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“When we were young… years ago…”
“Clark!”
“Your father. My mother.”
I have no idea what’s coming but the mention of my father makes me uneasy.
“They had an affair.”
I blink several times, staring at him. “Come again?”
“They had an affair. It obviously didn’t last. My parents stayed together.”
I let his words sink in. “What?” I say disbelievingly. He stares back at me with pity in his eyes. Or maybe empathy.
I walk back until my calves touch the sofa, then I sit. My father had an affair? “You just found out?”
He walks to the patio doors, looking out of the window. “Yes.”
I fight against the feeling of my airways closing. “Why would you tell me that?”
He turns sharply. “Do you wish I hadn’t?”
I press a hand to my chest, trying to keep it from exploding, feeling my heart racing. My dad? “I don’t know. I don’t… I don’t… I don’t know.”
He moves to the coffee table. The fact that he comes closer pisses me off and makes my head spin more, if possible. He takes my hand and turns my knees until they’re pointing between his spread legs. He takes a breath that wavers. It scares me. “Dayna, I need you to process this, okay?”
How could my father — my dad, Roger Cross — how could he do that? “That’s why your dad hates me, us.”
“Yes. He doesn’t hate you; he hates your father, what they did to him.” He closes his eyes and starts speaking before he opens his lids. His voice is cautious. His grip on my hand tightens. Everything about the way he sits and sounds is disturbing. “Dayna, Little Princess… it wasn’t just Caspar.”
I snap my hand back. I need to breathe. I need to breathe but I can’t.
“My father…”
I hold my hands to my throat and eventually manage to drag air into my lungs. “No.” My face contorts, and Clark becomes blurred through my glazed eyes. “No.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He reaches out to my face, but I slap his hand away.
My breaths are becoming quick and shallow, not enough to feed my body with oxygen. I grab my throat tighter until it brings to my mind the image of my father’s body, hanging lifeless from the shower rail, his head drooped to one side.
“Your father and Caspar?”
I don’t know whether Clark replies, because all I hear are screams. All I see are flames as Little Princess lights up the Persian Gulf. I can smell oil, filling my nostrils and my lungs, the fuel drowning me.
“Dayna, what do you need? Breathe, baby.”
I close my eyes, hoping everything will go black and stay black forever.
“Dayna, say something. Speak to me.”
I manage to stand and move to the kitchen. I haphazardly empty a bag of fruit onto the bench and hold the brown paper over my nose and mouth, sliding down the cupboards to the floor.
“Dayna, Christ, what should I do?”
I keep breathing, inhaling as deeply as I can. My neck feels wet with tears. Clark is kneeling on the floor in front of me. When I can, I reach out to his chest, pushing him away.
“Go.”
