If I Fix You. Abigail Johnson

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       CHAPTER 9

      Dad’s face was flushed red, the anger his conversation with Mom had stirred up still visible under his skin. But the moment he saw me, the moment I asked that one question, all the blood drained from his face.

      I shouldn’t do this to him. I shouldn’t make things harder. Dad looked ill, and he hadn’t even said her name to me yet. I didn’t want him to have to relive the conversation. And yet, I asked him again. “Dad.” I’m sorry. “What did Mom want?”

      His eyes were wide as he stared at me—frightened, I would almost say, except nothing frightened Dad. And that seemed to be all he could do. Just stare.

      But I couldn’t let it go.

      “She wants to know you’re okay—”

      I had never in my life sworn in front of Dad, but I did then. He didn’t even look that shocked.

      “She doesn’t get to pretend she cares. Not anymore. She left us—”

      “No!”

      I shrank back at Dad’s sudden outburst.

      “Me. Not you.” He rested his hand on my head. “She didn’t leave you.”

      The weight of Dad’s hand was familiar and comforting in a way that always made me feel safe and loved. But his words simmered under my skin so I shook him off. “Then where is she? Where has she been all these months? Why isn’t she here yelling at you? Why did she try to—” I bit my tongue.

      In a vertigo-inducing rush, I was back in my living room watching silhouettes moving along the wall in patterns that made no sense to me. And hearing her laughter, her murmuring.

      The morning after she left, I’d carried my Post-it note into the hallway. My legs had moved without any direction from my brain. I had stopped when I saw Dad hunched over in one of the beautiful but uncomfortable dining room chairs that Mom had picked out.

      He’d had his own note, a scrap of paper even smaller than mine. I had watched him stand, crush it into a tiny ball, and hurl it against the wall. It had bounced off and rolled under the china cabinet. Then his bones had seemed to dissolve before he fell to his knees, hung his head in his hands and wept.

      I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t done much of anything besides back up and slip quietly into the bathroom. I’d flattened her note on the counter, but the sticky part was covered with lint from my pillow and refused to stick. I’d held it down and stared at her words until they lost all meaning. Then I’d torn it into tinier and tinier pieces, until all I had left was a palm full of yellow confetti fluttering into the toilet and swirling away.

      The words themselves had been harder to flush. I could still close my eyes and see even the one she’d misspelled.

      I can’t do this anymore and I’m tired of trying. This isn’t the life I was meant to have and it’s suffacating me. I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I can’t stay without hurting myself more. I hope we can find a way to forgive each other.

      And she’d signed it Katheryn. Not Mom.

      * * *

      I wiped tears with my palms, hating that she could make either of us cry after all these months, and felt my voice strengthen. “She left us.” Dad didn’t try to correct me that time. “I don’t understand how you can defend her.”

      Dad raised his hand again, but I stepped back, tears pooling in my eyes. He lowered it with a resignation that infuriated me almost as much as what he said next.

      “I wasn’t a perfect husband. I know it’s easy to look at what she’s done and think it was all her, but it wasn’t.”

      “You,” I said, “didn’t leave. You would never do what she did.” I shook, struggling not to scream. “Never.”

      Why did he look as if I was the one making things harder? As if I was the one who didn’t get it?

      “It’s not that simple.”

      “It’s exactly that simple.” I pointed toward the front door. “She’s the one who quit. She’s the one who didn’t want us.”

      “You can’t think that way.” Dad’s eyes were glassy and I knew I would die if he started crying. “I didn’t love her the way I should have. That’s on me. But your mom—”

      “She didn’t love you at all! If you only knew—” I clenched my jaw so tight I thought I heard the bone crack. “Stop making excuses for her!”

      “I’m not justifying what she did.” And then he gave me a look that would haunt me. It was like he was trying to tell me something and not tell me something at the same time. “Not then and not now.” And just as quickly the moment was gone. He swallowed. “I’m talking about your mom, here, not my wife. I don’t want you to write her off because she doesn’t want to be married to me anymore.”

      Love for one parent and hate for the other fought a vicious battle inside me. How could she not love him when even now he was trying to salvage any affection I still had for her? The outcome cloaked my voice in bitterness. “Wife. Mother. It’s the same person. I can’t separate the two. I can’t.”

      “Okay, okay.” Dad saw fresh tears fill my eyes. “I’m not telling you that you have to. Not right now. But I am saying that it’s okay for you to still love your mom. I’m okay with you loving her.”

      I wasn’t. Through her words and actions, she’d shown that she despised the most important person in my life. There was no fixing that. Had I ever thought there was?

      I was getting what I wanted. A conversation. Something. Anything. Only, looking at Dad made me want to stitch my mouth shut. “She’s not going away, is she?”

      Dad wouldn’t look at me, but eventually he shook his head.

      My hands were empty, otherwise I would have thrown something just to hear it break. Hate was such an ugly, infectious thing. It burrowed deep inside and consumed. My hate hadn’t begun that way, not even СКАЧАТЬ