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And it happened again.
My insides hollowed out.
“Oh, Dad,” I said softly.
“She was on a fucking playground. How can a kid not be safe on a fucking playground?”
Oh God.
I pushed into him, and this time held on tight.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, cheek to his chest.
“It was, honey.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You’ll have kids one day and you’ll get it. Itwas.” He pulled me away with my face in his hands again, and he said, “But I wanna work on it because it’s torture, you being far from me. I thought I deserved it. I thought it was my penance. I thought you’d be safer, far away from me. But I couldn’t hack it. Then, when it got too much, and I’d break down and think to come to you, I’d think again I was being weak. You went away, and I thought you did it to protect yourself from me. I thought you needed the distance. So I stayed away. But it’s not that. It’s not weak. I miss my little girl. So I’m gonna work on it because I need you in my life.”
I put my hand over one of his at my face. “Does Deb make you happy?”
“Yes, but it’s incomplete because you aren’t a part of it. I hate that I do that to her too. I just can’t seem to stop…fucking up.”
“He left us with this, Dad. This is all on him. But he took Macy. We can’t keep giving him pieces of us.”
He nodded. “You’re right.”
I put my other hand to his and curled both around, taking his from my face, but I held them between us.
“You need to go back to Deb,” I said.
“She lives with the guilt too.”
I figured that was part of the draw.
Though, Deb was very pretty, and if memory served, really sweet.
“You’re right. You have work to do. Both of you. But it isn’t your fault. I don’t blame you. Mom didn’t.”
“She did.”
Hang on.
“What?”
“She blamed me, and she blamed Deb. I protected you from it when she’d lose it. The words she’d hurl at me. She hated me before she stopped feeling anything. I didn’t want you to know. After we lost her. Your memories of her were already jaded. I wanted you to be able to keep hold of what little you had. I didn’t want to tell you how much hate she had for me, how deeply she blamed me.”
“How could she blame you? You had nothing to do with it.”
“She sent Macy to Deb’s so she could get her hair done. The truth of it is, darlin’, she couldn’t stand the guilt she felt herself, so she transferred it to me.”
God, this was sofucked up.
He looked over my shoulder, so I looked over my shoulder to see everyone else had drifted away.
Everyone but Cap, Luna, Scott, Louise and Shirleen.
“I’m glad she has you,” Dad said to Cap.
