Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“Bullshit,” Deja snaps.
“Watch it.” Father and daughter stare at one another in the tight silence following her harsh curse.
“I’m not a baby.” She folds her arms across her chest. “You want me to pretend I am? Pretend I don’t curse? Pretend I don’t know what really happened between you?”
“What happened,” I say, “is that Byrd died and Henry died, and I fell down and could not figure out how to recover. Every decision from that season of my life was made through the lens of my depression. If I could go back, I would. But I don’t know what would change because that’s who I was. That’s how I coped.”
I release a huff of humorless air masquerading as a laugh. “Or didn’t cope. We were fighting all the time, your dad and me. I could barely get out of bed most days. Everything hurt so much, and I couldn’t make it stop. You and your brother kept me going, but it was hard.”
“I remember…” Deja’s voice peters out before resurging. “I remember tears on your face when you picked us up in the carpool line and hearing you cry in your room through the wall sometimes.”
It’s quiet in the kitchen, but the demons whisper that I failed my children by letting them see me that way. The poisoned vines of condemnation wind around my heart and squeeze, showing no mercy even when I cannot breathe.
“I remember you and Daddy shouting,” Deja goes on, eyes fixed on the floor. “Sometimes you’d go into the garage and try to hide it from us.”
“Kassim said he would come to your room when you heard us fighting,” Josiah says.
“Yeah,” Deja says. “We knew something was wrong, but I didn’t think you’d actually split up.”
She glances up at me. “Then I heard you arguing that night and knew you would because she wanted to.”
I swallow hot emotion and clear my throat. “You’re right. My actions did set the divorce into motion. I can’t change what happened or how I responded, so I’m asking you to forgive me for my mistakes.”
“So you think divorcing Daddy was a mistake?” she demands.
I’ve never felt more exposed than in the harsh light streaming through the kitchen window. Than in my bare feet under my daughter’s watchful stare. Than in the held breath between her question and the answer that will tell Josiah the painful truth secreted in my heart.
“Day,” Josiah says. “She doesn’t—”
“Yes,” I interrupt, forcing myself to meet her eyes and not look into his, which I feel trained on my profile. “I think it was a mistake.”
I walk deeper into the kitchen and stand right in front of her, not touching her, but looking her squarely in the eyes, praying she sees my sincerity and regret.
“People don’t become perfect when they become parents,” I tell her. “If anything, parenthood gives us more chances to screw things up, just with higher stakes. We all mess up. Sometimes we have to live with that for the rest of our lives. I can’t promise I won’t mess up, but I promise I will love you even when you do. Unconditionally. That means even if you can’t find it in your heart to forgive me, even if you hate me—”
“I don’t hate you,” she cuts in softly, eyes on the floor.
“It means I’ll always love you no matter what. And we can go on like this, not getting along, you resenting me and me not understanding you.”
I tip up her chin with my finger, waiting for her tear-drenched eyes to meet mine.
“Or we can decide today that we want something else. We can decide we’ve already lost too much to waste another day. I lost Byrd. I lost Henry.” Tears roll down my cheeks and my voice breaks. “I don’t want to lose you, too, Day.”
She may reject me, but I’m willing to risk that. I’ll keep risking it to win her trust back. To earn a second chance. Knowing she could very well roll her eyes and walk away, I extend my arms. They tremble. For a perilous second, I think she’ll reject me for the spite of it, to hurt me the way my actions hurt her. But she doesn’t walk away.
She moves toward me, her face crumpling and tears streaking her cheeks. She walks into my arms, burying her face in my neck, the wall she’s erected between us for so long collapsing. Like a cracked dam, the emotion, the tears crash through. I cry, too, but it’s as much relief as anything else. That after so much time of cutting remarks and frozen silences, I have something real with my daughter, even if it is her tears.
Chapter Forty-One
Yasmen
No school!” Kassim runs through the house delivering the news. “Mom, there’s no school!”
I walk over to my bedroom window and watch the steady drift of snow to the ground. Otis, here with us while Josiah’s in Charlotte, yawns from the foot of my bed.