by Nick Day
He jolted forward at my question, like his chair had suddenly lost a leg. “Uh . . . well . . . ”
“You and Mom fought all the time, and you still do. I know.”
He rubbed his temples. “Honestly, Sara,” he said, “we split up for the same reasons a lot of couples split up. Our relationship couldn’t bear the tension and the stress of being parents. Of money being tight, of dinner to be cooked, and laundry to be done. We tried therapy for a few months. I even spent some time in a hotel, to see if that would help, but nothing did.”
“But you didn’t just ‘split up,’” I said. “You walked out.”
He met my hard, unswerving gaze. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s exactly right. Walking out on your wife and your kid is the lowest of the low. It was an immature, selfish thing to do. And I will always be sorry I did it.”
“So why didn’t you come back?” I asked. “If you feel so guilty. It’s been twelve years, you know.”
“With every passing day, that seemed more and more impossible to do. You know, I didn’t actually leave Barrington for two months after I left you and Mom. I drove by the house all the time. One time I even parked the car and had one foot out the door, ready to walk back up to the front porch . . . but I couldn’t do it. I got in my car and left. Left Barrington, left Illinois. I kept driving until I got to Texas.”
I sighed. This was the first I had ever heard about what actually happened right after he left home. My whole life I’d seen him as a cold-hearted monster, but now . . .
“Mom never told me any of this stuff,” I said.
“She doesn’t know it,” he said, shrugging. “I kept it all to myself. I didn’t want to burden you guys with my indecisiveness then, or now.”
Is he telling the truth? I wondered. I had no reason to trust a single word that came out of his mouth. I barely knew the guy, after all. “You don’t need to sugarcoat anything,” I said. “I’d rather hear what really happened.”
“What?” he gawked at me, looking hurt. “I’m telling you, Sara, this is what happened. I was selfish, I was cold, and I had no idea what to do with myself afterward. I knew I had already hurt you and Mom so much, I figured the least painful thing I could do would be to just leave and let the two of you move on. Mom and I settled the whole thing with a divorce lawyer remotely and I agreed to pay alimony, and . . . you know all that, I guess.”
I drummed my fingers on the table anxiously, resisting feeling bad for him. He does not deserve your pity! I reminded myself.
He shook his head sadly. “You have no idea the number of plane tickets I’ve bought back to Chicago,” he said. “I even got as far as the gate onto the plane once. But I stayed away.”
At this point, I realized, if he was lying, he was a sociopath. I let myself respond honestly. “Whoa.”
I sat back in my chair heavily and looked at the gleaming rack of copper pots that hung above our heads. I replayed as many images in my head as I could muster of that warm, crystal-clear summer morning. I’d relived it so many times over my life, feeling the tears on my cheeks, looking upward at my mom, who was trembling with sadness . . . Was that only sadness she had been feeling? Maybe it was regret, maybe it was guilt, maybe it was relief. Maybe it was all of the above.
My memory of that morning seemed suddenly completely wrong. Nothing I thought I knew was right. Watching my dad turn down the front walk carrying his two suitcases—up until now, I watched and rewatched him walk away as a coward, a poor excuse for a father. But for all I knew, my dad had been crying as he walked toward his truck carrying those two suitcases, wondering what else he could have done to save his marriage and his family.
This was all almost too much for me to handle. I felt like I was drowning, just as I did when I first heard Dad’s voice on my phone a few days before. All I could do was take deep breaths and try to soak the news in.
“Phew,” Dad said, exhaling. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to tell you about that.”
“I’m glad you did,” I said. I took a deep breath and moved onto the next question I needed an answer to.
“Your fiancée,” I said. “Who is she?”
“Well, there’s one thing she’s not,” Dad said, “and that’s my fiancée. She’s a lot of things, but she’s not that.”
“Oh. Right.” I blushed, kicking myself for being so insensitive. I pushed myself to remember that for every ounce of pain and confusion I was feeling, Dad was feeling that much more. He was remembering how his first marriage ended, while still dealing with the fact that his next chance at a marriage had just crumbled.
