“Lili? What time is it?” Mom’s groggy voice brought a wave of tears to Lili’s vision. Dad’s computer screen blurred. “M—Mom, it’s about Dad,” she sobbed.
A crash sounded at the other end of the connection. “What’s wrong? Is he alright? Just let me switch on the lamp. I knocked it over.” A rustle sounded, then a click. “What’s going on?”
“I-I should have t-t-told you earlier, but he said he was going to talk to you. I wasn’t certain, and I thought—or I hoped—he was telling me the truth, b-but—”
“Lili, tell me what’s happening.” Mom’s voice was firm but not harsh.
She gulped back a sob. “Dad’s having an affair.”
The clock on Dad’s wall ticked—one, two, three, four.
“I know.”
“You know?” Lili sucked in a breath, then another. A tingle buzzed through her fingers, and her head floated two inches above where it should be. Was she hallucinating right now? How could Mom have known? “F-for how long?” The photos on the wall twisted and danced. “Mom, I feel dizzy.”
“You’re hyperventilating, Lili. Slow your breathing down.”
She stared at Dad’s bookshelf as she counted to three, breathing out, then in. A silver-framed photo of their family at Disney World sat at eye level. Mom, green from one too many Space Mountain rides, Dad with half a churro shoved in his mouth and looking cross-eyed at the camera, and eleven-year-old Lili laughing at him. Happy.
Now never again.
She twisted the cord of her pajama pants round her finger till it turned purple. “What are you going to do?” Her voice wobbled.
“I need you to do something for me, Lili, and you might not understand at first, but I want you to promise me.”
Poor Mom, knowing something this awful and pretending nothing was wrong. Anything she could do to help . . . “Okay. Promise.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
Was she serious? “What? Why? People should know what two-faced liars they are.” She stabbed a pencil against a notebook, and the lead snapped off.
There was a pause. “You know who she is?”
Lili’s insides clenched at the waver in Mom’s voice. “Yeah.”
“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
A question burned to escape. “Are you going to get a divorce?” She held her breath.
“Not if I can help it.”
She breathed easier even as disgust curled her lip. “How can you stay with him after what he’s done? Do you still love him?”
“It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I can’t be a divorced woman!” The words flew out of Mom like a squeezed watermelon seed. “I’ll lose my job, my ministry.”
The church fallout was going to be . . . Yikes. But Mom hadn’t done anything wrong. “Dad will, you won’t.”
“Who goes to a divorced woman for relationship advice, Lili? The church wants good role models to be its leaders, not people who couldn’t keep their family together. No one would look at me the same.” Mom’s voice cracked. “And I’ve only ever worked in the church. I don’t know how to do anything else. I don’t even have friends outside our congregation.”
Tears slipped from beneath Lili’s eyelids as she looked at the Disney World photo again. It had all been a lie. Dad didn’t want them anymore.
“I’ll do it on one condition,” she said.
“What?”
“Don’t look in Dad’s office when you get home.”
“Deal.”
* * *
Lili seized an armful of papers from the bottom drawer of Dad’s filing cabinet and tossed them into the air. A papery blizzard raged around her. She’d just emptied the entire cabinet in less than two minutes.
Pain registered. A paper cut sliced down her index finger, thin and red. Her throat ached the way it always did before she cried. Sermon notes and church budgets fluttered down around her.
She curled up on the paper-covered floor and sobbed till the tax return beneath her face turned soggy.
How could Dad have done this? Did he care that little for her and Mom?
She pounded the floor and screamed again. She’d tried to be the perfect daughter. Her grades were flawless, and even her math had improved. With the exception of the smoking incident, her behavior had been exemplary. She had no bad friends. No boyfriend. Didn’t party. Wore a skirt to church every week and had taught Sunday school for two years.
Apparently that wasn’t enough to make Dad love her.
Fire surged through Lili’s veins. She bounced up from the floor and attacked Dad’s desk drawers. When a notebook, calculator, and stash of jellybeans fell from drawer number three, a small black cylinder rolled from the top of the pile. She dropped the drawer and grabbed it. Red lipstick. Definitely not Mom’s.
Lili pulled Dad’s leather-bound Life Application Bible from the towering pile of books on the edge of his desk. A small nudge sent the rest of the pile crashing to the floor. She plopped the Bible in the center of the desk. Uncapping the toffee apple-red lipstick, she scrawled across the page.
Liar.
The lipstick worked like a giant crayon, its red stain smudging the holy pages.
Her gaze landed on the cream office wall before her.
Cheater.
Dad’s massive bookcase covered the third wall, and his filing cabinet and a cupboard blocked most of the fourth. But the back of his door was an untouched canvas.
I hate you.
She squished the remaining lipstick against the wall, then dropped the pulverized red mash. A sweep of the hand sent Dad’s bookshelf photographs tumbling to the ground, and she yanked every book from its place. The corner of an Old Testament commentary landed on her big toe. She yelped and jumped backward. Biting back a curse word, she clenched her fist against the roll of pain.
A thought whispered from the back of her brain. Why not curse? It wasn’t like God loved her either.
Lili shouted every curse word she knew and looked around for anything left to destroy. A pair of scissors suggested themselves from Dad’s desktop. She picked them up and turned to Dad’s chair.
Dad’s favorite leather chair.
She pressed the blade against the leather. A hot tear splashed onto her hand. She gripped the scissors tighter.
She could do it . . .
She should do it . . .
Throwing the scissors aside, she collapsed to her knees, face pressed against the seat. Her tears soaked the yellow foam that poked out from cracks in the worn cushion.
This chair belonged to the father who’d smuggled her chocolate-chip ice cream when Mom sent her to bed without supper. The man who’d danced with her at the elementary school ball. The one who bought her new paints last November, for no other reason than to see her smile.
She couldn’t destroy it yet.
Lili dragged the back of her hand across her face and rose on unsteady feet.
She screenshot the Find My Phone map, printed it, and laid it on the keyboard.
Uncapping a red pen with her teeth, she scribbled on the bottom of the page.
Dad, Oliver was really sick so Jem dropped me home. I got worried when you weren’t here.
I’m not worried anymore.
P.S. Mom knows.
She dropped the pen on the desk and left the room, shutting the door behind her.