Discovering Delilah

by Melissa Foster

  Her brows knit together and her eyes shift rapidly between me and Brandon. She crosses her arms over her chest and leans her hip against the doorframe.

  Goodbye smile.

  “So…?”

  “I got your texts.” Shit, shit, shit. I don’t have a plan. Oh my God, this sucks. Brandon steps forward. He must feel my discomfort, which means she does, too.

  Yup. Her lips curve up in a gratified smile.

  Fuck. This.

  I draw my shoulders back and look her in the eye. “Don’t call me. Don’t text me. We’re done.”

  “Yeah, I got that picture when you didn’t return my hundred texts.”

  “Right.” Way to go, dipshit. What was I thinking when I came here? I want to wipe that smirk off her face. I want her to know that she hurt me and I think she sucks, but I’m not a mean person by nature, so actually telling someone she sucks is not really something I’m very good at.

  Damn it. Why can’t I be a bitch?

  “But if you get it, why do you keep texting?”

  She smirked. “Maybe you’ll get one when you’re down and you’ll respond. You texted back a month ago.” She shrugs, and it pisses me off even more.

  I draw in a deep breath and think of Delilah and how hurt she was that I’d kept the messages from her. It hits me like a brick in the face. This is all on me. It’s my fault Delilah is hurt. I can’t blame Sandy for that. But I can blame her for what she did to me. I’m breathing hard now, angry with myself for stumbling over words, and when they finally come, they fly fast and hard.

  “You hurt me, and it was unfair. You can’t treat people like they don’t matter, or lie to them so they’ll play along with your little games.”

  Brandon steps closer to me, but I’m past needing support. I’m in tell-her-off mode whether I’m good at it or not.

  “I trusted you, and you took my trust and walked all over it.” Every word comes back at me like a slap.

  Oh God, Delilah. I’m so sorry.

  “Forget it.” I grab Brandon’s shirt and drag him down the steps, leaving Sandy to stare after us.

  We cross the parking lot and head for the car.

  “Um, Ash. I’m not sure you accomplished anything there.”

  “Yes, I did. I realized that I should be yelling at myself. I took Dee’s trust and walked all over it. People do shitty things, Bran, but blaming my shitty stuff on them isn’t going to fix anything.”

  I climb into the car and start the engine, then head for Wyatt’s house.

  “What now?” Brandon leans his arm on the passenger door and rests his head back.

  “I’m dropping you off at Wyatt’s. You’re living there now, right?”

  Brandon sits up and gives me a serious stare. “Pretty much, but my bike’s at your place, remember?”

  “Crap.” I turn the car around and drive toward my apartment, speeding up to make a yellow light.

  “Where are you going after you drop me off?”

  “Connecticut.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ~Delilah~

  WITH THE IMAGE of my father’s warm eyes now fresh in my mind, I close the sketch pad and begin packing up my room. His voice still eludes me, but his eyes have made this process a little easier. I had forgotten how they crinkled at the edges when he smiled and the way he could look at me from across the room and soften his gaze until I felt his support without him ever saying a word.

  Baby steps.

  My room feels like the room of a younger, more naive girl, not the room of a college graduate who has been living without parents for an entire summer. It feels like someone else’s room, and because of that, I don’t feel connected to the things in it. I dump drawers into boxes, separate the clothes I want to keep from the ones I can live without, and box those up for charity. I take one last look at the bedroom that once was my sanctuary and try to conjure up appropriate feelings for the moment. Sadness, grief, regret. None of them come.

  Relief and anger mingle uncomfortably inside me at my loss of the ability to feel something for the room that was once my private world.

  Why the hell can’t anything be easy?

  You won’t appreciate things that come easily.

  I sit on my bed with my mouth gaping open. Holy. Shit. Those were my father’s words. His voice. My eyes shift around the empty room. I listen intently, but no further words of wisdom come. I stand on wobbly legs and begin packing my closet.

  After a few minutes I’m past the disbelief—and the relief—and annoyance comes back for a visit as I picture my younger self and nights spent debating my attraction toward women, tamping it down with guilt. I don’t want to live in this uncomfortable place anymore. I refuse to live in it. I’m done.

  So very done.

  I walk down the hall toward my parents’ room, and like a winter coat falling from my shoulders, the weight of those tormented years lessens. I thought I’d feel worse, not better, as I approached my parents’ bedroom. I pull my shoulders back again, as I’d done downstairs, and gaze into their dark room.

  It smells the same way the rest of the house does, foreign and cold. I flick on the overhead light and survey the room. Their paisley bedspread is perfectly made, and my father’s dresser is stacked with books, as it’s always been.

  A lazy brain is a dull brain.

  I still momentarily from the memory of my father’s voice, then shift my eyes to my mother’s bare dresser. I walk into the room, wondering if I’ll smell my mother’s perfume again, but I don’t. Nothing strikes me. Not even guilt or longing, and this worries me. Shouldn’t I drop to my knees in tears? Shouldn’t I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck? I’m in the room where they slept, where, as a little girl, I’d crawl into their bed in the mornings and cuddle up against my mother’s side. She’d snuggle me in close and kiss the top of my head as my father slipped out of the other side of the bed.

