“Right, right, I won’t keep you,” he says. “Just wanted to tell you congrats and I love you. You already know that, though.”
If I had that buzzer, I might hit it now.
If I had more time, I might ask, Do you? Do you really?
Instead I push out a breathless “Yeah,” and end the call.
Monday night. That’s where Miles was. Monday night, and Tuesday morning.
That’s where Miles went. Unshakably cool, invariably well-liked, chronically fine Miles drove two hours to confront my father.
Suddenly the semi-pathetic box of fudge makes sense.
It was a consolation prize, just not in the way I thought.
He’d tried. I’d told him how I felt, how I wanted my dad to come back, and he’d tried to bring him.
And maybe I should be mad he overstepped. But I don’t feel mad. I feel raw. I feel like the boundary between me and the world is stretching thinner, making me tender and vulnerable, a water balloon fit to burst.
Why wouldn’t he have just told me?
But I know the answer.
I know Miles, and he knows me.
I look toward the road, the sparkling band of blue water, the scraggly beach trees blurring behind a wall of tears.
He knows me.
He loves me.
It wasn’t just a pretty word, thrown out in a convenient moment. It was true. And it makes me feel brave, being loved by him. It makes me safe enough to do the thing I never could.
I wipe the tears away and redial Dad.
“You forget something?” he asks.
“I only have a minute,” I say.
“Me too,” he goes on. “Star and I are going golfing—met someone who owns a course!”
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” I start. “I just haven’t said this before and I don’t think I will if I wait too long trying to figure out a better way of saying it.”
I think Dad feels the seismic shift. He doesn’t rush in with a joke. My last breath feels like the one you’d take before smashing a sledgehammer into a wall.
I’d tempered my expectations, packed them tight into bricks, built a fortress to protect me. But keeping every glimmer of hope out has isolated me too, and I want to be seen. I want to be loved. I want to live with the hope that things can get better, even if, in the end, they don’t.
“You were a shitty dad,” I tell him. “You were never there. I spent so much time just waiting for you. And when you did show up, it was never when you said. You never stuck around as long as you promised. And because of you, the whole world . . . my whole world felt totally fucking unpredictable. And maybe you really do love me. But I don’t know that. How would I? I’ve never been your priority. I’m a pit stop.
“And that guy you think doesn’t know me”—I choke up here, need a second to force the emotion down—“he didn’t even tell me he tried to get you to come back for me. Because he knew it would kill me. And he wasn’t going to let you break what’s left of my heart. So now I get it. Why Mom used to make excuses for you. She wasn’t protecting you. She was protecting me. But I’m grown now. She can’t always guard me from you. It’s my job to protect myself. Not hide, not just try to stop feeling this . . . this constant ache. I can’t keep doing this. I don’t want to be a person who expects the worst. Something has to change. So the next time you come to town, ask me first. And if you want to leave, don’t be a coward. Don’t make the people who love me make your excuses. You can tell me to my face, or we can be done with this.”
Pin-drop silence.
Then, finally, he murmurs, “Oh, Daphne.”
The doors whisk open behind me and Ashleigh pops her head out. “You ready?”
“You have to understand—”
“I’ve got to go,” I tell him. “I’ll call you when it’s a good time for me.”
I hang up and square my shoulders. “Ready,” I say.
36
I step up in front of the reference desk.
I’ve never heard the library like this, so raucous, humming with energy—and this is just our volunteers.
Ashleigh cups her hands around her mouth. “Listen up, people! This is our children’s librarian, Daphne, and she’s going to walk us through protocol before the kids get here.”
The room quiets. I can only see the first several rows of volunteers, Huma and her husband among them.
I steady my office chair and climb onto it. “First of all, thank you all for being here.”
Rowdy applause erupts from the back of the room, along with a high-pitched whoop!
