But I really hoped she would talk with me.
I knocked on her closed office door and heard her small voice behind it. She ushered for me to come in, and I heard an emptiness to her tone that made my stomach sink. I slid into her office and closed the door, then reached down and locked it.
The throwing of the lock caught her ear, and she whipped her head up from her desk.
“Brett. Good morning,” Olivia said.
“More like good afternoon.”
“What?”
“Look at the time.”
Her eyes danced over to her laptop before they widened. “Holy crap. It’s lunchtime.”
I grinned. “It is.”
“Let me clock out really quickly.”
I watched her fingers fly over the keyboard before she hit a button hard and closed her laptop.
“There. Lunchtime,” she said.
“Does this mean we get to talk?” I asked.
She leaned back in her chair. “You want to know how last night went.”
I shrugged. “I figured you’d call me after. Especially after inviting me to go with you. How did things go? You seem… distracted.”
“I’m trying to focus is more like it. I mean, the dinner went fine. About as well as could be expected. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anything he says. But I got to say a few things to him I’d wanted to say for years.”
“That’s good, on multiple accounts. And no one expects you to trust him.”
“He expects me to trust him.”
“What?” I asked.
“I mean, I don’t know if ‘expect’ is the right word. But I could tell he was hoping I would,” she said.
I slowly made my way for her desk. “What did you two talk about?”
“Well, he told me why he originally left,” she said.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She sighed heavily, and I knew whatever was coming wasn’t good.
“He was apparently addicted to pills,” she said.
“I’m so sorry, Olivia.”
“According to him—and the story my mother confirmed—he was taking the extra money Mom made at her jobs and was tossing it into his addiction. The moment I remember him leaving with a small suitcase in hand was actually the day he left for rehab the first time.”
“The first time?”
Olivia snickered. “Yeah. The first time. Apparently, it didn’t stick until the third time.”
“And he didn’t come back after that?”
“According to him and Mom—which was who I called after dinner by the way.”
“I figured as much. I’m smart when I want to be,” I said, grinning.
“She backed up his story verbatim. Without me leading her or anything. After rehab the first time, she wanted him staying in a place of his own she helped fund for a month. Just to make sure the sobriety stuck. It didn’t, and he tried on two more occasions to get sober and stuff. But by the time he was sober, more than a year had gone by and he said it looked like we were ‘doing well without him.’”
“So, he didn’t come back,” I said as I sat on the edge of her desk.
“Nope. He apologized for not calling on birthdays or holidays. He gave me some sappy bullshit on how he should have tried harder. And all I said was yes, he should have. He should have tried harder. He should have fought Mom on coming back. He should have made her take the money he was sending her instead of letting her work two jobs and barely be there for Mike and myself while he was off doing whatever the fuck it was he was doing instead of being with his damn family.”
“Sounds like your mother is partially responsible for this as well,” I said.
“She’s prideful, and she has every right to be. My father sucked down pills while pulling money from her paychecks.”
“But when he sent money to her, she refused to take it.”
“Maybe it was her way of sticking it to him, I don’t know. In my eyes, she was warranted that moment.”
“But maybe that was the moment that communicated to your father that he wasn’t necessary.”
“This isn’t my mother’s fault,” she said.
“I’m not saying it is. What I am saying is that it sounds like he tried to contribute in any way he felt he could after he got sober, and your mother wouldn’t let him. It takes two to make and break something like that. Your father is much to blame, but your mother isn’t clean in all this, either. Not from the sounds of it.”
I watched her grind her teeth together, trying to bury her anger at my statement.
“Well, the point of this is I don’t trust him. He tells me he’s going to stay in that hotel for a while and try to be there for me, but I don’t know if I want him to be anymore. I don’t know if he’ll stay. I’m not holding my breath for it,” Olivia said.
“It’s understandable. And it’ll take time. I hope, for your sake, that he’ll stick around. If anything so you can get more answers. So you can get more of this off your chest. Because from the looks of it, it doesn’t look or sound like you got everything out last night.”