“Information?” He repeated, then laughed. “Ah, you are… just like her.” He shook his head.
“You mean my mother, your wife?” I posed, my tone not at all friendly.
He didn’t seem to look back on her with love or regret himself. Now that I thought about it, my father turned cold as ice whenever my mama’s name was brought up. As long as theywere married, you would have thought that he would speak on her with love and admiration. He didn’t even like to talk about her. Red flag. I was too young to question anything, and I had no reason to believe that he would lie to me or my sister about what happened to her. Now that I was grown, I second-guessed everything that he had ever told me.
“That’s exactly who I mean. She bulldozed our entire life, then just walked out of here like shit was going to be sweet.” His tone was low and his eyes dark, filled with shadows. “She thought I was stupid too. And she tried to play me like I was,” he responded, biting down angrily on his jaw.
“What really happened to her, daddy, hmm?” I asked, and surprise splashed across his face.
He was usually better at controlling his emotions, I guess my question genuinely floored him.
“Who have you been talking to? Let me guess… Frequency, right?” my father asked. “Is that who you’ve been with this whole time? When did you meet him? Where did you meet him? Did he help you orchestrate this whole fucking charade!” My father lost it in a way I’d never witnessed before.
I was stone, unable to move, and barely able to fucking blink or breathe. The hatred he seemed carry was harrowing.Did he know him? Does Frequency have a past with my family? Was there another reason that I was targeted that night?
“This isn’t about him. This is about you. All this time I thought mama just abandoned us, but I know something happened, and I want to know what.”
“It’s done. She’s gone, so it doesn’t even matter anymore.” He said it so casually, raising his shoulders and keeping his eyes focused on me. “The past… it’s buried, and so is she. She wasn’t the woman you thought she was. Hell, she wasn’t the woman that I thought she was,” he said curtly.
“I still want to know what happened to her.”
“She turned into a rose that blooms every year. Full of thorns, pricking your fingers if you dared try to pluck her when she grew.” He spoke while staring out the side window into the rose garden that had been planted right after she went away.
She was never the one with a green thumb, but daddy was good at making things grow and thrive. Of the two, she was the free spirit, while he was always trying to push the law. I stared out at the garden with him, and my blood turned to ice in my veins. Glancing up at my father’s face, he didn’t even look like himself anymore.
“Halo exposed me to a man that abuses his power at every turn. She started a relationship with this man. She was going to leave us… for him,” he explained.
My thoughts were jumbled. Disbelief filled me up as he continued. That same sickening feeling I had gotten earlier swept over me as I inched away from him. My eyes bounced from the rose garden outside, and back to his face when he turned to me. There was some remorse there, along with anger, and beneath all that, a man that was wounded. She had left him scarred beyond repaired. Sometimes, that was the end result. A good woman left a man with her mark, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
“She put us all at risk, and when he showed her who he really was, she thought she could just come back here and pretend like nothing had happened. I knew though. I was having her tailed, watching everything that she did, including the many times she lied to my face and snuck off to be with him, or whoever else fulfilled her needs at the time.”
“Did… did you confront her? What happened?”
His eyes glossed over and he sniffled before lowering his head.
“I’m not proud of the things I’ve done, Harbor.”
“What did you do, daddy?” I asked, shaking my head and gripping my stomach as it did some serious lurches.
“I was angry and in the heat of the moment, things happened. Things that I couldn’t take back. She also said things, told me things… and I snapped. I had a few connections, dark web type shit, so I made a request. I put a bounty on her head,” he revealed, and I swear all oxygen was being deprived from me in that moment.
I stumbled into the chair behind me and eventually sank into it before my legs gave out and I ended up on the floor. There was no way that he was telling me what I thought he was. The mere thought of any of it being true was enough to make me come unglued.
“You… put a hit on her?” I asked, tears welling my eyes. “How could you?—”
“I was emotional. She had gutted me Harbor! You don’t understand.” My father shook his head, feeling defeated no doubt.
“Then make me understand! Because to me it sounds like you had her killed because she hurt your fucking feelings! Tell me that’s not what happened! Tell me I’m wrong!”
Silence. Sirens rang in my ears and we had a stare off. I felt like I was in the middle of some twisted ass dream and couldn’t shake the shit. My father. My protector. The first man that I ever loved. The revelation that he had done something to my mother left my world tilted.
“I had a change of heart, and I realized that I wouldn’t just be hurting myself. She was your mother. You didn’t deserve to be deprived of her. So I called it off, at least I tried,” he said, sniffing and turning back to the rose garden. “By the time I got the word out, it was too late. A team had been sent to handle her, and… she was gone. I fucked up. And I couldn’t let the rest of the world know. Especially not you or your sister.”
“So you lied. You lied to the whole world and said that she ran off, abandoning us, and the whole time you knew!” I snarled.
“Harbor—”
“No!” I hopped to my feet and snatched my purse from the couch. “I asked for answers, and I got them. I’m leaving.” I marched toward the entryway.
