“Well…” I hesitated before I continued. “You know how I said that I would check out softball teams for Lyra?”
“You wanted to see if the parents were nasty.”
“There are definitely better and worse parent cultures, but I really wanted to investigate the coaches. I had one who tried to make a move on me when I was a teenager. Almost a teenager,” I corrected.
“What does that mean? Some dirty old man hit on you when you were twelve?”
“Eleven,” I said and Silas’s eyes widened.
“Did he abuse you?”
“No, but he was doing things to get me ready.” I offered an example. “He bought me special stuff. All the girls had cute animal key chains that they would hang on their bat bags and I wanted some so badly. I knew not to ask my parents to waste the money but he got them for me as a present. He told me it was a secret.”
“Kids shouldn’t have secrets, not like those. I tell Lyra that so she’ll know that she can always talk to me, in case anyone tries to pull some kind of grooming bullshit like your coach.”
I nodded. “I loved the attention and he built up to more. He had me stay after practice or come early so we could work on my swing. Then he’d stand really close, right behind me. He was always touching me somehow, you know? He wanted me to get used to it. But one of the moms noticed something going on and she had a fit. He had never done anything real, though.”
“It sounds real enough to me.”
“I mean that he never hurt me. He just confused me a lot,” I explained. “I don’t know why I’m talking about this except that I was trying to say that it’s a good thing that you were independent and that you didn’t give, you know.”
“A fuck,” he supplied.
“Exactly. I gave way too many, always. I was the one who finished the group projects on my own because I wanted to get a good grade, but I would still let everyone else take credit sincethey were my friends. I was the designated driver so that the other girls could have fun. I don’t want Lyra to grow up thinking that she always has to please people.”
“And I don’t want her to grow up thinking that she should give them all the middle finger. You and I have different ways of approaching the world. I could incorporate a little bit of pleasing, and you could incorporate some middle finger.” He looked at his phone and then his face changed, from amused to…
“What’s wrong?” I asked anxiously.
“My dad just wrote back.” And again, he showed me the screen.
“Found out I’m dying,” I read aloud. “Wanted to see the kid before I kick the bucket.” I stared at Silas. “He’s dying?”
“Jesus Christ on a cracker.”
We sat for a moment, letting that sink in, and I tried to think of something comforting to say. I settled on, “I’m sorry,” and he nodded. Then he attempted to get more information from his dad, but none was forthcoming although he asked a variety of things in a variety of ways. He also sent an email to the counselor about what to tell Lyra and she did get back to him with some good recommendations. But there wasn’t a real roadmap of how to behave in this situation. Silas was worried about his sister but I worried about both of them.
As the days passed, his dad’s health problems didn’t become clearer. He never wanted to explain exactly what was wrong, where he was, or who he was with. He wouldn’t answer when Silas asked how he was supporting himself and how he was planning to arrive here for Christmas (apparently he’d lost hiscommercial driver’s license years before due to alcohol use and when he got a regular license, it went the same way).
But no matter how little he shared about his current location and however blithely he ignored questions about his well-being, he did continue to swear that he would show up to see his kids on Christmas. He actually only talked about seeing the one (Lyra) and never really mentioned the other (Silas), but since they were a package deal, maybe he didn’t feel the need to specify. He was coming, and I felt like giving him a final Christmas with his two acknowledged children was the least that everyone could do.
That meant that they would not go to Kentucky with me.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go either,” I said a few days later, as we continued to try to figure it all out. My parents were already crushed that they wouldn’t get to see Lyra, and if I didn’t show…but I had responsibilities here, too. “Maybe you’ll need to have me around.”
“Nah, you should go,” Silas dismissed the idea. “I’ve dealt with him my whole life and I can handle him now.”
“But Lyra hasn’t.”
He got the scary expression that reminded me a lot of when the villain in some awful comic book movie was about to morph into a monster. It was something I called “demonically angry,” and so was his voice when he spoke. “I’m not going to let him hurt Ly.”
“I know that,” I assured him. “Maybe you could use my help, though.” I had been looking forward to being with Lyra on Christmas, too, and doing things like making a pie and filling herstocking after she went to bed. She had told me that most kids at school didn’t really believe in the “Santa stuff” and she herself was pretty sure that it wasn’t true. However, she’d also said that she’d heard sleighbells in the yard on the prior Christmas Eve. She was keeping an open mind.
“Your parents would be pretty upset if they didn’t see this face on Christmas,” he told me, and he put his big palm under my chin. “This tired face. Have you been burning the midnight oil to work more? I haven’t heard you sneaking around the kitchen.”
That was because I was very, very quiet. I’d had years of practice in creeping through the house while people were asleep, since Dax had always gotten furious if I’d disturbed him with even the slightest noise. Getting dressed for work had been difficult. “I’m not tired. Not too much.”
“How are you going to do on that drive?” Now he looked worried instead of vengeful and threatening. I had known those feelings weren’t directed at me, anyway. “I don’t want you to go straight through but I don’t want you sleeping at a motel by yourself, either.”
