The fire crackled the next morning as I sat on my bed and stared at the ceiling. My conversation with Ellie had played through my mind all night. Finally, at four thirty, I’d built up the fire and mentally thanked Justin for restocking my woodpile. Then I’d sat in a ball of blankets and tried to disappear into a romance novel.
JJ intruded on my thoughts too much.
He seemed close enough to touch, but so far away at the same time. I’d been so distant yesterday and hadn’t explained myself. Guilt flooded my chest. Then regret. He’d been startled. Confused. I could see it in his eyes when I didn’t sit next to him, then didn’t speak.
How could I explain what I hadn’t even sorted through myself?
The uncertain side of romance really sucked. I’d always waved it off when the heroines experienced it in the novels. Said it was necessary for character development and made the story better. Now? I only felt miserable, confused, and terribly uncertain.
A ding from my phone pulled me from my thoughts. Ten o’clock. I’d lounged all morning in my cozy little cabin with frost on the windows, but now I had another ugly reality to face. With great effort, I shoved JJ to the back of my head, pulled in a deep breath, and let it all out in one great whoosh.
Time for my call with Dad.
The door to my cabin was locked, the radio turned off. I pulled the curtains, too, just in case. Couldn’t imagine how horrified I’d feel if JJ or Mark came to ask me something and saw an inmate in a bright orange jumpsuit who happened to be my father. The whole situation was embarrassing.
“I can talk to Dad and not be confused,” I chanted as I navigated to the appropriate web page. “I can talk to Dad and not be confused.”
For fifteen or so minutes every December, we met on a videochat. I gave him updates, and the call ended. Every time I sent him a letter or joined our yearly call, two parts of my heart spoke to me. Are you crazy? one half of me said. That man would have killed you if you hadn’t gotten out of there. You’re lucky he didn’t do worse.
That part was totally true.
The other half said, But there were good times, and that was also totally true.
Something in me couldn’t let go of those good times. They’d been few and far between. Fleeting, like glimpses of sunshine in a rainstorm. But he was my father.
Ellie didn’t know I’d kept up an erratic correspondence. At least, I didn’t think she did. At first, my therapist had suggested I reach out. For some reason, I felt better after talking to him. Like I didn’t have to erase a part of me or pretend it hadn’t happened. I was already trying so hard to erase Mama.
The prison had an online system that allowed me to videochat him for a small fee. I never really looked forward to it, but felt obligated all the same. The calls were mostly dry and stilted, but they satisfied the part of me that couldn’t pretend like he didn’t exist.
Today, however, our talk might actually be helpful.
The call rang, and my stomach gave a nervous flip before I answered it. Only a few seconds passed before the picture cleared, bringing Dad into focus with his usual orange jumpsuit, buzzed hair, and pale expression. While he was offered outdoors time every day, it didn’t seem like he took it.
In the five years since he’d been sentenced, he’d grown gaunt. Hollows had appeared in his cheeks and dark lines under his eyes. He’d never really been conversational while I was growing up, but was even less so now.
I conjured a smile.
“Hey.”
He cleared his throat. “Hi. Good to see you.”
Is it? I wanted to ask. He remained classically stoic and unreadable.
“How are things?” I asked instead.
“Good.”
“Any word on your sentencing?”
“Still on good behavior,” he said. “There’s a chance for parole in a year or two.”
My eyes widened. That was news. “Really?”
He nodded a little.
Resisting the urge to text Ellie a warning was hard.
Somehow, my dad occupied three spots in my mind. The drunk, the dad figure, and the jailbird. Right now, I couldn’t picture this sedate, boring guy as the one who’d stormed into the Frolicking Moose and almost shot Bethany in a drunken rage.
But I could never forget it, either.
“Any news from there?” I asked, then almost winced. How awkward. What could possibly be news in his world?
He just shook his head, lips puffed in a closed line.
“I, uh . . . it’s been eventful here,” I said. “Almost drove my car off a cliff the other day.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, but . . . it worked out okay. Car is totaled, but I’m alive.”
“Good. Insurance cover it?”
“Not sure. We’re waiting to hear back.”
“Glad you’re safe.”
“Me too.”
Another painful silence. Moments like this reminded me why it seemed so easy for Ellie to cut him from her life without a thought. She hadn’t even spoken his name since that awful day in the coffee shop.
