My stomach soured the way it always did when they started talking about me. Dad’s voice lowered after that. He was speaking so softly that I missed most of the next few things he said until:
“Don’t you ever say that to me again.”
I shrank into myself at the unspoken threat in his voice. I wasn’t used to being scared of him. I’d made him mad plenty of times, but even at his angriest, I’d never been afraid of him.
I was afraid now, and I wasn’t even the one he was threatening.
“Kate—Kate—Kate!” He threw the phone so hard, I heard it break.
My hands fisted at my sides. Things had just started to get better. Dad and I were figuring out life again—just the two of us. I was beginning to remember what being happy felt like.
With one phone call, she took it all away.
Dad would come out of his room any second. If I didn’t want to have a conversation, I needed to hurry back outside and pretend that I was only just getting home.
Avoiding had kind of been the default all summer when Dad and I came even remotely close to talking about Mom. And maybe it would have worked. Maybe we could have kept dodging the subject, pretending that we weren’t a family with an amputated member, ignore the phantom pains that we both still felt.
Maybe Dad and I could have.
But Mom wasn’t going to let us.
Instead of backing away, instead of hiding, I stood directly outside his door so there’d be no way for him to wonder if I’d overheard him. I wanted him to know.
I met his eyes dead-on when he opened the door. “What did Mom want?”
CHAPTER 9
Dad’s face was flushed red, the anger his conversation with Mom had stirred up still visible under his skin. But the moment he saw me, the moment I asked that one question, all the blood drained from his face.
I shouldn’t do this to him. I shouldn’t make things harder. Dad looked ill, and he hadn’t even said her name to me yet. I didn’t want him to have to relive the conversation. And yet, I asked him again. “Dad.”I’m sorry.“What did Mom want?”
His eyes were wide as he stared at me—frightened, I would almost say, except nothing frightened Dad. And that seemed to be all he could do. Just stare.
But I couldn’t let it go.
“She wants to know you’re okay—”
I had never in my life sworn in front of Dad, but I did then. He didn’t even look that shocked.
“She doesn’t get to pretend she cares. Not anymore. She left us—”
“No!”
I shrank back at Dad’s sudden outburst.
“Me. Not you.” He rested his hand on my head. “She didn’t leave you.”
The weight of Dad’s hand was familiar and comforting in a way that always made me feel safe and loved. But his words simmered under my skin so I shook him off. “Then where is she? Where has she been all these months? Why isn’t she here yelling at you? Why did she try to—” I bit my tongue.
In a vertigo-inducing rush, I was back in my living room watching silhouettes moving along the wall in patterns that made no sense to me. And hearing her laughter, her murmuring.
The morning after she left, I’d carried my Post-it note into the hallway. My legs had moved without any direction from my brain. I had stopped when I saw Dad hunched over in one of the beautiful but uncomfortable dining room chairs that Mom had picked out.
He’d had his own note, a scrap of paper even smaller than mine. I had watched him stand, crush it into a tiny ball, and hurl it against the wall. It had bounced off and rolled under the china cabinet. Then his bones had seemed to dissolve before he fell to his knees, hung his head in his hands and wept.
I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t done much of anything besides back up and slip quietly into the bathroom. I’d flattened her note on the counter, but the sticky part was covered with lint from my pillow and refused to stick. I’d held it down and stared at her words until they lost all meaning. Then I’d torn it into tinier and tinier pieces, until all I had left was a palm full of yellow confetti fluttering into the toilet and swirling away.
The words themselves had been harder to flush. I could still close my eyes and see even the one she’d misspelled.