“Teresa,” he said dryly. “I met her at work, about eight years ago.”
“Wait . . . where do you work?” I asked. I realized the list of things I had no answers for was only growing.
“I’m the CFO of an oil company here,” he said plainly.
My eyes bulged. “Whoa.”
“I got lucky. A guy I used to work with at my consulting firm back in Chicago had come down here and started the company. He owed me one. And since then I’ve sort of climbed the ladder. Hence . . . ” He held out his arms, showing off the picture-perfect kitchen.
I offered a small smile. “Understood. That’s impressive.”
He shook his head bashfully. “Nah, I got lucky, like I said.”
“So, Teresa worked there too?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Dad said. “She works in HR. Worked. Works. I don’t know. Anyway, she’s really good at her job. We started talking, started spending time together—just friends at first. You know how that goes.”
What was he getting at? Was this more hinting about my relationship with Pete? I decided not to press the subject.
“Eventually we started dating, but I told her I wasn’t ready to settle down anytime soon. This was still five years ago.”
“Did you tell her what happened to you and Mom?”
“Not explicitly, but I said I had some skeletons in the closet, and I really wanted to take things slow.”
“Seems smart,” I said.
“But things don’t stay so simple, no matter how much you want them to,” Dad said. He stared down at his beer bottle, where his hands were picking at the paper label.
“What?” I asked.
“She got pregnant,” he said. “And, uh, lightning struck twice.”
“Twins?” I asked. Dad looked back and nodded ever so slightly. I could sense the pain and anguish creeping up inside of him. “Rough.”
“Yep, you said it,” Dad said. “So we’ve tried to ease into it. She kept the kids at her place for a few years, and I visited sometimes, enough to get to know them. Then we moved in here a year ago, to give the kids some stability in their lives. Then we thought we should tie the knot, that we had waited long enough, and . . . ”
He trailed off, his eyes glistening. Without thinking, I reached across the tabletop and took his hand. I squeezed it and looked at him, hoping to make eye contact and try to tell him I felt sorry for him . . . but he was distant, totally trapped in his own world. We sat like that for a while, me warming up his hand with mine, searching for his eyes.
“Thanks,” he said, eventually. “I just keep replaying our last conversation in my head, you know?” He looked back at me, finally, expectantly.
Of course, I wanted to say. Of course I know that feeling. I’ve been replaying one very specific memory for as long as I can remember. But all I said out loud was, “Yeah. Totally.”
“I just got cold feet,” he said. “I hate that phrase, but there it is. I thought if we waited for a while, until we—I—could really be sure I was ready, then I’d be able to take the plunge. But here we were, the day before, and . . . you know the feeling you have when you wake up in the middle of the night and have to throw up?”
Where was this going? “Yeah,” I said hesitantly.
“That’s what I’d been having about the wedding. I had regret, I started dreading it—but I ignored it. I told myself everything would be fi
ne. Then it crept up again a few days later. I tried to ignore it. But eventually you just have to go and say, ‘This is going to be really unpleasant, but I have to do this if I’m ever going to feel better again.’”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I told her I wasn’t ready. We were sitting right here. She was going over the final guest list with me, we were looking at the seating plan . . . and I said I didn’t want to do it. She tried to reason with me, reassure me, but I put my foot down. I said I’d pay for everything. We would be able to still pay for another ceremony later on . . . but she’d had it. She stormed upstairs and got the kids. She said this was over. She’d held out for too long, and she couldn’t waste any more time. In less than half an hour, she was gone.”
Those last few words seemed to echo in the giant kitchen, bouncing off the pristine granite countertops. Dad looked back at me, tears rolling down his cheeks.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” I said.
“Don’t pity me,” he said, “I’m doing enough of that for myself.” Then he abruptly stood up, shook his head. “Agh, what are we doing here? We should be celebrating—this is a reunion! I’m ruining what should be a fun night!”
“It was never gonna be fun,” I said sharply.
Dad took a deep breath and nodded. “Smart kid,” he said. “Smart, smart kid. Your mom’s done a good job with you.”
