There are more texts, another phone call, and I can’t do this anymore. I click around until I find the button that says block, and I tap it before I change my mind.
He knew I would do this. It’s what he keeps saying.
Maybe he did. Maybe we were doomed from the start. Maybe there was never going to be a world where we trust each other, and I was looking for anything to latch onto. Or maybe he’s lying to me, and I was a fool for ever believing he cared about me.
Ollie’s already gone to bed, and Addie is upstairs in her room, the way she spends most of her days after her fight with Emmett. I’m all alone, sitting in the dark of the living room, and for one second, I let myself feel it.
I gave him all of me, and he took that and used it for anything he could, no matter how much of an empty shell it left me in the end. I can’t even cry. That would involve having anything left to give.
He tookeverything.
Addie comes downstairs at some point in her pajamas, her pink hair in messy braids. It seems like these days her face is set in a permanent frown, and I wish I knew how to help her.
Through everything that’s happened, I miss her smile.
“Dad,” she says, turning on the lamp beside the couch. “Why are you sitting in the dark? And why didn’t Uncle Will come for movie night? I tried to call him, but he didn’t answer.”
Probably too busy calling me over and over.
“He’s not going to be coming around anymore,” I say, staring down at my hands so I don’t have to see her reaction.
“What? Why not?” Her voice is tinted with an anxiety that reminds me of having to tell a ten year old Addie that her uncle wouldn’t be coming home. This man has been hurting my family for years. I don’t know why I ever thought it would be a good idea todatehim.
But I’m not going to lie to her. She’s seventeen. She deserves to know why she can’t see him anymore. “There were some pills in the medicine cabinet,” I say, as gentle as I can, even though I know there’s no way to break this news to her lightly. “From one of Mom’s old prescriptions. They’re missing. I guess he hasn’t changed as much as we thought.”
I rub my eyes that begin to burn, tears threatening to finally come after all this time, at the worst possible moment. When I’m supposed to be strong.
“Dad,” Addie says, sitting beside me.
“I know it’s hard to hear. I thought—” My voice cracks and I bury my face in my hands. “I thought things were different this time too.”
“Are you okay?” she asks, putting a hand on my back.
I turn toward her, and this isn’t the first time she’s had to ask me that in the last year, but this is the first time I can’t lie. “Not really, kiddo.”
She nods, leaning over to rest her head on my shoulder, and I think that’s it. Until she speaks up again. “Dad, I have to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to hate me.”
I sit up, turning to look at her. Her face is paler than usual in the light from the lamp, her eyes full of tears, matching mine, and I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Addie, I could never hate you—”
“Just… hang on.” She stands up and goes upstairs, into her bedroom, and when she comes back down, she’s holding an orange pill bottle.
Theorange pill bottle. The one I accused Will of—
“Why do you have those?” I ask, my eyes glued to the bottle that destroyed any chance of a relationship with the man I—
He didn’t even—
Addie had them.
She sits down beside me, staring at the wall, the same way I was minutes ago. “It’s been so hard,” she starts. “Mom doesn’t love us anymore. You’re always so busy, and I know we stress you out. Emmett hates me now and I just—”
Her voice gets quieter as she says the words that would shatter any parent’s heart. “I thought maybe. If I wasn’t here anymore, it might be better for everyone.”
I know what I’m supposed to do in this situation. But all of my training goes out the window when my daughter, the light of my otherwise bleak life, is sitting there telling me she intends to end her life.
