Besides, I’m not there every day to protect her from life. I have to teach her some defenses.
“Good girl. What do you want to do this weekend when you come to see me?”
“Can we have breakfast at Miss B’s?”
“Of course we can,” I tell her. We do that every weekend she’s here; it’s become a tradition.
“Can we work on the garden too?”
“Absolutely. I may even have a surprise for you.”
“Oh, my goodness, I love surprises!”
“I know you do. Do you know what I love?”
“What?”
“You.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
We chat for a while longer. She tells me about this week’s spelling list and how she particularly likes the word agog because it sounds like eggnog, and eggnog looks like snot. Then, she grills me on who I saw today and what is happening in Stowaway. I saw all the regular people and nothing new is happening. Paige doesn’t like to miss things here, though.
When she’s here, she doesn’t like to miss anything that’s happening in Portland. Ideally, we wouldn’t live ninety minutes apart and she wouldn’t have to miss anything.
Like every night, when we say goodbye, I plaster on my smile and pretend that it doesn’t kill me a little that I can’t tuck her in bed and kiss her forehead goodnight.
Life can come at you hard. No matter how careful you are, or all the planning you do, sometimes, this world picks you upby the nutsack and shakes you like a fucking rag doll. Every morning I wake up with the renewed energy to fuck it right back.
Two
Lou
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
Ambrose Redmoon
Waking up is as hard as falling asleep. Every horrible detail comes back to life. Constant familiarity. Persistent reminders.
No escape. No respite.
I wear my bad decisions like a shroud. All my missteps are like a trail I’ve left behind for others to follow.
I hope they don’t.
When Jules offered me her deceased grandmother’s house in Stowaway, Oregon, I could have laughed. Maybe I would have if it didn’t hurt to do so. The town name fits my situation. It’s what I did. I stowed away in a borrowed car, wearing borrowed clothes, to a borrowed home, all in the hopes of finding myself somewhere new. Or the next version of me, anyway.
I’ve been many things before.
Now, I guess I’m a victim.
Well, I’ve been that for years now. I didn’t know it. Didn’t see it, at first. I’m sure no woman does. The subtle signs well hidden behind charisma and charm. It’s the lure. The draw. You don’t know you’re walking into a web. You don’t know you’re sleeping with a monster. If I had seen it, I like to think I’d have run the other way.
I’m sorry. I love you.
It was always the same words. Repeated over and over.
Lies and lies and lies.
