I swipe to answer. "Hello."
"Rika. We need to talk about tomorrow."
My stomach drops. Something in his tone tells me exactly where this conversation is going.
"What about tomorrow?"
"I'm not going to be able to make it to the recital this weekend."
For a moment, I can't speak. Can't breathe. The words echo in my head, hollow and devastating.
"You're joking." My voice comes out flat. "Please tell me you're joking."
"Something came up. Jasmine and I have plans."
"Plans." I repeat the word like it's poison. "What kind of plans?"
"We're going to a wine tasting in Vermont. It's been booked for months."
A wine tasting. He's choosing awine tastingover his daughter's dance recital. And he’s booked it for months? This feels almost surreal, it’s so bad.
"Mitchell, you already missed the dress rehearsal. Do you have any idea what this will do to her?" I argue, but I know it's pointless. "If you don't show up, she'll be the only girl on that stage without her dad. Theonlyone. Do you understand how humiliated she'll feel? Howhurt?"
I wish there were another pause. A small sign, even a fleeting one, that Mitchell realizes what he’s doing. That he’s effectively abandoning his kids. But there's none.
"Don't be dramatic. She'll get over it."
"She won't get over it, Mitchell. This will break her heart." I grip the phone so hard my fingers ache. "You promised her you’d be there for her. YoupromisedZoe."
"I'll make it up to her."
"How? How are you going to make this up to her?" My voice rises despite my best efforts. "She's one of the featured dancers this year. It’s her first solo. She needs you for the father-daughter dance where the dads lift their daughters. You’re already the only dad who wasn’t there for the dress rehearsal. You can’t do this to her."
There’s a long pause where I can hear a feminine voice talking in the background. A feminine voice I wish I didn’t know all too well. I can almost feel Mitchell’s disinterest through the phone line. I’ve already lost this battle and I’m not going to be the victim.
Zoe is.
"She doesn't need me there. She needs someone to lift her up for that dance. Anyone can do that."
This can’t be happening. Zoe is already on the edge of disaster and her dancing is the only thing in her life that is still going well. This could topple her into a full-blown crisis.
“It's afather-daughterdance.” I grit through clenched teeth. “She needs herfather.”
"Well, her father has other commitments." His tone turns belligerent, the way it always does when he knows he's in the wrong but refuses to admit it. "I'm not canceling a five-hundred-dollar wine tour because Zoe wants to twirl around onstage. I'm already stuck with them for spring break."
I have to swallow as my lunch threatens to come up, and I clutch the phone so hard my knuckles hurt. Is he serious?
"Stuck with them?"
"Listen, this isn’t negotiable," Mitchell continues, unaware that I'm unraveling on the other side of the line. Or maybe he just doesn't care. That last part is way more likely than the first. "Just because you don't have a life doesn't mean we're all like you."
Oh, Mitchell's got a life alright. A life that apparently doesn't include his own children.
I feel like I've been punched in the chest, all the breath knocked out of me in one vicious blow.
I force myself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
"You still there, Rika?"
