As an adult, I did.
She liked having money my dad didn’t control. Something he couldn’t dangle over her head the wayhe did with everything else.I make the money. I make the decisions.He used to say it like it was gospel.
As if he could hear my brain talking shit about him, he marched in, right on cue.
“Good afternoon, Liam,” he said, setting his worn leather briefcase on the counter.
No hi, son. No hey, buddy. Just that short, professional tone he used with everyone—like being my father was just another job he clocked in and out of.
“Hey, Dad.”
“I’ve got some work I need to get done in my study tonight, so don’t wait up for me after dinner,” he told my mom.
“Do you have time to sit down for dinner with Liam and me?” she asked, frustration in her tone, but my dad would either ignore it or not even realize it was there at all.
He glanced down at his watch, like he was actually weighing whether we were worth a few minutes of his precious time.
“Yeah, I think I can fit you guys in.”
This guy.
If I didn’t know it would only create more problems for my mom, I’d stand up and walk out right now—tell him to go fuck himself on my way out the door.
But I didn’t. And I couldn’t.
I couldn’t be the reason my mom had more to carry than she already did. Living with my dad every day—being married to a man who didn’t truly love her—was painful enough.
I sat down at the large dining room table, my plate already waiting in front of me. Of course, my mom had set the table to the nines—three-piece silverware placed just right, one crystal glass for water, another for tea. Fresh flowers ran down the center, their colors perfectly matching the fabric of the place mats.
To an unsuspecting eye, it looked like the kind of table a happy family gathered around every night—sharing stories from their day, laughing between bites, maybe even planning their next family vacation. But the memories carved into the wood of this table told a very different story.
If we managed to sit down together at all, the room was usually swallowed by silence. My mom would try to start a conversation, her voice hopeful at first, asking my dad about his day. He’d answer with short, one-word responses, until my mom finally gave up trying to make a connection with him.
After my brother, Noah, died, she stopped asking questions altogether. Who could blame her? Losing a child trapped her in a constant state of grief. Like me, I’m sure there wasn’t a single day that passed without my mom thinking about Noah.
Like most people say about the ones they’ve lost, he was the life of the party. Even though he was barely twelve when he died, he had an incredible way of seeing the world—full of hope, always believing the glass was half full, no matter who our dad was or how heavy the house felt.
Noah never stopped asking questions or thinking outside the box. Most days, we’d disappear into the treehouse in the far corner of the backyard, imagining we were pirates searching for lost treasure, or playing I spy from high above the ground—laughing, pretending, and, most importantly, forgetting about the life that waited for us back inside our home.
That’s why, as soon as I turned eighteen, I enlisted in the military and ran from this hellhole without looking back. When my time in the military was over, I couldn’t even convince myself to buy a house in the same town my dad lived in. That’s why I landed in Silver Creek. Closer to the people who actually cared about me and farther away from the man who could make my blood boil in five seconds flat.
“Thought any more about law school?” my dad asked, peeking over the edge of the newspaper he’d pulled out of his briefcase.
Here we go again.
“No, Dad. You know I like being a sheriff.” I knew he wouldn’t like my answer, but no matter how many times he asked, it was never going to change.
“You can’t be making a good living doing that,” he said. “You probably barely make enough to live in a shack.”
“I live comfortably, Dad. Money isn’t the only reason to love what you do, you know.”
“Not where I come from. Money is the only reason you do what you do. Without it, you have nothing.”
The way my mom stared down at her plate told me his words had hit their mark. My dad had always seemed to be missing the part of the brain most people have—the one that knows some thoughts are better left unsaid. But because no one dared to take him on, he never realized it. He said whatever he pleased. He’d done it his whole life, and he’d do it until the day he died.
“How are you ever going to start a family if you can’t even support them?” he pressed.
Quite frankly, I didn’t care if I ever started a family. There was no way I was passing on the Carson name. All it carried were generations of trauma and a reputation soaked in shame.
