Chapter Eleven
The clock struck six, and I’d been holed up my room for hours.
I wouldn’t let this happen again. I wouldn’t sit up here and take this imprisonment, day after day until he finally relented.
Enough was enough.
Yes, I’d broken his rules. I’d screwed up, and I could admit that. But no one had lived under the kind of pressure and scrutiny I’d lived under for these last few years, and I was at my breaking point.
Something had to change—today. Not for me. Not for him. For us. Dad and I needed to begin again, and walking away from each other was the worst way to do that. We needed to be together—in the same room. Hashing this out.
I slowly descended the stairs, finding him in his usual spot in front of the TV. I leaned in the foyer, wondering if he could see me out of the corner of his eye, and if he could, why he hadn’t sent me away again.
When the silence droned on for the better part of two minutes, I took a step into the living room.
“We need help, Dad.”
“I know,” he whispered, finally turning his head away from the TV to look at me. He swallowed hard, scared of what that admission meant.
“I’ve known for a long time, but I’ve been so scared to say anything,” I said. “I’ve never wanted to hurt your feelings.”
“Maybe I need to have my feelings hurt.” He picked up the remote to turn off the screen. His eyes flicked back to me. “We can’t keep living like this, Ally. Day after day I watch you tiptoe around me, too scared to say whatever it is that’s on your mind. We’re both living in fear. Me, of what you’ll become if I let go, and you . . . of me.”
“Dad, I’ve never been scared of you.”
“I don’t want you to live in fear of how I’ll react. And yet I lash out at you. Whatever it is you’re scared of, whatever it is you want to say, then say it. Please. Do you want to leave, too? Is that what it is?”
“Of course not.” I nodded to the couch. “Please come sit with me.”
Dad peeled himself away from the chair, and each of us made our way to the couch. It was the closest we’d sat to one another in years, and the memory of all the times he’d held me, comforted me, rocked me to sleep . . . it all came flooding back.
I’d never forgotten how much I loved those moments with him, the comfort and the safety. The love. But it’d all felt so far away for so long, and it didn’t have to stay that way.
Not anymore.
While he looked down at his hands, picking at his fingernails, I tucked my feet up beneath me and turned to face him.
“I know you’re hurt, and I know that you’re consumed with pain that you don’t know how to deal with,” I started. “I am, too. Together, we need to decide if that’s something we want to overcome, and if it is, then we have to find a way to get some help—both of us, together.
“And yes, Dad, I’ve tiptoed around you. I’ve followed your rules. I do as I’m told. I’ve tried for years to prove that I want to be here. If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be. But I can’t breathe anymore. Wanting space and freedom and very few liberties doesn’t mean I’m walking out on you.
“The part you’re failing to understand is that when you lost Mom and Lucy, I lost all three of you. I don’t even recognize this person you’ve become. I know you’re trying, and I can’t fault you for that, but I need you to understand that you can’t pick and choose when to be my father. I need you to go to work, on time, every day, all day, because even without Mom and Lucy, you still have a family to take care of. You and I are a family. We need food and hot water, and a way to survive.
“Laying down rules and giving me a curfew isn’t enough to say you’re doing your job. Banning boys, restricting romance and intimacy . . . what good do you think that’s going to do? Lucy taught me more through her mistakes than you’ll ever enforce through a seven o’clock curfew.”
Dad took a deep breath, trying to digest everything I’d thrown at him, but I wasn’t done. I’d said a lot, but I hadn’t said enough.
“You need to start sleeping upstairs,” I continued. “They’re both gone. Mom’s not coming back, and we don’t know that Lucy ever will. But she made the decision to leave, okay? She—left—us. And you have to stop beating yourself up over it. Life has to move forward. We have to move forward. Nothing’s going to magically change. We have to do this together, step by step. I’m here, and I’m not leaving. I want to be here to see this through, because I know we can have a life that we deserve. It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to be this way.”
Dad readjusted in his seat, finally looking up to me though the tears flooding his eyes.
“What if I’m stuck?” he choked. “What if I don’t know how to move forward?”
“I’ve been stuck, too. And it’s really hard to pull yourself out and appreciate the world again. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but . . . we have nothing but time, ya know?”
If Jasper had taught me anything, it was that sometimes we had to let go of the moment we were stuck in. Sometimes we had to believe in the healing power of time.
Dad nodded, and I scooted across the couch, closer to him. I huddled into his side, and he dropped his arm over me.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been hard enough on you,” I said. “We should’ve had this talk a long time ago, but I was just . . .”
“Scared,” he said, nodding, because Dad felt it too. We were both so scared of what our lives would look like when we finally accepted that we had to move forward and start looking toward the future.
“I’m not going to make a habit of telling you how things are going to go around here.” I wiped a tear. “But for tonight, I am leaving. One of my best friends turns eighteen tomorrow, and I have very little time to pull together the party of the century.”
Dad nodded.
“And then tomorrow we’re going to talk about The Red Barn. I can’t let you tear it down. I know the memories are haunting you every time you see it, but if we give it a chance, we can turn those memories into something beautiful again. We have too much unfinished business in there, and we can make it good again. I promise.” Dad remained silent. “I know working outside the house has been especially difficult for you, but if you can help me get Mom’s business up and running again, maybe you’ll never have to work elsewhere again. We can’t do it alone, and it’s going to take a bigger team, but I’m working out the details. We can do this. It can happen.”
“I thought you weren’t going to make a habit of telling me—”
“Starting now.” I nodded to the front door. “I need to grab Roz, Mel, and . . . Jasper, if that’s okay?” He nodded. “I need their help. We have to get this done, and we don’t have a lot of time.”