I waved that comment off like an annoying mosquito. “Have you talked to your kids?” I asked. I liked feeling like I was the powerful one here, that I was the calm and collected adult in the room.
“She hasn’t let me,” he said. “But she’s going to Austin to stay with her parents for a while, and while she’s there . . . the kids are going to be with me.”
My heart skipped a beat. “They’re going to be . . . ”
“Here,” Dad said. “They’re your half-siblings, Sara. Anna and Lily. Cute as can be. And they’ll be here in . . . ” He looked at his watch. “Twelve hours.”
He must have stared at me, waiting for a response, but I was half a world away. This was all starting to be more than I could handle.
I came back to earth when Dad said the only word that made sense. The only word that made sense in the last four bizarre days.
“Surprised?”
My heart was pounding as I lay down on the king bed in one of two guest rooms an hour later. The last few days had all been confusing and emotional . . . but this one was the most overwhelming yet. And yet even with everything Dad and I had talked about—how he and my mom came to separate, how he’d met Teresa, what happened yesterday that led them to end their relationship, the fact that I would meet their kids, my half-siblings, in the morning—I felt . . . okay.
Maybe I finally had a dad. Maybe this had been the first of a lot of hard, emotional conversations we’d have, the kind fathers and daughters are supposed to have.
My phone buzzed across the room, and I went to pick it up. A name I had all but forgotten for the last few days shone brightly: Maria Alvarez. Oh, this will be good, I thought.
“Hello?” Instantly I was assaulted with a blast of loud, bass-heavy dance music, and what sounded like a thousand people all talking at once.
I could barely hear Maria above the fray. Her voice was all smoky and scratchy, probably from singing all day and partying all night. “Girl!” she screamed.
“Maria, I can barely hear you,” I said. “Can you step outside or something? Where even are you?”
“Ugh, fine, hold on.” I listened as she moved across what sounded like a very crowded room—I could hear her phone brush up against people’s bodies, and the occasional “Watch where you’re going!”
Finally, I heard a door slam and the background noise dropped away. “Can you hear me now?” Maria asked. “Ha! Remember, ‘Can you hear me now?’ Remember that Sara? Sara! Remember? The commercials?”
“Yes,” I said. “Got it.”
“‘Can you hear me now? Buy my cell phone, I’m a nerd, I have big glasses.’ Whatever happened to that guy?”
I giggled. This was exactly what I needed to cap off this crazy, exhausting day. “How are you?” I asked.
“Ugh, Sara, LA is amazing, you need to get here!”
“Are you guys clubbing?”
“No, no,” Maria said, “we’re at this house party at USC. We’re crashing with some other a cappella group at their place.”
“Of course,” I said. “All you crazy a cappella kids.”
“Sara, listen.”
“Okay, I’m listening?” I said hesitantly, waiting for a punch line.
“Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Two words. All male.” She cackled loudly, then did her best club air horn. “Bwahhhh, bwah, bwah, bwahhh!”
“I’m thrilled for you,” I said, chuckling.
“Nah, but they’re all weird-looking kinda, I dunno. Anyway, what’s up with you? You and Pete make out yet?”
Of course this was why she was calling! “No!” I yelled. “Not even close!”
“What?!” she screamed, probably waking up half the neighborhood. “Girl! You have been wasting precious time!”
“That’s not happening,” I said.
“You are not fooling me, Sara. You’re not fooling me, and you’re not fooling him, and you’re not fooling your dad—oh my God, your dad! What’s up with your dad?!”
“Oh, man,” I said. “Well, he called off his wedding. Broke this woman’s heart too. Seems to be good at that.”
“What?!” Maria yelled again. By now she had probably woken up every student at USC.
“Crazy, right? And get this, he has kids. Two four-year-old girls. Twins.”
“OMG, that’s unreal! Sara! You have sisters!”
“I know!” I said, smiling. I was surprising myself. Finding out about my sisters was shocking, but it hadn’t taken long for me to be totally, completely excited to meet them.
