“Dad?” I walk through the front door cautiously. “Is that you?” It’s a silly question to ask, because of course I know it’s Dad. I know my own father’s voice. I just didn’t expect to arrive home to him yelling like this. My heartbeat speeds up. Is Mom home? Are they having another fight? I hear a pause, then Dad’s raised voice again.
Oh. Right. He must be on the phone. A pit opens in my stomach. Of course Mom isn’t home.
Of course.
“Dad?” I call again.
“In here, honey! I’ll just be a second.”
“Okay.” I throw my backpack by the foot of the stairs, then turn and unzip it, pulling out the apple I didn’t have at lunch. I might get attacked if I go into the kitchen for a snack now.
“We’re fine. I promise.” Dad’s voice is still loud, and he heaves a heavy sigh, the kind of Big, Bad Wolf sigh that could blow down a house of straw. “Mom, you don’t have to come here. I can handle my own daughter.”
I creep closer to the kitchen door, one of those swingy ones that look like the entrance to an Old West saloon. I press myself against the wall, then peek around the door. Dad is facing the window over the sink, his cell phone so close to his ear that I think it might fuse with his head. Grandma Helen and Dad don’t talk on the phone that much. They’re close, but Dad always says he’s not a “phone person.”
I’ve never heard him this upset with her, either.
“I can cook, too!” Dad’s throws his hands in the air, then quickly brings the phone back to his ear. “I am a functioning adult, you know.”
I can’t hear Grandma on the other end, but I bet she’s saying something about bringing over a bunch of casseroles. Stuff that neighbors and family do when you lose a loved one. Mom’s not dead, though. She’s going to get better and come home soon.
Unless Dad and Grandma Helen know something I don’t?
Dad keeps talking, stuff about how Mom is working hard to get better. About how I’m doing fine with him working two jobs and how we “one hundred percent don’t need anything.”
Which is a total lie. As I look around the hasn’t-been-vacuumed-in-weeks living room, I want to shout the truth at the top of my lungs.
We do need you! In so many ways.
Dad doesn’t know how frustrating it is when he’s at the hardware store and I need help with my homework. He doesn’t know how lonely it is to heat up a microwave pizza for dinner and eat it at the table by myself while he’s at the hardware store.
He doesn’t know what it’s like to want to tell Mom how I’m getting more and more nervous about softball by the day. How scary it is to think that Coach Ortiz is going to be judging me against the other girls. That I might stay that nervous and scared the entire season since I have to keep proving I’m as good as everyone else.
I probably couldn’t tell Grandma Helen all that, but I could at least get a hug from her. She could at least eat dinner with me.
Why didn’t Dad tell her the truth?
Is he ashamed of Mom after all?