“We can talk about that later,” she said, her voice steady. Before I could answer, I spotted my dad in the doorway of the truck.What! What was he doing here? The happiness that flooded me in that moment almost knocked me off my feet. Never had I been happier to see that lucky Dodgers cap.
I looked over at Rose and she smiled. “Surprise!”
“Adrian?” Hamlet exclaimed from behind me.
But my dad kept it cool. He leaned against the truck’s doorframe and crossed his arms—the birthday tattoo visible on his forearm. “Well, well, well.”
Looking at my dad in his truck—a culmination of decades of blood, sweat, and tears—the e-mails I’d read yesterday flashed through my mind, paired with the strongest memories of my childhood.
The day my mom left, the feeling of her hair pressed against my face and the wetness of her tears immediately forgotten when my dad scooped me up in his arms and took me down to this very park we were standing in. Putting me on the little train that traversed through creeks, horse stables, and trees. The worst day turned into a magical one.
My first day of kindergarten, the first time I’d been truly apart from my dad and left with strangers. He let me wear his old Bone Thugs-N-Harmony T-shirt, tied into a knot at the waist, and the animal charm bracelet my mom had mailed me for good luck. When I wouldn’t stop crying, he stayed parked outside the school, within view of the window all day—missing his first day at a new job and getting fired.
Being picked up from a sleepover in fifth grade when all the girls circled around me and asked me why my dad was so youngand was he really my brother and where were myrealparents. My dad pounded on the front door of Lily Callihan-Wang’s house so hard that the entire family woke up. He bought me a McDonald’s hot fudge sundae on the midnight drive home and we sang along to TLC’s “No Scrubs.”
My dad’s expression as he sat in the doctor’s office with me as I got a shot for a bacterial infection, wailing. Not being able to tell if it was his palm that was sweaty or mine as he grasped my hand, so tight.
My dad’s expression, again, as he read the instructions on the back of a tampon box out loud to me as I lay curled up in fetal position on my bed, torn between laughter and tears.
And his expression, now. I realized right then—how disappointed you could be when you were all in with someone. When you cared so deeply. How your heart could break, so precisely and quickly.
But I’d always known that. Ever since my mom left my dad, left us. And everything since then had been an attempt to keep myself so far away from all that. Anything real, anything difficult to hold on to.
As I stood there surrounded by three people who had the ability to do just that—crack my chest open to all the disappointment and difficulty and grief—I knew I still wanted it. The risk of the bad stuff was so worth the good stuff. People who would be there for you even when you messed up and behaved like a little jerk? They were the good stuff.
My fear that my dad would move on without me, with Kody or whoever else, seemed so absurd then.
It was hard to keep the emotion out of my voice. “I’m back.”
“I see,” Pai said, cool and distant.
I took a deep breath. “And I’m the worst person. Do you still want me as your daughter?” The words came out choked, garbled.
His posture relaxed and he smiled, somehow sad and happy at the same time. “Sure, Shorty.” He stepped down from the truck and when he reached me, I hugged him fiercely.
“I’m sorry,” I said into his shirt, the tears dropping rapidly—they’d been at the ready since the second I saw him. I heard Rose and Hamlet tactfully walk away from us.
His chin rested on the top of my head, and he wrapped his arms around me, too. “I know.”
“I’ll never do anything like that again.”
“I canceled my credit card, for one thing.”
I laughed a little, snot running down my face. “I overreacted. I was just disappointed and it was hard and Mãe was easy.”
He pulled back and rubbed the snot off my face with the dish towel from his back pocket. “Yeah, she has a way of making everything seem simple.”
I looked at my dad’s face—the one that resembled mine, but with a straighter nose and darker eyes. “The thing is, I didn’t like it? It was fun at first but, ultimately…”
He smiled that crooked, knowing smile. “Unsatisfying?”
That was it. “Yeah. Missing something.”
I heard a sniffle from somewhere inside the truck. Whether it was Rose or Hamlet, I really couldn’t say.
“Don’t ever do that again. Got it?” He poked my forehead.
I scowled but nodded. “I won’t. I don’t want to let you down again. Ever.”
