.
His little footsteps pad softly down the stairs, his curls sticking up in a dozen different directions from sleep.
He climbs onto the couch beside me, clutching his blanket and blinks up at me with those big, trusting eyes of his, and snuggles against me.
“When’s Grampy coming home?”
The words twist in my chest every single time.
“I don’t know, honey,” I tell him, the same answer I gave yesterday and the day before. My voice stays as even as I can make it, because if I let myself feel anything at this point I’m going to completely shatter down the middle.
Every time he frowns, a tiny crease forms between his brows. “Why not? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.” It’s the truth, at least.
Eli doesn’t understand this kind of hurt.
In his world, things are still simple: people argue, they leave, and then they come back and make up.
Everything gets fixed in the end because that’s how stories in his books and cartoons always go.
He doesn’t yet know that sometimes love isn’t enough to make people stay, and betrayal will always destroy things no matter how much you love that other person.
I make him breakfast every morning after that, trying not to count down the days till Christmas morning.
I’m scared Dad won’t come back and I’ll have to answer even more questions and come with more excuses for Eli.
Every time he sees the empty chair where my dad used to sit every morning, his little face falls again.
