“You did. It damn near shattered me. I wanted to stay more than anything.”
“You wanting to leave the church and get a divorce shouldn’t have come with conditions.” I try to say that without bitterness. “You shouldn’t have been ashamed. It was Mom who decided she was going to hate you for it. She said she’d never be able to hold her head up in town again.”
“I was never supposed to fall in love with a certain kind of life when I was doing outreach. That was the life I was trying to talk folks out of.”
“I thought it was amazing that you joined that ministry and that you went on the road to go to big cities to do street ministry and help the homeless. I know Mom hated it. She hated that you spent more time with addicts and drunks than with your own family. I couldn’t sleep one night and I heardyou fighting. She said that the kind of friends you were making weren’t the kind a minister should have. You weren’t leading people to God. You were getting led astray.”
Dad’s got a healthy tan from spending so much time outdoors, but he visibly pales. “I didn’t know that you heard that.”
“Yeah.”
“I never touched any drugs, but it was true that I had many friends who’d done bad things. They’d turned their lives around. Some were homeless. Some addicts. Some were alcoholics. Many were women who had been…”
“You can say it. Prostitutes, or who worked at clubs. I know that’s how you met Rita. I know that she was trying to get clean because she had two little kids and that her husband wasn’t a good man.” That was ultimately how Dad found his way to Hart. Rita had a brother who lived across the country and was part of a biker club. He’d always offered to keep her and her boys safe if she ever wanted to leave his brother. “You helped her get clean and you gave her money to start over in Hart. The club kept her safe. I heard you trying to tell Mom one night, when you were upset that her husband OD’d, that you felt guilty. Mom didn’t get it. She said that some people were past redemption and we all had a choice in the first place. You didn’t need to be worried over a woman and two kids who weren’t yours. You should be worrying about your own family and your own church. She wanted to know what you had in you that was so dark you felt that you had to bleed and sweat to atone for it.”
Dad winces like he’s been struck. “I was trying to help and I’ll admit, I got lost in it. You meet people and you get to know them. You hear their stories. It’s heartbreaking. I was losing myfaith in the idea of religion, but not in people. It was the church board who finally sat me down and told me that I had to stop the ministry. They said they’d had complaints, and it wasn’t proper.”
“How ironic.” I can’t help my dry tone. Dad hasn’t once asked me what I think about church and God. He won’t, either.
“They thought that if I was so passionate about what I was doing, then I needed to shift my focus from being a church minister to street ministry and get hired somewhere else. It was a not so gentle nudge out the door, even if they pretended to give me a choice.”
“Mom blamed you for it. She said you should have seen it coming.”
“She did,” Dad admits, but not unkindly.
I won’t ever tell Dad about the stuff Mom said after he left. That he was having an affair with a drug addict and that he’d moved across the country to be with her. She told me once that my own father had chosen a junkie and her kids over his real wife and daughter. She made it seem like that’s the reason she had to protect me. She had to keep me safe from a father who had fallen so low that he was now a sinner, an adulterer, probably a drug dealer as well. She told me she had to cut off all contact for my own protection. I didn’t believe all of it. It wasn’t until I was a teenager and I found out that my dad had put the house and the car in my mom’s name that I started to subtly question what she was telling me.
Our food comes, and I get another reprieve. The words were right there, ready to break loose and spill free. It’s not good timing, but maybe it’s not the worst either.
I distract myself with eggs and hashbrowns for a few moments while I gather my courage. After all these years, Dad still gets the same breakfast he always did. Two eggs over easy, bacon burned until it’s crispy, and two pieces of rye toast. He still likes hot sauce on the eggs. Patti must really know his order, because they came sprinkled with red droplets.
I wait until he’s half done eating before I push my plate to the side and clear my throat. “I have to tell you something. You’re going to be upset. I don’t want you to blame Mom or be angry with her, even though it’s on her. I get that. It’s a choice she made not to tell you.”
Dad’s hand freezes. His fork clatters to the table. He doesn’t make a move to pick it up. I can’t tell him any other way.
“When I was sixteen. The house burned down.”
He goes so pale that there’s almost no tan at all. He looks sick. I should have found the words, and the courage, before we started eating.
“A fire…” he gasps.
I nod slowly. “Yes. Mom got out, but I was trapped inside.” Giving him the barest details might be best. Saving the rest for later, when he’s processed it, is likely the smartest way of dealing with this.
“I woke up and the room was all smoke. The fire was devouring part of the house. I could feel how hot the door to my room was. I looked around to try and find something to break the window, but there was nothing. I crawled around and found Bubby. She was so scared. I was too. I didn’t know that Mom was outside by then.” I pause. Even saying the words brings me straight back to that night. How scared I was. “She was alsotrying to find something to break the window. It was getting hotter and smokier. I didn’t know what to do. I thought I was going to… to die, but then the window justshattered. A man jumped in. Bubby got scared and leapt out of my arms. The man grabbed me. He must have cut himself on the glass because he was covered in blood. He shoved me through the window, but he didn’t hurt me. He made sure I didn’t get cut on the jagged edges like he had. I turned around and begged him to find Bubby, even though the room was full of smoke and the fire was literally inside by then. He- he-did. Mom saw me and ran to me. We both waited. I was so scared. I was so afraid that I’d sent someone to their death. I loved Bubby so much. I’d had her since I was a kid. I couldn’t let her die that way. He…” I chew on my lip for a moment as tears burn my eyes, as the fear and smoke and the terrible certainty that I wasn’t going to survive, roll through me.
Dad doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. He’s barely breathing.
“He got Bubby. He came out with her wrapped in his t-shirt. I knew he was hurt. That he’d been burned and he’d inhaled too much smoke. I knew it as soon as the paramedics and the fire trucks came and they put a mask on Bubby to give her oxygen. They gave me one too.” I have to finish, even though I’ve never seen my Dad look like this. Scared. Scary. Ruined. Devastated. I grasp his arm. Hard.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I know it wasn’t right that Mom didn’t tell you. She told me straight up that if you didn’t care about what happened to us then, you wouldn’t care now. I knew she was lying. I wanted to tell you when we reconnected, but I knew how much it would hurt you. We- we tried to find the man who saved me. She put up all sorts of stuff online, asking him to come forward so we could thank him, but he never did. He just…vanished. It was like he hadn’t ever been there at all. He saved my life, and Bubby’s too.”
Dad’s vibrating in the bench beside me. He’s shaking so hard thatI’mtrembling fromhistremors. “When I first met Maverick and Loreena, he told me that he could find just about anyone, or that Dravin and Wizard could. I have a date. Gordonville, Ohio only had five thousand people. It wouldn’t be impossible, even if it seems like it would. Maverick said that he wouldn’t do anything until I told you first and asked your permission. It’s taken me all this time to get the courage to tell you.”
Dad shoves up from the booth so hard that he knocks both his knees into the tabletop, nearly sending our plates careening over the edge.
I cover my mouth with both hands. Scalding tears stream down my face. This wasn’t how I wanted this to happen. I thought that Dad might actually sit calmly and go and break down in private later. Not that I wanted him to do that, but I don’t want him to hate Mom or me.
He turns to me, chest heaving. “I know who it was.”
