That’s okay, though.
I light the cigarette before leaning back into his shoulder. “Tuesday morning Mass,” I tell him, rolling my eyes.
He chuckles. “It wasn’t my idea to send you to a Catholic school.”
“Noted.”
I take another puff, inhale, and then blow out smoke.
My dad shakes his head. “I’m a terrible father.”
I laugh, holding up my cigarette. “Years down the road, I’ll cringe when I think of the debutante ball, and I probably won’t even remember my friends’ names,” I tell him, “but I’ll smile when I remember sneaking cigarettes with my dad.”
His mouth tilts up in a half-smile, and the both of us take another drag at the same time, enjoying the morning silence for another moment.
“How are your classes?” he asks.
“Easy peasy.”
“And your classmates? Is everything…happy?”
I turn away, watching the end of the cigarette burn orange. What’s he going to do if I say no?
Parents ask these questions, because they want to appear to care, but they don’t want a problem. Not really.
“I should get going,” I tell him instead, hopping off the chair and snuffing out the cigarette in the crystal ashtray.
I slip around his desk and hear the wheels of his chair move.
“You already got into Wake Forest,” he calls after me. “Slack off a little. Enjoy your senior year.”
But I can’t. The biggest events of high school are just ahead of me. The fun is just starting.
“I’ll be leaving again tomorrow morning,” he informs me.
I stop at the door and turn my head. “Miami again?”
“Yes.” He nods. “But I’ll be back Monday afternoon.”
Suspicions settle in, and I know just as well as my mother does why he’ll be gone again. Over the weekend, when almost no one is in the office.
No one says anything about anything, though. We’ve splintered off since Henry’s death, cultivating our own lives that consist of as many distractions as possible.
This house is just where we collect our mail.
“Travel safe,” I tell him, his guilty eyes looking at me like he needs to say something.
But I’m gone before he has a chance.
• • •
A long time ago, I realized that it isn’t my responsibility to fix my parents. My father can face the fact, at any time, that Henry would hate knowing how quiet the house is now. No smiles or food fights or watching Mom cry at the same part during White Christmas during our re-watch every single holiday season.
He can face the fact that, while one child is gone, he still has another. That I could be out doing who-knows-what while he’s off in Miami or Austin or Chicago. I could be getting into drugs. Getting pregnant. Getting arrested.
Does he care? If he did, he’d be here.
I used to think it hurts him too much to be in the house, but we could’ve moved. Maybe it hurt him to be around my mother. In that case, he could’ve taken me with him sometimes.
But he just leaves, and it didn’t take long to get the message. Neither of them want this family anymore.
And honestly, I can’t blame them sometimes. What’s the point? You work for years—educating yourself, building, planning, working, loving—and leukemia sweeps through and ravages your ten-year-old son to death.
What’s the point of any of this?
I enter the church, lockers slamming shut in the school hallway behind me. I stop, scanning the room.
She sits right off the aisle, about halfway down the pew, and something swims in my stomach, a small smile spreading my lips.
The truth is…there’s no point to any of this. If being a lifelong Catholic school girl has taught me anything, the idea of heaven is as much of an abhorrence as the idea of hell. Who the fuck wants to be in church forever?
My mother has her shopping and her all-too-important schedule, and my father has another woman, both of them running as fast as they can from themselves, because they now realize there’s no point in denying the sins that keep you feeling alive.
I stalk down the nearly empty row, drop my bag, and look at her. She turns her head, sees me and rises, grabbing her backpack, but I slide into the seat, grab her wrist, and yank her ass back down.
“Sit,” I growl through my teeth, feeling heat rise up my neck as she crashes back into the wooden pew, her jaw flexing.
There’s no point in denying myself any of this. I’m a bitch, but only to her, and only because it feels so good. Fuck it.
“Do something for me?” I ask her, keeping my voice low as students fill the rows around us, and the altar servers light the candles. “Move your ass a little faster than my grandmother down the field this Friday, or is that too much trouble?”
Liv doesn’t look at me, just stares ahead as she lets out a quiet little laugh. “I haul ass down that field.” Relaxing back into her seat, she hangs her elbows over the back of the pew, and her shirt creeps up a little. I spot the switchblade she keeps hooked over the waist of her skirt, but hidden on the inside, that only I seem to know about. So far anyway. She goes on, “I’ll never understand how a princess who can’t pass a ball for shit and brags to anyone who will listen about being a Swiftie,” and she does air quotes, “‘even before she went pop’ is our team captain. Oh, wait. Yes, I do understand. Daddy is useful. When he’s there.”