Chapter Ten

Taking a Load Off

I was four hours into my swing shift and stretching my legs at Southpoint Mall when my phone vibrated with an incoming text. I pulled the phone from my pocket and read the screen. All it said was Thanks. I didn’t recognize the number, and no name popped up. Whoever had sent it wasn’t in my contacts. Hmm.

I typed back. Who sent this?

A moment later, a reply came in. Your father.

My fingers seemed to type of their own accord. Working swing. Time for my dinner break. Meet me at Chili’s on Fayetteville Road?

Had I really just asked my father to have dinner with me? It was a risky proposition. Things could go really bad. But maybe Trixie was right. Maybe I needed to work through my feelings and maybe, good or bad, confronting my father is what it would take. Then again, maybe I had lost my ever-loving mind.

Three full minutes passed before his response came in. Ok.

I returned to my bike, rode it the block or two to the restaurant, and requested a booth where I could see the door. Twenty minutes passed and I wondered if he’d changed his mind, when the door opened and there he was. I raised a hand to get his attention, and he walked over, his steps short and hesitant. He slid quietly into the other side of the booth. A scab had formed over the split lip he’d suffered last weekend, and his cheekbone still bore a faint bruise. But his clear eyes told me he was sober tonight, and his hangdog expression told me he just might feel bad about the way he’d talked to me the preceding weekend, for blaming my mother for his failings.

I simply stared at him for a long moment. He cast furtive glances at me between toying with the menu and salt shaker.

Finally, I said, “You’re welcome.”

His gaze met mine and held. Speaking softly, he said, “I didn’t deserve that bail money.”

I thought back to the police reports from his childhood. “You’ve gotten a lot of things you didn’t deserve.”

“I know!” he snapped sitting bolt upright, his posture and demeanor changing in an instant. “I didn’t deserve your mother, and I didn’t deserve you girls. That’s why I left.” He looked away, and I could see a vein in his neck pulsing.

“No.” I reached across the table and grabbed his wrist, taking it in mine. “That’s not what I meant.”

He turned to look at me again, and I eased back on my grip. “I meant you didn’t deserve this. These scars.” I raised his hand before gently releasing it. “You weren’t bitten by a dog.”

He looked down at the scars then up at me, before turning away again. “How do you know?”

“Police reports.”

I sat back and mulled over what he’d just said, about not deserving my mother, my sister, and me. Clearly, his upbringing had left him with no sense of self worth. And though he had been a little older than my mother when they’d met, he’d been hardly more than a kid himself. He’d probably been overwhelmed by the responsibilities of fatherhood, by the end of a childhood he’d never even had a chance to experience. He’d acted immaturely and irresponsibly, but it was understandable under the circumstances, even if wrong.

We shared another long moment of silence before he looked at me again. “I really screwed things up, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” I said. “But you might be able to unscrew them.”

His eyes flashed in surprise and remained bright with hope. “Really? You think so?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. It might not be a total unscrewing, and it might take a while, but I know Mom and Brie. If you explained and apologized, they’d hear you out.” I leaned forward. “None of us wants to keep holding on to this resentment. It’s been weighing us down far too long, and we’ve been looking for a reason to let it go. Give us one.” He’d probably feel better, too, if we cleared the air. He’d likely been hanging on to a lot of guilt and regret. “Just let me lay some groundwork first. You broke my mother’s heart. She might need to ease herself into the idea.”

His exhaled a long breath and sat back in the booth, scratching his head in a vain attempt to hide the fact that he’d just wiped a tear from his eye. His voice cracked when he spoke again. “How is she?”

“Mom? She’s good. Married. Has another kid, a boy, smart as a whip. Still works part-time at the same grocery store.”

He nodded, chewing his lip. “Her husband, is he good to her?”

“The best. He helped us out when you left, took us in.”

He nodded again, closing his eyes for a brief moment. “And Brie?”

“Tune into WRNR,” I said. “She does the morning traffic reports.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” He beamed with pride before looking away again. “I’m glad you two turned out all right.” Though he didn’t follow his statement with despite me leaving you in the lurch, it was clear that was what he meant.

“So what are you doing these days?” I asked. “Besides picking fights at bars.”

“Looking for a job. I worked the last six years for a local moving company down in Tallahassee, but they sold out to a bigger outfit and put all the loaders out of work.”

“Six years, huh? So you were showing up on time? Doing a decent job?”

“I was. Staying out of trouble, too.”

Looked like I wasn’t the only one who’d grown up since he’d left.

He grimaced. “But when I came back here, everything just . . .” He shook his head and let the sentence remain unfinished. I could finish it for him, though. Coming back here had brought up a lot of bad stuff, and he’d fallen back into old, destructive habits.

“My stepfather said one of his suppliers is looking for a loader,” I said. “You’ve got experience handling boxes. He might give you a shot. But you’d have to pull your weight.”

Dad sat up straight. “I would.” The hopeful expression on his face said especially now that I’d have a good reason to.

“All right, then,” I said. “I’ll put in a good word for you.”

The server arrived and we ordered. Over dinner, my father filled me in on his last twenty years. After running out with Mom’s money, he’d decided it would be better for everyone if he left town and got a fresh start somewhere else. He’d eventually worked his way down to Florida, with stints of a year or two doing odd jobs in various towns and cities in South Carolina and Georgia. He’d never married and had no more children.

“The longer I was gone,” he said, “the harder it was for me to come back. I figured y’all were better off without me.”

Truthfully? He was right. We had been better off without him, in the long run. But even though he’d said it, it wouldn’t be nice to agree with him. He’d already figured that out for himself. Besides, just because we’d been better off with Mr. Yancey as our father figure, it didn’t mean we’d come out of things unscathed, that we couldn’t have benefitted from some type of relationship, however limited, with our biological father.

“Where are you staying here in town?” I asked.

He named a rundown motel known for cheap rates, cheap hookers, and an occasional bedbug infestation. No wonder he’d been in no hurry to get out of jail. “I went by my mother’s place,” he said. “Another family lives there now. Apparently, she passed on a few years ago. Lung cancer.”

That’s irony for you. I offered to help pay for an extended-stay hotel, but he wouldn’t have it.

“You’ve done enough already,” he said.

We walked out to our motorcycles, and parted ways with my promise to arrange a face-to-face between him, Mom, and Brie. I wasn’t quite ready to hug him just yet. Still, when I climbed back onto my police bike, I felt strangely taller and lighter, unburdened and free. Trixie had been right, as usual. I sent her a text to let her know her guidance had been spot-on. Had dinner with my father. Filled the fuck-it bucket. I followed the message with a kissy-face emoji.