“No!” I sounded like a kid, but I didn’t care. “She’s to blame. Janis Nicole Hickey. She’s the one who drugged us. She’s the one who tore us all apart.Shebroke our snow globes!” I wiped my eyes. “But we can fix this. We just have to do it together.”
“You went to see her?”
I hesitated, because the question was quiet, but it was laced with something I couldn’t understand. “Yeah.”
He stood, took the bottle, and flung it at the wall. Glass pieces littered the floor, and the entire room smelled like flat hops. He set his hands on his hips, and he was breathing heavy.
Nazzareno went to move toward the room, but I held my hand up. Bonny stayed in the kitchen, acting like she was busying herself, but I could tell she was invested.
“Did she want money?” he demanded, looking at me. When I didn’t answer, he pressed, “Did she?”
“Ah.” I cleared my throat. “She was fishing…kind of.”
“That’s about fucking right,” he spit out.
“She wanted money from you after she left. She told me.” Okay, it was a lie, but I had a sinking suspicion that she might have tried to blackmail him or something from where this conversation was heading. “She told me you paid her.”
“Yeah, well, it was the only way to get rid of her.”
“You…” I took a deep breath. “You paid her to stay away from us.”
“Why else?” He looked at me then.
All the times he came up short for bills…then he’d try to gamble to get it back. Because she demanded money from him. She knew he didn’t have the money for court and how lenient they might be because she was our mother, even if the school had their suspicions.
He must have given her whatever he had to keep her away, and it was good enough, because she really didn’t want us.
He’d continued to gamble even after we were grown, but we all had our vices, and maybe like us, he just couldn’t quit some of them.
A fresh new slice cut me deep, but I tried to hide the bleeding. I turned my hands, squeezing them. “You never know with her,” I said. “She’s conniving.”
He plopped down in his seat, like all the air had been drained out of him. He stared at the television, like a default setting, but I saw it then. His eyes. They were glossed over.
I took small steps to get to him, then without asking, I sat on the arm of the chair. I set my shoulder against him at first, leaning a little, and then I took his hand. “Will you just tell me one thing?” I breathed out. “Why didn’t you tell us? I can understand when we were kids, but when we got older.”
He looked up at me, and our eyes met. And I had my answer then. If we would have seen the look in his eyes that he hid from us while watching television, we would have known.
He was saving us from knowing the truth.
He was the one dying while he tried to save us.
Something only a real parent would do.
It felt so good to have one.
He answered me anyway. “You and your sisters will always be my babies,” he barely got out. “Couldn’t kill any of you with the truth. Moms are special. I didn’t want you girls to feel like you weren’t because you didn’t have one who cared.”
A strangled noise quietly came from my mouth, and I slid into his lap and cried into his chest. He held me like he used to when I was just a little girl.
When I could catch my breath, I said, “I’m not crying over what she did. I’m crying because I love you, and this is healing me more than she ever hurt me.”
He made a gruff noise and pulled me closer, kissing my head.
I wasn’t sure how long we sat like that, butBonny knocked on the wall, Nazzareno standing behind her. “Dinner’s ready if you’re both hungry,” she whispered.
We both stood, and the distance between us was gone, even if I felt emotionally drained.
Bonny went to bring my dad’s plate in, but I shook my head. “How about we have dinner at the table instead?”
