I recognized the look on Frankie’s face, but it didn’t make any fucking sense. She’d only met me once. It wasn’t the same as when I thought about her. I knew who she was. Knew what I had given up. What I was missing.
To her, I was just a guy who fixed their sink. The guy who answered her questions, no matter how many she threw at him, just so I could listen to her voice. Just so I could keep her close to me for a few fleeting moments.
Now, I’d never get close to her again.
It was for the best. She wasn’t my daughter. We might have shared DNA, but I gave away any right to have her in my life. I walked away thinking she would be better off. Believing she would be safe.
“Dad went to jail for hurting us.”
Us, Frankie had said. Not me, not Mom.Us.
I wanted the fucker’s name but didn’t know how to get it. Sure, I could ask Nav, but that would lead to questions. Questions I didn’t want to answer.
But I knew one person who could find that information for me.
“No.”
I stared at Haizley. “What do you mean, no?”
She cocked her head to the side and raised her eyebrows, giving me a knowing look.
“I need to know what he did.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I asked, adding another octave to my voice. “He hurt my daughter!”
Haizley sat back with her eyes on me as I paced the room. She was quiet, too quiet, and I knew what she was doing. I’d been coming to see her long enough that I knew when she kept her mouth shut, she was waiting for me to work something out on my own.
“What?” I asked, impatient with my own lack of understanding.
“What did you say to me when you told me she was here and I asked what you were going to do?”
My hands scrubbed over my face as I thought about it. I knew what she wanted me to say, but this was different. Just because I couldn’t be her father didn’t mean I wouldn’t beat the ass of the man who hurt her.
“Fuck,” I cursed and fell back onto the couch.
“Derek?”
“I said there was nothing I could do because I signed away my rights,” I answered.
“That wasn’t why you cursed. Tell me what you just learned.”
I stared up at the ceiling. Therapy was bullshit, I decided. All it did was show you what you were doing wrong, which I got was the point, but I already knew what the fuck I did wrong. What I needed to know was how to make things fucking right. I needed to know how to not fucking do it again.
“Derek, you had a breakthrough. What was it?”
“She’s my daughter, Haizley.” My voice cracked with emotion. I sat forward, my elbows on my knees, as I hung my head. “I was supposed to protect her. I thought I was.” Haizley’s eyes filled with compassion when I looked up at her. “I let her go so she would have a good life, a safe life, and he did something. He hurt her and her mother.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked, and I knew by the tone of her voice that she already knew the answer.
Haizley Walker was a damn good therapist. She knew what I wanted to do without me having to say it, but she would push me to say it out loud, and she didn’t do it with a condescendingI told you sotone.
She made me do the work. Forced me to face my flaws in a way that made it seem like it was my idea to do the opposite of what I would normally lean toward.
“I want to beat his fucking ass.”
I pushed off the couch and walked to the window. My hands gripped the frame as I looked down the street at the house my daughter lived in. Haizley didn’t say a word. Every time I had what she called a breakthrough, she would stay quiet after I said it out loud and wait while I worked through shit in my head.
