“Our family is worth fighting for,” I say, but as soon as the words are out in the cool evening air, I realize that they’re a mistake.
“Family?” Ellie doesn’t speak the word as an accusation. She’s not blaming me for what we’ve done together. I know she takes equal responsibility for it, despite it being my dare. But the question is there. What would any of us be fighting for? Fix our parent’s marriage, and we’re only heading to destroy it again if we allow ourselves to continue being more than fake siblings. I know for a fact that our dad would be against a relationship. Forget Lara. If one Townsend man can’t be trusted, how would she ever consider her daughter shacking up with three?
It’s all too much to ask.
“We’ll get there,” I say. “It’ll get better.”
“You’re always such an optimist,” Ellie says, taking another step back. Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears. “But sometimes life is just shit, and nothing can change it.”
Then she turns and strides back up the driveway.
I watch until she’s disappeared into the house and closed the door to our home behind her.
In the car, no one says anything on the drive back.
There’s nothing left to say.
When we get back to Molly’s, Dad’s car is in the lot, and he’s sitting in the driver’s seat with his head resting against the seat and his eyes closed. In the darkness, with the hollows of his cheeks and eyes shadowed, he looks much older than his years.
The noise of our car pulling in front of him draws his attention, and he climbs slowly out of his vehicle with shoulders hunched.
Looking around, I guess at his train of thought: his car is worth more than all the other cars in the lot put together.
Colby bringing him here was a good move. I’m certain that if we stayed in a luxury hotel that the direness of the situation we’re facing wouldn’t be conveyed half as well. This dive motel in this part of town just magnifies what he’s lost, what we’ve all lost.
“Why the hell did you choose this place?” he asks.
“It’s cheap,” Colby says. He locks the car and starts walking, and dad follows, keeping in step with Micky and me.
The bed is still rumpled from earlier, and Colby tugs the sheet that we spread over the gap in the mattresses. Probably wise, seeing as Ellie might have leaked his come all over it.
He tosses it in the corner with no care for our dad noticing, but dad’s too distracted to notice a soiled sheet.
He slumps into the rickety wooden chair and rests his head in his hands. “I fucked up.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard my dad drop the f-bomb, and I stifle my shock.
“Yeah, you did,” Colby says. “And it’s not just your life you fucked up.”
Dad looks up, his eyes red and face gaunt, regret plastered all over him. “I know. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I don’t think you were,” Micky says, slumping down onto the edge of the mattress.
“I made a big mistake.” Dad rubs his face and straightens, dropping his hands by his sides. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Have you told Lara it was a mistake? Have you begged her for forgiveness?”
“I don’t beg anyone for anything.”
I look over to Colby, whose shoulders are bunched with tension. I can see so many similarities between my dad and him. The mask they both wear to cover weakness isn’t healthy for either of them.
“But you still want her? You still want our family?” Micky asks.
There’s that word again. Family as a descriptor doesn’t sit right with me anymore, not after what has happened.
“I do,” Dad says softly.
“Then maybe you need to look at it from Lara’s point of view. It’s not her who’s betrayed the relationship. It’s not her who’s broken the trust. She deserves you to crawl on your hands and knees and say a million sorrys. Whether you like it or not, that’s what you’re going to need to do.”
“But what if she doesn’t accept my apology? What if she can’t ever trust me again?”
“That might be the case, but you have to take the risk. There isn’t an alternative.”
He exhales and shakes his head. “Women. They’re nothing but trouble.”
Colby snorts and rolls his eyes. “You had a perfectly good relationship, and you messed it up. Don’t blame women for your selfishness. Lara waits on you hand and foot. She’s cared for us like we’re her own. There’s not a thing that woman wouldn’t do for her family. She didn’t deserve this.”
There’s a long moment of pause, and then dad stands and paces back and forth. In his dark suit trousers and white dress shirt, rolled at the sleeves, he looks like a businessman who bet on the wrong horse. There’s a stoop to his normally iron-straight posture, and it’s weird because this is the first time I’ve ever really noticed my dad’s humanity. He’s always been larger than life, a mountain whose summit is too high to view. He’s aloof and always in control and never shows weakness. Never lets down his guard.