  I walk to his side of the bed and sit on the edge, again waiting for a sudden impact to steal my ability to move.

  Nothing happens.

  I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

  Does it say something bad about me? Am I losing my ability to care?

  I have no answers. I reach over and open his nightstand, feeling mildly like a Peeping Tom. My father was a private person, but I asked Aunt Lara to leave my parents’ room for me to pack. This is my last chance to learn about them. As I stare into his meticulously neat drawer at a notepad, two pencils, and four quarters, I know that I won’t learn anything more about him from these items. I close the drawer and my shoulders drop. I don’t even know what I’m searching for.

  I cross the room and open his dresser. Every pair of underwear is neatly folded and color coordinated. Wow. I had no idea he was this meticulous. His socks are separated from his underwear by a thin wooden slat. The items in his next drawer are equally as neat and ordered. White undershirts in one stack, beside grays, next to more whites. We learned at a young age that our parents treasured their privacy. I remember opening my father’s nightstand drawer when I was little, and he gave me that disapproving look, slanted brows, lips pressed in a thin line. Even then he didn’t need words. It never occurred to me to nose around after that. Now curiosity gets the better of me, and I head into his closet and sift through his color-coordinated suits and dress shirts. Benignly patterned ties in grays and blues hang from a wooden tie rack, each perfectly spaced from the next.

  The top shelf of my father’s closet is lined with shoe boxes. I use the shelf at the back of the closet as a step as I grab the boxes one by one and drop them onto the floor. There are eight boxes, and when I drop the last, I sit among them trying to imagine my father deciding which shoes to keep in boxes and which to put on the two metal shoe racks on the floor. I look at the full racks. My father did like shoes, even more than my mother did. I never thought about that until now.

  What man is this neat? Wyatt’s shoes are toed off at the door and left where they fall, not set neatly on the mat, the w
ay my father always left his. My father had high expectations of us—and neatness was part of who he was. When Wyatt and I were home, we were extra careful not to leave a mess. I never questioned my father’s rules, and now, as I open one of the boxes and find a pair of leather flip-flops, I begin to wonder about his parents. I didn’t know my grandparents very well before they passed away, but what kind of meticulous expectations did they have for him to have turned out like this—and why aren’t Wyatt and I neat freaks, too?

  I put the lid back on the shoe box and set it aside, then lift the lid off the next. Loafers. I repeat the process two more times and come across a pair of white sneakers. I don’t remember him ever wearing white sneakers, and these are particularly ugly. I take one out of the box, shaking my head. He should have had my mom help him find sneakers. I put them back in the box and set them aside. Those are definitely going in the charity box. I lift the lid off the next box and there are no shoes, only a dark wooden box. I lift it out and run my finger over the edge. It’s not fancy, and the simple golden clasp lifts right up when I flick it. I lift the lid and find a stack of folded papers. As I lift them out of the box, I imagine my mother writing my father love letters. They met in high school and dated all through college, even though they attended different schools, marrying shortly after graduation.

  With the letters on my lap, I wonder if I’m crossing a line I shouldn’t. What if they’ve written personal stuff that grosses me out? I close my eyes and think of my parents. I can’t see them writing about sexy nights and longing for each other. I can only imagine my father detailing long nights of studying and my mother writing about missing him.

  I unfold the first piece of loose-leaf paper. The penmanship is neat and familiar. The letters slant slightly to the right, with no curls or swoops. The paper is still dented with my father’s determined writing.

  It’s dated at the top with mine and Wyatt’s twenty-second birthday.

  Soon they’ll graduate. I couldn’t be prouder of them. They’re smart and steady. Both born leaders.

  Three simple lines that bring tears to my eyes. He was proud of us. I don’t wonder for more than a second why he’s written this to himself, or why he didn’t write more. I’m just glad he did.

  I read it again and again, then I fold it and set it aside, reading another, dated at the top with our twenty-first birthday.

  Rules have changed. College is more parties and sleeping around than I ever thought possible. They’re careful and smart. I have faith in them both.

  He had faith in us. Why didn’t he ever say those words to us? He pushed. He said things like, Good job on your grades, which feels very different from I have faith in you.

  I fold the letter and set it with the first one, then read the next few. He’s written similar letters on each of our birthdays.

  Our sixteenth birthday…

  Driving. My biggest fear. Please keep them safe.

  Tears slide down my cheeks. Please keep them safe. A prayer. A plea. For us. If only he could have sent the same prayer and plea for himself and for Mom.

  He loved us so much.

  I read a few more and find the one dated on our sixth birthday.

  We no longer have two. Now they’re three. Cassidy Lowell has become one of us. We’re blessed in so many ways. Wyatt has moved into a stronger leadership role, as it should be. Delilah is coming into her own, not a pushover, but happy to let him be the big brother.

  Wyatt will be glad that he included Cassidy, but who refers to their six-year-olds as moving into a leadership role? I wish I could talk to him. I want to understand him better.

  I find the last…well, the first, really—from our first birthday.

  They’re smart and steady. Wyatt is a born leader. Delilah is a born watcher, but she’ll lead one day, too.

