"About as well as you'd expect." I glance over at Mercy, who is spraying the faucet more than the dishes while Mom gently redirects her aim. "I kind of froze up. I couldn't even talk to him like a normal person. I gave him a muffin and he left and then I had a panic attack in my office."
"A panic attack? Over Jaxon?" Dad tilts his head and studies me, and I can see him trying to piece together why an ex-boyfriend from a decade ago would rattle me this badly. He doesn't have all the pieces, though, so maybe he thinks I'm overreacting. "Honey, I know things ended rough between you two, but that was a long time ago. Wouldn't it be nice to at least catch up? You were close once."
"It's not that simple, Dad…" I hang my head, unable to look him in the eye now. If it were that simple, I'd have loved to hear from him. I still cared, even though he'd given me every reason to really hate him. We grew up together, and he went off and did very adult things while I was here still learning to take care of myself.
"Why not?" He says it gently, not pushing, just confused. And I get it. From his perspective, Jaxon is just a former boyfriend who enlisted and fell out of touch. A kid I used to date.
The lie I told them was so easy because I was so heartbroken after two months of missing him and no calls. I told them I missed him and had a one-night stand. Mom cried for a day and then rallied. Dad was quiet for a week and then he built a crib, and my Nan crocheted a blanket for Mercy. No one was the wiser.
Now Nan is gone and Jaxon is back, and it's dredging up old emotions I thought I'd dealt with a long time ago.
"It's just weird seeing him, Dad." I force a smile and shrug. "That's all. It threw me off."
Dad nods slowly, not entirely convinced but willing to let it go. "Well, if it helps, I think the best thing you can do is just be yourself. You've got nothing to prove to anybody, least of all some boy who took off and never looked back. If he wants to be friendly, fine. If not, you've got plenty going on without him."
"Thanks, Dad."
"I mean it. You've built something real with that bakery, you're raising the best kid I've ever met, and you don't owe Jaxon Cole a damn thing." He reaches across the table and pats my hand. "Don't let him take up space in your head, baby."
"Mama, I sprayed Nana!" Mercy announces proudly from the sink, and Mom is standing there with water dripping off her chin, laughing. The front of her shirt is soaked and water runs down the walls. And that smile—my God, if Jaxon sees her, the world will stop.
I don't know how my parents don't see it, but I do every time I look at her. She looks just like him.
"You sure did, Baby." I get up from the table and go to them, wrapping my arms around my daughter from behind and pressing my face into her hair. She squirms and giggles and I hold on a little tighter than I need to. Right now, she's mine and only mine, and I'm not ready for that to change.
I'm not sure I'll ever be ready for that to change.
5
JAXON
Dad gets home at quarter past eleven and I've been on the couch for two hours doing nothing but staring at a water stain on the ceiling that looks like Florida. The kitchen is clean now, or at least cleaner than it was. I filled four trash bags, mostly beer bottles, and mopped the floor twice before the smell started to lift. The fridge got gutted too, though I'm pretty sure whatever was in that Tupperware in the back had been there long enough to qualify as a biohazard.
He stops in the doorway when he sees me, keys in one hand, the other gripping the frame to keep himself steady. He looks worse than he did at the yard, which I didn't think was possible.
"You're still up," he says.
"I went through the mail." I nod at the coffee table where I sorted everything into three piles. Junk, bills, and things that look like they might involve lawyers. The bills stack is ugly. A few of them have FINAL NOTICE stamped in red across the front, and one from the county assessor's office has been opened and shoved back into the envelope like he read it once and decided he didn'twant to deal with it or felt overwhelmed by it. "Some of these are bad, Dad."
He grunts and hangs his keys on the hook by the door. "I'll get to them."
"When?" I ask, feeling concerned about this. Mom would never have let it get this bad.
"Someday." I can tell he just wants me to shut up. But things are serious and he's not taking them seriously.
"Dad," I say, leaning forward, but he scowls at me.
"Where'd you put the remote?" His words are slurred. He's drunker than a skunk. It's like he's purposefully avoiding anything difficult, hiding from his real life because it's too difficult to process, and while I completely respect that—I've been through hard shit too—I was never given that opportunity. When hard shit happens, you grow the fuck up and deal with it. Not hide in booze.
"Dad, seriously. You have to deal with this shit or it's gonna pile up, and from the looks of it, you're about to lose your land. What about the house, hmm? Are you in foreclosure on this place?"
My comment draws more ire, and he turns and tracks mud across the kitchen floor I just mopped on his way down the hall without saying a word. His bedroom door closes and that's the end of that conversation. At least he didn't go to the fridge for a beer. There aren't any, which would've caused a bickering match, I'm sure, but he's had enough for one day.
I sit there looking at the bills for a while longer. If the house is in the same kind of trouble as the lumberyard, we're in a deeper hole than I thought. I don't have the income right now to dig usout. My pension paperwork hasn't even been filed yet, and the guys at the VA said it could take months to see anything, anyway. I add it to the growing list of shit I need to handle and get up to haul the trash out back.
The recycling bin is already full, so I line the bags along the fence and stand there in the yard for a minute. The night air is thick and warm and the crickets are loud in the trees behind the property. I grew up in this back yard, climbing that tree, playing in its branches and getting scolded by Mom for destroying her tomato plants, though they never really produced much, anyway.
It's tough knowing Dad's been struggling so much that he's barely paid the bills. I don't have access to his bank records other than the statements I went through—happy he didn't bite my head off for that one. But it doesn't look like he's even been making much money. If he has, it's been going to booze.
