I put in our presents to Momma, put it all down in bursts of feeling and snatches of recollection, like setting words to music, like hearing my sisters singing in my head. When I was finished, my heart pounded as if I’d completed a four-mile run. A naked run. This was somethingdifferent, all right. This was me. This was my own story, under my own name. Would anybody like it?
I read the blog over, breathless and exposed.
Before I could chicken out, I took a deep breath. HitPOST.
So quiet.
Against the drumming of my heart, I could hear the patter of rain on the roof and the sound of my father, moving around downstairs. It was dark outside. He must be hungry. Stiffly, I made my way down the attic steps.
Light shone from my parents’ room. There was an open suitcase on their bed.
My brain stuttered. “Dad? What are you doing?”
My father turned from his dresser, T-shirts in hand. I wondered who had folded them for him. “Packing.”
My skin prickled. He didn’t need a suitcase to spend the night in the hospital. “For what?”
“The caregivers’ conference.”
“You’re not still going.” As if my saying so could make it true. “Mom’s in the hospital.”
“She’ll be released to rehab tomorrow.”
Paralyzed, I watched him walk back to the suitcase, trying to reconcile the man methodically stacking underwear with the father of my childhood, the one I’d written letters to, the dad in my story. “Have you told her?”
“She knows.”
“What did she say?”
His mouth compressed. “I don’t believe I have to share the details of our conversation with you.”
Heat stung my cheeks like a slap. But this was myfather. The man who had taught me to speak up for myself, to hold true to what I believed. “I don’t need details, Dad,” I said in an even voice. “But an explanation would be nice.”
My father sighed. “Your mother isn’t the only one who requiressupport, Jo. There are people—veterans who have sacrificed everything for their country, many of them homeless or wounded—who don’t have anyone else to advocate for them. No one to share in their grief and their joy, no one to care for them or their families. I have a duty to be where the suffering is greatest. If you had any kind of calling yourself, you would understand.”
“This isn’t about your high-and-noble calling. And I’m not going to let you make it about me. About my writing. This is about Mom. And she needs you.”
“I can’t be here now. Not the way she...” His gaze met mine, briefly. “Not the way you seem to want.”
“You can’t just leave,” I blurted. “We’re your family.”
His brow creased, as if in pain. For one giddy moment I let myself hope that I had won. But I’d forgotten I was fighting my father.
His forehead smoothed. His eyebrows rose. “For someone who has pushed away any intimacy in her own life, it’s rather disingenuous of you to question my choices.”
I sucked in my breath. It was like the end ofTo Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus Finch doesn’t heroically save his client, when he loses at trial and Tom is shot escaping from prison. Except my father wasn’t even trying to do the right thing.
I folded my arms, burying my shaking hands in my armpits. “At least I’m trying. I’m not running away.”
But my father was no longer listening. He frowned. “Do you know where my navy sweater is?”
I stared at him in disbelief. “I’m not going to help you pack. Find your own damn sweater.” I spun on my heel.
His clear voice followed me to the door. “Who’s running away now?”
His words tripped me at the edge of the carpet. But I didn’t stop. I pressed my lips together, the way I’d seen my mother do a thousand times, and went out, closing the door.
My father, my hero, would rather minister to wounded warriors than deal with his own family.
