“I’m here to say goodbye, to tell you that we will not be visiting you. If the girls want to come when they’re eighteen, they can. But I wouldn’t keep your hopes up.”
That snatches his next sentence away. His mouth opens and closes, opens again, closes again. He looks devastated, but I can’t find it in myself to care.
I pop my knuckles, frustrated by his silence but well aware he’d only piss me off if he spoke. “I’m done with you.”
“Did she survive? The girl?”
“Ophelia is fine.”
“I want to talk to Fleur.”
“Fleur is going through enough.”
“I want to make things right between her and I,” he says, but his eyes are glittering with ill intentions. I’ve seen his version of making things right. The whispered threats, the harsh bite of his words that sting so much more than his fists ever could, and the drunken, saccharine apologies that had my too-kind mother forgiving him each night.
I won’t have him feed his poison to Fleur.
My laugh is bitter, acidic on my tongue. “We’re long past that. What you did to Mom is irreparable.” I shake my head, simultaneously desperate to leave and longing to understand just how he ended up so terrible. “I remember you loving her.”
“Of course I love her, I—”
“Just loved Green more.” I try to let it go, but I just can’t. “They told you she had a medical condition, and you told them she was just high-maintenance. I was twenty-one, driving her to hospital visits so you could fuck your secretaries.”
“I’m sorry, Alex,” he snaps, but the telltale flexing of his fingers tell me the only thing he’s truly sorry about is the guards and the cuffs that prevent him from touching me. “What more do you want me to say?”
I don’t even know. Sorry is all he can say, but it doesn’t feel enough. It’ssounsatisfying. I hardly recognize him sitting opposite me, hardly understand how anyone could think I look like him.
I rise to stand, unsure what anyone could say to make any of this less terrible. “Well.Have a good rest of your life.”
“It’s not too late to turn yourself around. Lose the girl, cut the distractions. You could be worth something, Alex.”
Ophelia crosses my mind. The way those brown eyes brighten when they meet mine. The pink tinge that kisses her nose when I compliment her. My voice is soft and sure when it comes. “I am worth something, dad.”
It’s the gentlest reply I could’ve given, and yet he flinches like he’s truly, finally understanding that all his efforts to turn me into him have been in vain. And for the shortest of seconds, it’s like the past ten years of emotions pass through his expression at once. It’s gone in an instant, but the strong line of his shoulders droops a little lower than it did when he came in.
It’s the punishment he deserves, and no guilt hits me.
I’m halfway out the door when his voice stops me. I expect a final, cutting blow. A remark that’ll haunt my lowest of days. But it’s just a quiet, dejected, “Look after the girls.”
“I’ve been doing that for a very long time.”
And then I walk out, leaving the crushing weight he piled onto my shoulders for so long behind.
I unlock my phone as I pace out of the foyer and into the sunny parking lot beyond, dragging in a desperate lungful of fresh air.Finally. I slip a cigarette between my lips, thumbs hammering out a text.
Alex
It’s done. I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.
Robert Harwood
A day we’ve talked about for years. How do you feel?
Alex
I don’t really feel anything at all
Robert Harwood
