Twelve months, two weeks, and three days is exactly three hundred and eighty-two days. I’m fairly certain it doesn’t mean squat to anyone else, but to me, it’s everything. To me, it’s how I measure my life, because nothing that happened before then matters. Not now and maybe not ever.
I used to be that girl. You know the one. I had it all.
Until I didn’t.
Three hundred and eighty-two days ago, my whole world imploded, and ever since then, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get it back to what it was. How to unsee and unhear everything that happened.
You see, those things, the things that could break me, I hold them close, buried so deep that sometimes I don’t even think they’re real.
But they are. They’re as real as the blades of grass beneath my toes. Or the big fat cucumbers in the back garden. They live in between those three hundred and eighty-two days, like the sawdust that fills the cracks of the floorboards in my father’s church. And it’s the sawdust that chokes.
Every morning I wonder, is this the day that I can forgive him for what he did? Is this the day that I can forgive her for not knowing? I mean, how can she not know? That thought alone haunts me every single day, which leads to other questions. Is it my place to tell her? Is it my place to make him?
Is this the day I can break free from the silence that weighs me down?
Every morning as I sit across the table from my father and watch him eat his toasted bagel with chunky peanut butter, spread so thin I don’t get the point of even putting it on his toast, I wait. I wait for something inside me to shift.
I wait for him to talk about it. To explain the lie that is his life.
I wait for something to change.
I wait for it, and I die a little when it doesn’t happen because I want it so badly.
I watch my mom breeze into the kitchen and kiss him on the cheek, her hands lingering on his face because she loves to touch him. I watch her frown because the Nutella on my toast isn’t a healthy choice, so she grabs her homemade strawberry jam and puts it in front of me.
I let her touch my shoulder, lean over, and kiss me before running her hands through my little brother’s hair.
I watch her smile, and I wait for her eyes to light up the way they used to. Because for as long as I can remember, my mom’s smile was the most beautiful thing in the world.
But her smile never quite reaches her eyes, and her penchant for humming hymns from church borders on crazy. She knows things have changed, but for the life of her, she can’t figure out what those things are.
So I pop my toast in my mouth and force the dry crust down. I know that I’ll have to put on a fake smile and head out into the world and pretend that my life is just as perfect as it was before. No one can know the secrets that hide behind our front door. The secrets that are slowly tearing my family apart.
To everyone in Twin Oaks, we’re the Jenkinses—the perfect and loving Pastor Eric Jenkins; his beautiful wife Terry, who spends all her time volunteering for the less fortunate in the community; and their kids. Isaac, the free-spirited little guy who loves baseball, fishing, and above all else, his father.
And then there’s me, Everly, the All-American girl, with a heart of gold and truckload of morals to go along with it.
That’s how I was brought up. That’s what he taught me.
Ironic isn’t it?
So here I am, day three hundred and eighty-three. I’ll push my feelings aside and pretend that everything is freaking A-OK. I’m a good daughter who’s learned from the best, even though the best is flawed. Even though the best is beyond redemption.
Apparently, in my world, the best means being a hypocritical jerk. A liar. A cheat.
I hate pretending. But most of all, I hate him for what he’s done to my family. Him. My father.
I love my father.
I hate my father.
How screwed up is that?