Page 34 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

"Yeah. We'll figure something out."

"I'm glad I told you. I was nervous."

"I'm glad you told me too."

"Love you, sweetheart."

He'd said it many times in my life. The voice was familiar. The man speaking through it was someone else.

"Love you too, Dad."

I hung up first.

The living room was dim. I hadn't turned on the lamp. Whiskers came around the leg of the chair and looked at me.

I held the anger in my chest like a vital sign.

I tried to read. The pages didn't take. I put the kettle on and stood there with the tea bag in the cup and never poured, and when the kettle screamed I turned it off and the cup was still empty.

I needed out of the house.

I pulled on leggings and the windbreaker I hadn't worn since I don't remember when and wheeled my bike out of the garage. The streetlight popping on overhead, the only sound the hiss of the air pump. I clipped the helmet on under my chin.

By the end of the block my legs were finding it. By the second I was moving.

The streets were quiet. Dinner-table light in some of the windows. A man jogging the other way, breathing hard. The wind was clean and I pulled it in and let it out.

Dad has a girlfriend.

The road rolled under me.

Dad has a girlfriend named Carol and I bet he doesn't tell her how to dress.

That made me pedal harder.

I bet he doesn't tell Carol what's appropriate for a woman her age. I bet he's never once mentioned her hemline. I bet Carol wears whatever she wants and he tells her she looks nice and means it.

A car came up behind me and gave me a wide berth.

He's off Brad's side now too. Six months ago, a man like Brad didn't just throw away a good marriage. I must have done something. Now Brad's a piece of work.

I thought he was a piece of work too. I thought it first. So I can't hold it against him that he caught up. People are allowed to catch up.

Except something in me held it against him anyway, the way he asked about Brad and never about me.

Catching up now doesn't undo the years he didn't.

The road bent and I leaned with it. My legs found the old rhythm, the one from college and residency, the one I used to ride at midnight after shifts to come down off whatever high the shift had triggered.

Somewhere along the park the old voice showed up, the one that sounds almost like mine, but isn’t. It's his. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Look at everything you have. A roof, a job, a body that works. You don't get to be a grown woman on a bike sulking because your father met somebody.

It was a strong voice. It had run me for thirty-five years. But now I didn't believe it.

I stood up on the pedals on the flat stretch and let the anger have the road. I had run out of that club. Run out on a man who looked at me like he was glad I existed, and I hadn't called him, and I'd told myself that was caution. It wasn't caution. It was the same good girl who isn't allowed to want things, and I was so tired of her.

Anyway, I thought, as I laughed out loud into the empty street, Derek fucking Harrington is a millionaire and he looks miserable, so there's that.

The laugh came out short and mean and surprised me. The wind took it. God, I'm being a bitch. Derek was miserable from loss. But the petty thought was the first thing in twenty minutes that hadn't hurt.