I didn’t want to cry. It felt like that was all I’d been doing for the last two weeks, the last few months, even the last few years. Every day seemed worse than the last. But this had to be the bottom. Rock bottom. The tear trickled down my face, carving a tiny little path through my makeup.
Lori grabbed a tissue and dabbed it away. I didn’t move. I sat still and stared at the ground, not really seeing anything. “Maybe things will work out,” she offered hopefully.
I looked up at her. “How could things possibly work out?”
She looked back, her eyes soft and sympathetic, trying to find the right combination of words to soothe my fears and make me feel like maybe, just maybe, the last few good things in my life weren’t totally crumbling to pieces around me. “I don’t know,” she admitted finally. “But they might.”
I turned my eyes to the bouquet in my hand. It was filled with while lilies. Their petals were smooth and creamy. I extended a finger and stroked one, but as soon as I touched it, the petal detached itself from the flower and fell fluttering to the ground. What a perfect metaphor for the way today was going.
“He is handsome,” she said. “At least there’s that.”
It was true; Ben was handsome. He was every bit as rugged and dark as I remembered him being, even though I’d only seen glimpses of him in the two weeks that had gone by since my father had come home and informed me that I would be marrying him as soon as it was possible to arrange the ceremony.
I didn’t believe him at first. No father could be so casually cruel.
“Daddy, you’re not serious.”
No reply. Just that stare.
“No, Daddy, wait. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Still nothing.
“Don’t I have a choice in this? It’s my life you’re ruining!”
“You made your choice when you let that animal empty his seed into you.”
What could I possibly say to that? What kind of father said something like that to his only daughter? There was nothing that could have prepared me for that kind of conversation. I was out of my depth by miles.
I wondered where the father I used to know had gone. Before my mother died, he was the best dad a girl could ask for. I remembered laughing when he sat me in front of him on his motorcycle and let me use two hands to twist the throttle. I remembered all those little memories of him and me, the ones every daughter shares with her father: painting his nails, forcing him to indulge in my tea time fantasies, him tossing me in the air. Those were the bread and butter.
We had our own special moments, too. The motorcycle, the day he taught me how to flick out a switchblade knife, the time he kept me out of school for a week for no other reason than to ride down to Mexico and play in the surf. Just the three of us—my father, my mother, and me—all alone on a white sand beach, splashing in the water without a care in the world.
But a few months before my mother’s murder, something had changed. I remembered the day perfectly.
I was fifteen years old. It was a half-day at school, and I’d finished my homework quickly so I could lay out in the backyard and tan. I was stretched out on a towel, basking in the sun and on the verge of drifting off to sleep, when I heard a huge crash from inside. I sat upright and whipped off my sunglasses. I couldn’t see anything from where I was sitting, so I got up and walked over to the window that looked in on the living room. Pressing my face against it, I saw the coffee table had been upended. The glass vase that usually sat in the center, the one my mother loved to fill with fresh cut flowers from our garden, was now shattered into a million pieces spread out across the floor. My mother was cowering in one corner as my father loomed over her. Their voices were muffled through the window, and I could only make out a few things they were saying.
“Tell me who it was!” he roared.
“Nothing happened, James,” she begged. “Nothing, I swear.”
“Tell me!”
“James, you have to believe me.”
He raised a hand high in the air as if he were about to hit her. I found my voice then and screamed. They looked at me simultaneously, saw me standing on the other side of the glass, tears running down my face. I’d never so much as seen them argue before. My dad was always the picture of calm reserve. Always in control, always smooth. But when he looked at me, I saw his face wrinkled in purple rage. My mother’s eyes were round and teary. She mouthed, “Please go away,” but I couldn’t seem to make my feet work.