“Listen, Dad, can we talk about Mama?”
His features darkened. He shifted a little in his seat but didn’t stop me.
I pressed on. “I’m . . . I’m trying to remember her. Remember our life together. It seems so long ago, and . . . I’m not sure I’m remembering what was real or who I think she was.”
He scoffed. “Whoever you thought she was was probably wrong. There wasn’t a person on this planet who could peg Kat down.”
I frowned. “Okay, but . . . was she a romantic?”
“She claimed to be a hopeless romantic.”
My heart sped up. “Was she?”
He shrugged. “What does that even mean?”
“You know . . . the kind of person who really believes in love. In the safety and power of romance as a force for good in the world.”
His brow wrinkled. “That doesn’t sound like her. She was an endless flirt who led men on, had sex with them, and then moved on.”
I hid a wince. He wasn’t wrong.
“Did you try to be romantic with her?” I asked.
“Can you fill a black hole?”
My nostrils flared with my effort to suppress my annoyance. His bitterness had only grown more concentrated over the past five years.
“Okay,” I drawled. “That’s fair, I guess. I just realized lately that I think I’ve been a little . . . naive about romance. About love. I’m afraid that I’m too much like Mama, and I’m trying to not go down the path she did.”
“So what if you are?”
The question stopped me in my tracks. Then I have to halt my life, reevaluate my plans, and change absolutely everything about myself, I thought. I have to make sure I never do to JJ what Mama did to you. Or me.
I didn’t answer his question.
He tilted his head back, as if in thought, for a long stretch. Eventually, he said, “She was always in love with love. It seemed like she wanted an out whenever she realized it wasn’t easy.”
I ran my memories of Mama through that filter, and it fit.
“Okay.”
“That was Kat. Easy, fun, and spontaneous. That’s what she wanted. Whirlwind romance. To be swept off her feet. Prince Charming. That load of bull. She didn’t like responsibility, either,” he added, “which is why we lost electricity so much. You’d think romance would dictate she pay the bills on time.”
A fault the two of them had shared.
“Did she love you when you first met?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you love her?”
“Sure.”
A bitter edge colored his flippant response. He didn’t like this conversation at all. Could I trust his responses? Was he telling me the truth?
“Why did you marry her?”
For a moment, I thought he’d end the call. His brow grew so heavy it nearly covered his eyes. Eventually, he said, “Because I think I did love her. I thought we could do anything together. At the time, it felt good.”
“And then?”
He scowled. “And then you’d have to ask Trevor how things ended between me and Kat.”
I blinked. “You knew about Trevor?”
“Of course I knew what was happening with Trevor,” he growled. “Didn’t take an idiot to figure it out. I let it go for a while because I assumed she’d get bored with him the same as she did with me. Since we had a child together, I thought she’d stay.”
“She did.”
“If you could call it that. The night she died? She told me she was going to leave me for him. That’s what we fought about.”
“I didn’t know that,” I murmured.
“Lovely, hopeless romantic, wasn’t she? More like a tornado. Kat destroyed everyone she touched. Not even you can deny that.”
More silence. Mama practically sang the ugly parts of love out of the shadows with her driving need to experience it. To find love. She’d escaped from reality with romance, just like me. Then she broke all our hearts. Who might Dad have been without Mama? What if she hadn’t been so in love with love?
The lesson here was clear: Mama had destroyed all her relationships with her undying belief in romance.
And I would never be like her.
Cracks in my heart fractured what little strength I had left. What if I did the same thing to JJ? Would I turn him into a convict? A mess of a man who felt only bitterness? No, I’d never let that happen. Not to him. Not to me.
I couldn’t endure that.
“Thank you,” I croaked to Dad. “This was helpful.”
Dad nodded, gaze focused off-screen. He drew in a deep breath. Then he let it out and leaned forward a little. “Listen, Lizbeth, this sentiment won’t make me popular, and I’m already a jerk. But the truth is this: if I could make it so I never met Kat, I’d do that. If you ask me, that’s what Kat’s quest for love did. Left regret and broken hearts in its wake. You’d do well to stay as far away from it as you can.”
He turned the videocall off without another word.
I closed my computer with a sob.