“Sorry, Sweetheart,” I continue and bend to pick up the bits of glass. “Stay there. I don’t want you to cut your feet, okay?”
Millie tucks her feet up on the large wooden bench of the breakfast bar. “What were you thinking about?” she asks. “I called you like four times.”
“Nothing. Just got caught up in the mountains.”
My daughter is no dummy, she knows I’m lying. We live in a twenty-five-foot motorhome and spend almost every moment together traveling North America for my work.
Dad hobbles into the kitchen. “What’s going on in here?”
“Nothing, dropped a glass.”
As I carefully step over the small bits of glass, I realize my father’s place in all of this. He’s been here all this time. He knows that I have a kid. Even though my father has hated the Ryker’s for as long as I can remember surely, he could’ve mentioned something to Xan.
“Hey, Millie? Can you go outside before it gets dark and clean up your stuff from the treehouse, please?” I gesture toward the back door, tracing out a safe path with a sweep of my hand.
“Okay,” she says with a slow wary tone. For a nine-year-old she’s extremely empathic. No matter how good I am at hiding my emotion on the outside, she feels it. Since she was a baby, reading a room was her superpower.
“We’ll talk later. You know I’ll tell you the truth.”
I grab the broom and dustpan from the small closet by the back porch and Millie smiles for the first time since she saw Xan. I live for that lopsided toothy grin.
There’s never been a need to lie to her about our situation. I told her everything as she began to get older and question why we lived differently, why she didn’t have a dad. Sure, I edited it a bit to protect the huge heart that lived inside her small body. I told her that her daddy wasn’t ready to be there for her. I told her that having a baby was a big responsibility that some people could handle, and some people couldn’t, especially so young. I wasn’t going to tell her that he abandoned me, ghosted me and forfeited his right to our daughter through being the world’s most giant asshole. I didn’t tell her father was a coward.
I told her that we were on our own. That we had each other and took care of each other. I proved to her that we didn’t need him, that I could love her enough. That I could protect her.
The thought sends a shudder through my body. Protecting her is becoming increasingly difficult with threats now hovering in on two sides.
“Love you, Mom.” Millie says and I set aside my worries and reach for any semblance of calm I have left.
As soon as Millie’s out the door I spin around on my dad, still standing in the doorway leaning on his crutches. His face is strained and red, exhausted from the effort of lugging around a broken leg and huge heavy cast.
“Why did Xan look like he had no idea that Millie existed?”
“Pardon?” Dad says but I’m unsure what’s happening behind his stone-faced expression. Something he’s perfected being a small-town cop. Neutrality.
“When Xan saw Millie. He was shocked to see her. Like he didn’t know that she was alive. He knew I was pregnant, Dad. Why was he so confused?”
Emotion flickers across my father’s face and his tell is obvious even from across the room. My father licks his bottom lip any time he’s about to tell a lie. That’s something only Mom and I knew.
“He was probably shocked that you came home. Even if he knew you were pregnant, seeing a nine-year-old girl that looks like you is bound to be pretty disorienting.”
“He wasn’t disoriented Dad. He was completely terrified.” Even after ten years I know Xan. I know his tells as well as I know my father’s.
“Mom,” I whisper as it all became clear. Watching my dad lower his gaze and hunch his shoulders solidifies my suspicions. “Mom told him I had an abortion, didn’t she?”
My father says nothing—as usual—but it’s as good as screaming from the rooftops. We were the kind of family that fought with silence and coldness–like all good white families. We buried our feelings and talked about the weather, we went to church in our Sunday best and polite pleasantries but at home felt hollow and disconnected. We were the family that drove into town and gossiped about people like the Rykers but then smiled sweetly to their faces at church and asked them how they’d been.
“Dad,” I say more sternly, and he sighs, hobbling to the table and lowering himself on the bench.
“Your mother’s plan was to convince you that keeping the baby was wrong for you. Her plan was to send you to Aunt Jane’s in Vancouver no matter what. You would either have an abortion or give it up for adoption.”
Anger flares through my body and I aggressively dump the glass into the trash can.
“What you call it is outside playing in your yard right now. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“I know,” Dad says waving his hands in defense. “But you knew your mother. She was determined to separate you and the Ryker boy. A baby would only tie you to him forever. She had a plan and even after the accident I followed it. I sent you to Jane’s. I kept my mouth shut about the baby. I didn’t know for sure what Amelie told him. But it makes sense that she would have said that. It would be the only way to get him to actually leave you alone. After you two fought that night she tore out of here with a desperation that I’ve never seen. All she wanted was what was best for you. You were sixteen. You were so blindly in love with that boy.”
I sink down into the chair across from Dad and replay the painful memories of my last moments with my mother. The ones where we finally tore open the polite restraint that oppressed our family and we screamed at each other over the fate of my beautiful girl. In a small conservative town like Raston and a family like mine that cared so much about reputation, if I took a few steps back it was almost comical that my mother was trying to force me to get an abortion. I wholeheartedly believed that every woman should choose for herself what happened to and with her body. I chose Millie. That was my choice.