Closing my eyes, I flashed back to Sean’s face that night I’d walked in on him with Mom. The way she was leaning much too close. The way my heart started to splinter before I even understood what I was seeing. The way a million tiny and not so tiny dreams died in the moment that I did.
Sean was waiting for some kind of acknowledgment, so I nodded once and walked my bike up.
We were finally going to talk about it. And afterward, maybe we wouldn’t ever talk again.
* * *
Dad’s truck was still in the garage when I checked the window, which given how late I was, was alarming enough to push Sean from my mind.
“Dad?” Once inside, I made a beeline for his room, thinking—hoping—maybe he was just sick. But his room was empty. His bed was even made. I was darting through the kitchen to check the living room when he came walking through the opposite entryway.
He was holding his phone. “We need to talk.”
I braced myself against the fridge, almost as out of breath as I’d been after running earlier. Except it wasn’t exhaustion panting through my body. It wasn’t shock, or even fear, so much as dread. Like twisting in a swing, round and round, watching the ropes coil together, tightening, and shortening until there was nothing left to twist together. I’d been watching the swing twist higher and higher all summer, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but always inexorably closer to that point when it would spin free in a rush, trying to hurl me off.
Except I wasn’t a kid on a playground shouting with my friends. I was a motherless girl, standing in a tiny galley kitchen watching the fluorescent light leach away what little color was left in Dad’s face. He’d been watching the swing twist too, dreading his next words even more than me.
My hand found the fridge handle and squeezed for no other reason than I wanted something to hang on to.
“About Mom.”
Dad looked smaller when he answered. “She left a message. She wants to see you.”
My response was a confession and an apology all in one. “She already did.” I saw those three little words physically impact him, hurt him. And I had to hurt him more. “When you were at the auction. I know what she wants. And I know why.” I bit the inside of my cheek, but I couldn’t keep my chin from quivering as I looked at him. “Dad… Daddy…it’s not true. Please tell me it’s not.” The idea that I might not be his, that he might not be mine, was unbearable. It was such a vile thing, this poisonous seed that she’d planted, and I’d fed without meaning to. I needed Dad to destroy it. To pull it up so I could salt the earth.
But he didn’t.
His face crumbled. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen. The worst. It cauterized my tear ducts in an instant.
She wasn’t a liar.
Denials screamed in my head and I was moving, staggering across the kitchen on legs that felt as worthless as Mom’s wedding vows. I wrapped Dad in a bear hug, locked the tips of my fingers behind his broad back and squeezed as tight as possible.
“I knew when she got pregnant. We hadn’t been able to… I should have told you.”
“No. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”
He grabbed my shoulders and held me away from him. He came just short of shaking me. “It does matter.” I felt something rip inside at the words he said next. “She could try and take you away. Do you understand that? Do you want to come visit me on the weekends?”
“Then we’ll leave. Oregon, remember? People need mechanics everywhere.”
He let go of my arms.
“Dad, remember?”
He turned my palm up and dropped the keys to his truck in them. Dad’s blue eyes were glassy. “Go in without me. Leave the closed sign and work on the Spitfire.”
I didn’t immediately comprehend what he was saying. It had nothing to do with Mom. Nothing to do with the new reality we suddenly shared. I couldn’t understand why he wanted me to leave when my instinct was the exact opposite. I wanted to physically hold on to him. If there was a chance that she could take me, I’d make her pry me away from Dad if it came to that. I’d make it come to that.
I’d have sworn Dad felt the same way, except he was stepping back from me. He was sending me away. He was quiet.
My heart was beating in my throat, so that every word had to fight to push free. “You can come with me. I’m so close to starting it. The timing sprockets came in. Don’t you want to take the first test drive with me?” We’d been talking about it for the past couple days, arguing over the music we’d play.
Dad shook his head. “Not today. I’ll look her over tomorrow and we’ll see. You go on.” He brushed past me after that, disappearing into his room.
Leaving me.
Dad had never left me.