“Are they so cute?” Maria asked.
“They’ll be here tomorrow,” I said. “Tomorrow morning.”
Maria gushed, suddenly opening up like a broken dam. “I wish I could have you as my older sister, Sara. I really do. They’re gonna be so obsessed with you and want to be you and be as smart and as cool and as beautiful and as sophisticated as their older sister. Like . . . it’s so obvious to me.”
I blushed, my cheeks burning up. “Aw, Maria, that’s so—”
“Oh my God, Sara,” Maria cut in. “I made out with Tim yesterday!”
“What?!” I yelled. Tim was a senior in her a cappella group and an economics major in the running for valedictorian, who also happened to be an award-winning guitarist and songwriter. “You’ve wanted that for so long!”
“I know,” Maria said proudly.
“Was it everything you wanted?”
“Eh,” Maria said dryly. “He had just eaten Chipotle so, like, whatever—but anyway I should go.”
“Oh,” I said, sad to hear our talk was over so quickly. “Well, it was great to hear from you. I don’t know what’s gonna happen down here. I still might not have much of a dad when I get home, but I’m glad I’ll have you, okay?”
“You’re dumb,” she said, which I knew was code for I love you, too.
“Now go kiss Tim,” I said.
She guffawed. “I’ll buy him some Listerine this time. Bye, girl!”
I hung up the phone and put it next to me on the mattress. As I drifted off to sleep, I smiled. In spite of everything, I smiled.
A FIRM KNOCK ON THE DOOR RIPPED ME FROM A dream the next morning. I tried to grab onto the strands of the dream before it slipped away. There was a raging thunderstorm, and Pete and I were trapped somewhere together . . . but then it was gone.
“Come in,” I said, and Dad immediately entered, clad in plaid pajama pants and a ratty Princeton Crew T-shirt, carrying two mugs of coffee.
“You’re up?” he asked quietly.
“I am now,” I said, smiling.
“Figured I better start totaling up some dad points,” he said, indicating the coffee mugs. “I took a wild guess . . . black?”
I smiled, charmed by how hard he was working. I usually put a dash of skim milk and a spoonful of sugar in my coffee, but he didn’t have to know that.
“Perfect,” I said. “That’s nice of you.” I sat up and took the mug from him, and he took a seat at the foot of the bed.
“Plus ten dad points!” he said, beaming.
“Is Pete up?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Dad said. “He was up before I was. He insisted on making breakfast. Who am I to turn him down, huh? Seems like a really great guy.”
I had a momentary impulse to quickly shut down any idea he had that Pete and I were a couple . . . but it passed. I realized, looking at Dad, that he and I had a lot of ground still to cover. He’s still basically a stranger to you, Sara, I reminded myself.
I took a sip of the piping hot coffee to fill the silence. It was some kind of expensive, trendy roast, both bitter and sour. I smiled through it.
Dad leaned forward and put his hand on my foot. “I just wanted to say how grateful I am for our conversation last night. I had no idea what you’d be like, or what you might want to know, or what you wouldn’t want to know. You’re a very empathetic person, Sara. I don’t know where you got it from, but I am very impressed with you.”
“Thank you,” I said tentatively.
“My pleasure,” Dad said. “I want us to be as honest with each other as possible.”
“Breakfast!” came a forceful call from downstairs.
“Ooh, let’s go see what he made, huh? I bet you’re starved.” He leapt off the bed and offered me a hand.
I wasn’t at all surprised to see what Pete had created in the kitchen. He was a confident cook and had made all kinds of gourmet meals for our friends over the last year. Of course my dad, like anyone who doesn’t know Pete well, was amazed. “Holy crow!” he exclaimed, looking at the spread.
“Well, you haven’t tasted any of it yet,” Pete said bashfully. He was already dressed for the day, in a handsome navy-blue polo and rust-brown khakis. Where’s the Northwestern gear? I wondered. Who’s he trying to impress? He wasn’t helping to clarify Dad’s confusion about my relationship with Pete. This was just Pete being Pete, not being my boyfriend . . . right?