by Nancy Adams
The apartment we finally chose wasn’t quite the Miller building, but it was still poky and in need of a touch of color, the drab, peeling plaster walls, greasy stains, and leaking faucets giving the place a somber ambiance. But it was home.
As to my moving out, my father had initially cautioned me on it, but, seeing my determination, ultimately gave it his blessing. I was unfurling my wings and flying off with my love, and he could see that it was hopeless to try and stop me. A week later, he told Lucy and Kay about his true past at a meeting to which I was present. Both of them broke down into tears, which was to be expected, and I comforted them, giving words of solace to my sisters and words of support in defense of our father. Of the two, the tigress Kay was the most angry, storming out of the house. As the youngest, she had the fewest and least distinct memories of our mother and held her up to be a saint. To hear my father, who she also regarded as a saint, talk about his terrible behavior toward Mom hit Kay hard, and she stormed from the house. I followed and found her halfway up the street, sitting under a cherry blossom tree with her weeping face buried in her arms. Seating myself down next to her, I placed a soothing arm around her.
“How could he do those terrible things?” she’d sobbed.
“Because he was a different man back then.”
“But he was so sinful. To do that to his own wife.”
“Don’t think that he hasn’t been punished by his sins, Kay. Because, as the adage goes, we are not punished for our sins, but by them. And Daddy has been punished. He is still the father we have known these past fifteen years. Don’t turn your back on him for things he deeply regrets and has been attempting to redeem ever since.”
“But how can I look at him the same knowing what I do now?”
“Because he isn’t that man anymore. Back in the house he was describing another person, like a butterfly describing its time as a caterpillar. He’s the man we’ve known for these past fifteen years; he’s Roy Dillinger, voice for the silent, fist for the defenseless, helping hand to the fallen. I too wish I hadn’t found any of this out, but it’s better now that we know.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Secrets and lies solve nothing. It is better to see the world on fire around you than to be blind while you burn. You know, he’s still our loving father, regardless of his past, and I wouldn’t change him for any other.”
She’d pulled into me then, crying in my arms for several minutes until we both got up and walked back to the house, where we found our father waiting for us in the hallway. Kay immediately flung herself into his arms and cried upon his chest. If there was one thing we Dillinger girls had in us, it was an abundance of forgiveness, and we each forgave our father his sins.
That was two days ago, and now I was curled up in bed with Josh listening to the police sirens outside, the odd domestic squabble in one of the other apartments and the occasional helicopter joining in. Even though we were sharing a bed—well, sofa-bed to be precise—we still hadn’t made love. This was something that would happen in due course, when it was supposed to and not before. However, regardless of our lack of sex, each night I fell to sleep in his oak-like arms, and each morning I awoke still wrapped within them. We were surely now two become one in the spiritual sense.
At this moment in time, I was snuggled into him and we were both lying upon a sea of tranquility on our little sofa bed within the confines of our own little piece of heaven; our modest three-room apartment with its tiny kitchen, even tinier bathroom and lounge that doubled as a bedroom, as well as its leaking plumbing and paper-thin walls.
“I’m so glad that next door aren’t arguing again,” Josh said to me as we lay in the darkness.
“Yes” was my brief answer.
“You know, even though this place is pretty moth-eaten, I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
“You like the squalor?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s not the apartment that’s important but what exists inside of it.”
Every cell in my body ejaculated with radiant joy at his words, and I gripped on to him, laying my lips upon his own. Because he was right. For all the apartment’s apparent ugliness, it was our own pretty room, our own microcosm of love. It was us. In that cupboard of an apartment, we could float away and be free of all the problems that surrounded us, drifting upon our lumpy little sofa bed into a faraway corner of the cosmos made just for us. His father had achieved only one thing with his threats: our ever-burning bliss.
That night we fell asleep entwined within each other, knowing that nothing in the world could hurt us. Nothing. What future hazards that lay in wait, we did not know. But what we did know was that we were so strong that when they came for us, we would be ready to fight them side by side, together as one.
BOOK THREE – COMING SOON!
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