I’d sunk to the porch steps when I’d been sifting through my mail and found a letter from my sister hidden in the stack. Unable to remain standing while I’d ripped into the blue envelope.
There’d been no return address, but it had been postmarked in Washington.
What was this? An apology? An explanation?
Tears blurred my eyes as I clutched the letter to my chest. I inhaled deeply and looked up to the same blue summer sky my sister had been talking about. I wanted to reach into the letter and go back to those days. To remember the way she was begging me to do.
God. I felt almost desperate to see her face, to know she was okay, to ask her why.
All while struggling with so much anger, I didn’t know how to process it.
Her desertion.
Her betrayal.
The lies she’d cast.
I didn’t understand and I wanted to.
But I doubted very much there was a way to get there. No way to undo all the wrongs that’d bound our lives. The trust that had been so brittle years before had been completely shattered after she’d come back three months ago.
She told us she’d changed, that she’d wanted to make amends. Then she’d turned around and delivered the harshest blow—she’d stolen everything we had then disappeared again.
I peeled the letter from my chest and looked at the handwriting that was so familiar.
Hating that I missed her so badly.
Hating that I loved her so much.
Hating that I hated her for who she’d become.
Because I did…I remembered when she was good. And I’d do anything to go back there, too. To change it before she’d spiraled.
I jolted when I heard a car slowing out front and the crunch of tires in the gravel drive. I swiped the moisture from my cheek and stood. I folded the letter and stuffed it into my pocket before I moved around the small yard and to the side gate. It opened to the single carport, and I saw that my daddy’s Honda was parked behind my car.
The door opened just as I stepped through the gate.
He stood.
My chest squeezed at the sight of him.
So handsome at his 57-years, his once brown hair now gray. His history—the joys, the sorrows, the achievements, the tragedies—were written in the deep-set lines that were carved into his kind face.
I wouldn’t so much as call him rugged, his soul quiet, his demeanor unthreatening, though there was something powerful about him, too.
He was my savior. My rock. Strong and capable. But my spirit also recognized his. How he’d been broken down by the losses he’d been dealt.
“Hey, Daddy. What are you doing here?” I latched the gate behind me.
He smiled, so soft, the corners of his eyes creasing as he looked at me with the same warmth he’d watched me with my whole life. “Just came to see my best girl.”
We both ignored the sting of what he’d said, and I swore, that letter I’d hidden in my pocket felt like it just might catch fire.
“You did, huh? You just saw me yesterday,” I teased. I moved his way and welcomed the feel of his arms as he wrapped them around me.
Tight.
Ripe with affection.
Pulling back, he held me by the outside of the arms. “That was work and it doesn’t count…besides, I feel like I haven’t talked to you in ages. I’ve missed you.”
Okay, so maybe I’d been avoiding him a bit.
It was better to hide rather than to face the questions that would inevitably come.
No, I wasn’t ashamed of working at that club. But my daddy? He would instantly go into protector mode. He would tell me it wasn’t my concern. Say I didn’t need to worry. Claim it was his burden to bear. That it was insane for me to get another job even when I’d promised him that I was working on trying to find a solution.
But when he found out where I was actually working? He’d go nuts. Worry himself sick. Be concerned I’d be in harm’s way.
So far outside of my element. Of where my devotion lay.
Of where I belonged.
“Do you want to come inside and have some tea?”
“That’d be really nice.”
We moved up the front walk, and he followed me into my little house that I loved. It wasn’t much, but it was a safe haven.
Peaceful.
Quiet.
My heart ached a little when I admitted it was lonely, too. Sometimes the peace that radiated from the walls echoed with sadness. With a hollowness that reflected the hole burned through the middle of me.
We entered into the small living room stuffed with a cozy couch and a ton of pillows and a slew of pictures of my momma and daddy. Some of my students. Tessa and me, too.
There was a hall at the far end that led to the two bedrooms to the right.