  My hand drops to my leg and my stomach sinks. A born leader at a year old? Leader, watcher, steady. Even in these letters he was sensible, and thought in terms of us being adults, not warm and loving the way people usually gush over babies. I wonder about his upbringing again. Why don’t these letters speak of how cute we were, or the milestones we reached? They’re all so formal and sort of impersonal—well, except the one about us driving. I remember when we got our licenses. Dad was a nervous wreck. Mom was better, less worried, but my father practically timed us wherever we went, door to door. If we were fifteen minutes late, he’d call. I always thought it was because he worried that we’d lied about where we were going. Now I know he worried whether we’d made it to our destinations alive.

  My perfect, demanding father, who made me feel like shit about who I was, worried about our safety. I’m not sure why this strikes me with such a strong impact, but it does. I never thought about why he was so overprotective. It just annoyed me that he was.

  I rise to my feet and cross the room to my mother’s closet. I’m not as respectful of her things, because I’m losing patience, and I want answers. I tear through her closet, top to bottom, pulling clothes off the hangers and everything she’s got stacked on the top shelf comes down in a big pile, landing on the floor with several thumps. I toss the sweaters aside, searching for a diary, her own box of secrets. Something that will clue me in to the person she was, beyond the caring mother who was always present when we needed her.

  Maybe there’s some secret in their past that would help me to understand why they were so unyielding in their beliefs. They weren’t religious by any stretch of the imagination. The need to understand why they were so adamant consumes me as I face my mother’s belongings.

  Her closet is full of normal stuff: scarves and clothes, shoes, belts. I glare across the room at my father’s closet, and something inside me snaps. I tear open his drawers again and pull them out. They crash to the floor. I toss his clothes on the ground, searching for something more. Anything to explain why he was so against my lifestyle. I feel like a raving lunatic as I throw his stuff around the room, knowing damn well I won’t find anything but unable to stop myself.

  After coming up empty on my search-and-discovery mission, I run down the stairs to my father’s office and tear through his desk, but my aunt’s already cleared it out. Every drawer, every shelf is empty. I pace his office, breathing hard and debating where else I might find answers. Finally I pull out my cell phone and call my aunt. She answers on the first ring.

  “Aunt Lara?”

  “Delilah? Wyatt called and said you’re already at the house. I’m coming down tomorrow, unless you need me today?”

  “I don’t.”

  “What’s wrong? You sound upset. I can go through your parents’ room, sweetie. Don’t stress over it. I know it’s hard to face.”

  She’s so supportive that I feel guilty for dragging her into this.

  I’m sick of feeling guilty.

  I’m alone in my sea of guilt, and I’m so sick of it I could scream.

  “It’s…I was going through my father’s closet and I…” I don’t tell her about the letters. I’m not sure why I feel like those are his private thoughts and I’ve already done something I shouldn’t have, so I cut to the chase and tell her exactly what I want to know. “I want to know why Dad was so against same-sex relationships.”

  Silence fills the airwaves. I look at the phone to see if we’ve lost connection.

  “Aunt Lara?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” she says just above a whisper. “It’s a little complicated. He wasn’t really against them. He was uncomfortable with them.”

  I pace again. “Why?” The need to understand gnaws at my stomach.

  “Delilah, honey. Why don’t I come talk to you in person? I can be there in a half hour.”

  This is bad. I can hear it in her voice. I grab my father’s desk to steady myself.

  “No. Tell me, please. I can take it. Just...Was it because of me? Did they know before I told them?” She was with them at my graduation. I’m sure if they’d told anyone about my confession, they’d have told her, since she drove home with them. />
  She’s silent again, but I hear her breathing. “No, baby. No, it wasn’t because of you.”

  Tears spring from my eyes and my legs crumple beneath me. I hadn’t realized that I was so scared of that being true.

  They didn’t know before I told them at graduation.

  It wasn’t because of me.

  Even though it’s a relief, I can’t breathe. I still don’t have the answers I need.

  “Delilah? Are you there?”

  They were prejudiced against gays.

  I can’t move.

  “Delilah, honey. I promise, they didn’t know until you told them.”

  Anger blasts from my lungs. “Then why? Why would my parents be so pigheaded?”

  “Dee, calm down. Please. Please, honey. Take a deep breath.”

  I shoot to my feet and storm into the living room, feeling completely out of control. This isn’t new information, but it feels new, like because Aunt Lara doesn’t dispute that my father felt that way, it is somehow more real.

  “Dee, you’re breathing so hard.” The cadence of her voice tells me she’s on the move. “Please, just sit down and relax. I’m getting into the car.” I hear her car door shut and the engine turn over. “I’m coming there. Don’t go anywhere.”

  I’m panting like I’ve run ten miles. I wonder if it’s hard for her to come here after being in the car when my parents were killed. She was right there in the backseat. She heard their screams, and may have heard them take their last breaths. I know she’s recovered from her injuries, but it’s not the physical scars I’m worried about. I freeze, weighing my selfish need and her suffering, but my need to put this behind me is so big I can’t move past it.

  “I need to understand.” It comes out strangled.

  “Delilah…” She says my name so seriously I stop walking. “I’ll be there soon. Stay put.”