I was worried she’d stay, and I wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye.
That I would be so deeply disappointed in her, so upset with her decision, it would affect our relationship.
By not trusting her decision, I robbed her of the ability to make one.
“Yes, she would.” Dad stopped mopping, pressing his forehead to the tip of the mop stick. He closed his eyes. “She would have walked away. She was tempted to do it regardless of my infidelity.”
His head sloped forward, his shoulders sagging, and then … then he started crying.
Lowering himself on the floor in front of me.
His knees sank into the golden river of beer.
My dad never cried.
Not when my aunt died, or when my grandparents passed away, or even when he watched Persephone walk down the aisle, ushered by the brother of the groom, because Dad had had leg surgery and couldn’t walk.
He wasn’t a crier. We weren’t criers. Yet here he was weeping.
“I’m sorry, Belly-Belle. I’m so sorry. I’ve never been sorrier for a thing in my life. I cannot even imagine what it felt like for you to find out that way.”
“It was terrible.”
But, oddly, maybe not as terrible as seeing him like this.
I mean, a part of me still hated him for the distorted picture of partnership he’d ingrained in me, but he was also the person who took care of us.
Who bought me everything I wanted—within his ability—and helped pay off my student debt.
He was one of my investors when I opened Madame Mayhem, and he once punched a man in the face for propositioning me while we were all vacationing on the Cape.
He never locked me in dumbwaiters or was abusive or neglectful.
He fucked up, but he never intended to fuck me up.
“If it makes you feel any better, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even function for a very long time after Sophia and I ended things. And, after a couple of years, I told your mother.”
“Wait, Mom knows?” I grabbed the hem of his plaid shirt and hoisted him up so we were at eye level. His eyes were puffy with tears, bloodshot. “But you said she’d have left you if I told her.”
“She did leave me.”
“She never told me.”
“Do you tell her everything?” He caught my gaze meaningfully, arching an eyebrow.
Fair point.
He rubbed his knuckles against his cheek. “She kicked me out of the house shortly after you graduated college. By then, you and Persy were out of the house. I think she waited until you both left because she didn’t want to traumatize you. I rented an apartment two blocks down for eight months, trying to win her back.”
“Go Mom,” I mumbled. “I hope she got some.”
“She had a two-month affair with a yoga instructor at the local YMCA. After we got back together, I got so mad just driving past the YMCA, I vowed to move us away from that entire zip code to escape that memory.”
“This is why you moved to the ’burbs?”
He nodded.
“Why’d she take you back?” I realized I was still holding his shirt, but that did not deter me from clutching harder.
“Something very inconvenient happened to her.”
“What?”
“She remembered she was in love with me, and by being away from me, she was punishing not only me but herself too.”
I let go of his shirt, staggering back.
My yearning for Devon welled inside me. Wasn’t that what I was doing? Punishing both of us because I couldn’t handle the prospect of being in love? Of putting my trust in someone else?
My parents’ relationship was far from perfect. It was littered with disloyalties, bad years, and other people.
But. It. Still. Worked.
“I hope that in time, you’ll forgive me,” Dad said. “But just in case you don’t, let me assure you, Belly-Belle—I will never forgive myself.”
I needed time to think.
“Thanks for the talk. I’m going to go ahead now and scream into my pillow for a while,” I announced, grabbing a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels from the pantry on my way up to the guestroom.
I was still wearing my canary-yellow swimsuit.
I stopped by the stairway, holding the railings for dear life as I twisted my head back to look at him. He was still standing in the same spot in the open-plan kitchen.
“One more question.” I cleared my throat.
“Yes?”
“What was so wrong with Sophia?” I bit out. “Why was she so fucked up?”
“She couldn’t have any children,” he said gravely. “That was what was wrong with her. That’s why her husband left her. He married another woman three months later and went and fathered three sons.”