Off the Record (Off #3)(49)

“It’s my father.”

And there he is, walking into the dining room. He even has a wrapped birthday gift in his hand.

It galls me that he feels he can just come and go in my mother’s house. He has no right.

My dad looks at me, then at Linc, then at my mom. He walks over to her. “Happy birthday, Sammy.”

I wince as my mother stands up and gives him a hug. “Thanks, John. Is that for me?”

“Yeah. Just a little something I picked up for you,” he says, handing her the gift.

“That’s so sweet. Thank you.” My mom takes the gift and just holds it. She looks at me with worry. The silence is oppressive and my mom seeks to alleviate it.

“John...this is Linc Caldwell. He’s a friend of Ever’s.”

My dad steps around the table and Linc stands to greet him, briefly releasing my hand. I feel cold and alone. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Montgomery.”

“Likewise.”

Linc sits back down and immediately picks up my hand. He starts rubbing his thumb across the back, almost desperately trying to give me consolation, although he has no idea why I need it. The silence gets thick again, and my dad glances back and forth between me and my mom.

“Would you like some cake, John?” My mom is nervous, I can tell. I can alleviate this nervousness if I wanted, simply by talking to my dad. But I don’t.

“No thanks. Cathryn is expecting me home for dinner. I wanted to stop by and talk to Ever actually.”

My hand tightens around Linc’s again, and I just stare at my dad, willing him to go away. No such luck, though. My mom, being the gracious southern woman that she is, said, “Linc...why don’t you help me in the kitchen while Ever and her dad talk.”

I finally find my voice and say, “I don’t have anything to say to him.”

The look on my dad’s face is pained and my heart actually leaps with joy that I have hurt him. I glance to Linc and he has the same look of worry on his face he has been sporting since he felt me tense up when my dad walked in.

“Ever,” my mom pleads. “It’s my birthday. Please...just talk to him.”

I stand up from the table, releasing Linc’s hand. I can feel the tell-tale sign of tears stinging my eyes. My mom is pitting my love for her against my loathing for my dad, and normally my love for her would win out. But I just can’t do it.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I just can’t. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a walk.”

I spin on my heel, and practically flee the house. I can hear my mother call after me, but I don’t stop. I run out of the house, making it halfway down the block before I slow down.

Within just a minute, I hear footsteps beside me, and then Linc is there, putting his hand in mine. He doesn’t say anything, just walks beside me while he holds my hand.

Three blocks down from my mom’s house sits a little park. It’s nothing really but a small parcel of land with some playground equipment and nice shrubbery. Linc leads me over to a bench and we sit down. He puts his arm around me, drawing me into his shoulder.

“Whatever it is...you can tell me,” he offers and kisses the top of my head.

I’m silent for a minute, but then I decide to let Linc know exactly how f*cked up I am. “When my mom got cancer, I was just sixteen. You know...it’s that time in your life when everything should be great, right? I was Captain of our cross country team, I was dating the most popular boy, and everything was just perfect in my life. And then my world came tumbling down. My mom’s diagnosis was grim, so I felt like I had already lost her. I started grieving really hard, even before she started her actual treatment. My dad...he was in denial at first, but then as mom started to undergo her treatments, he started to understand how real it was.”

“What happened?” Linc asks.

I turn my head up to look at him. “He left us, Linc. He left us because he couldn’t deal with my mom being sick.”

“He left?” Linc is bewildered by my accusation.

I nod my head. “Just three weeks after she started her treatments. He sat us both down in the living room and told us that he just couldn’t handle it. That he couldn’t handle watching his wife die, and he wanted out. He packed his stuff up that night and left. He left me to worry about her. To drive her to her treatments. To mop up her vomit. He left me to clean up the hair from her pillowcase as it fell out of her head, and he left me to be the one to hold her at night when she got so cold that nothing would warm her up. He didn’t just leave his wife, Linc. He left his daughter to handle all of that on her own. I was sixteen for f*ck’s sake!”

The tears I had felt prickling never fell. They haven’t fallen since that day my father walked out of our lives. I had cried my eyes out that day, and then that was the last time I ever let them fall again.

It felt good to just get those words out, to share some of that pain, and it made it easy to push the sorrow back.

“I’m so sorry, Ever. That was a totally selfish thing for your father to do.”

“He at least had the manners to wait a few months before he started seeing someone else. His current wife, Cathryn. And you know what burns me up the most...that my mom has forgiven him. That she doesn’t mind him coming over, and calling her Sammy, and bringing her presents. I mean, what self-respecting woman does that?”