I’m sitting at the table eating a grilled cheese sandwich when my father comes inside from working around the cabin. The September evening is still warm enough to cause him to be sweaty. He takes off his work gloves and wipes his forehead, then grabs a glass of water before sitting down across from me.
“There’s a lot that needs to be done around this place,” he says to me in a tone that makes it sound like I should be doing the work.
I just nod and continue eating my sandwich.
Dad just looks at me for a minute and shakes his head. “Chris—come on.”
“What?”
“Give me a break.”
“What?”
I’m sounding like a broken record.
“No—I mean it. Cut the routine. Enough.”
Before I can say “What?” again he keeps going.
“It’s been three days. And look—I have no idea when your mother is coming home, do you understand that? You don’t have to like the fact that I’m here, but you can at least act decent around me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Stop with the hate,” Dad says, wiping his face again. “Your mother has turned you against me.”
“Mom hasn’t done anything.”
“She’s done enough,” he says.
I look at the figure across from me. Kyle Buckley, fortysomething, his face permanently set to look serious, his eyes two piercing daggers of judgment.
“I didn’t want to move down here.”
“I didn’t want you to.” His voice startles me with how loud it is. He breathes in and tries to calm down.
“You think God wanted this to happen?” I ask.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t be that way. Don’t be a smart aleck.”
“I asked a simple question.”
Dad just glares at me. “It’s not a simple question, and you know it.”
“You don’t know everything that’s happened down here.”
“Then tell me, Chris. I’ve been here a week, and you’ve said nothing and told me nothing. About you, about Mom, about anything.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Why are you so angry? What’s happened to you?”
I finish the last bite of my sandwich and suddenly don’t want to continue this conversation.
“I know you don’t believe me, but I still love your mother and you. And I haven’t given up hope.”
“Hope for what?”
“That we can still be a family.”
I let out a laugh. A laugh that’s been wedged deep inside something tight and hurting.
“That ended the day we left Libertyville.”
“I did not want that.”
“You chose God. Mom chose North Carolina.”
Dad shakes his head, angry, searching for something else to say, knowing I’m right.
“I didn’t choose God, Chris. Do you really think I wanted this to happen? I quit my job, and things have been in a tailspin ever since. And I keep asking God why. I keep asking Him what He wants from me.”
“Maybe there’s a reason you’re not getting an answer.”
“Don’t,” Dad says. “Don’t dare be that way.”
You have not seen what I’ve seen. Or been where I’ve been.
“Don’t become bitter like your mother.”
“Should I be like you?”
Dad laughs, shaking his head, rubbing his palms together. “No. No, I hope and pray that you turn out far better than I did. Because I realize this, Chris, and you might not hear what I’m saying or want to hear it, but I mean this when I say it. I wasn’t there for fourteen years of your life. And when I finally tried to be, it was too late. I know that now. I pray that I haven’t completely lost you, but I don’t know. I just don’t know. Your mother—well, I can hope for something, but that’s more complicated. And in her condition—it’s just—that’s something else. But I still love you. And I want the best for you.”
The best for me.
I wonder what that looks like.
So many people want the best for me. But what about what I want?
Haven’t you spent the last few months figuring that out?
“The only thing I know is this,” Dad says. “God really does love you. And I don’t want you to think of Him as your ‘Heavenly Father,’ because you have a really awful version down here on earth to compare Him with. So don’t. But He is there, and He does love you. And that love—there’s nothing like it, Chris.”
Oh, here we go again.
I don’t know if I roll my eyes, but Dad can just feel it.
He looks at me for a long time, and that’s when I see the tears in his eyes.
In all our conversations and arguments and times back in Illinois, I never once saw him cry.
I think that maybe I should say something, anything, but he’s up and heading to the bedroom. Probably to take a shower.
I sit there in the silence, thinking of everything he just said.
Maybe he’s changed as much as I have.