Begin Again(92)

It’s more than I’ve ever heard him say about losing Mom. It didn’t occur to me that he’d be this frank. That maybe he’d been thinking of this very conversation as long as I have.

When he meets my eye again, it’s clear that he has. “I wanted you to come with me.”

I remember him offering. It was a courtesy offer, really. One he only made two weeks before he was planning to move.

“I could never leave Little Fells. Not then, at least.” I shift in my seat. “But I know what you mean. I felt that way, too. Like it wasn’t just our lives that changed, but everyone around us. Like we were never going to be the people we were to them before it happened. I couldn’t figure out if everyone else changed or I did.”

He dips his head. “I wish I’d talked to you more about it back then.”

I mirror him, glancing down at my lap. I think about that first school assembly where I choked, and everything changed. How it felt staring out at the other kids and feeling like I was on an island, and no matter how hard I paddled back, I could never step foot on the old shore. How the feeling only got worse over time with every year my dad stayed away, every year I struggled between trying to be my old self again and trying to find a new version who could be better. Who could fit somewhere else, since the old world didn’t fit anymore.

“Me too,” I say, glancing back up. “The whole thing just—made me feel so alone.”

His eyes are misty when he meets mine. I swallow thickly and press on.

“Especially because I couldn’t figure out why you did it. I thought for the longest time—maybe I was just too much like her, or something. Maybe that’s why you felt like you had to stay away.”

My dad lets out a soft laugh, surprising both of us. “Oh. Andie. You and your mom are nothing alike.”

The sudden jolt is almost welcome, after the heaviness of everything else. “Excuse me?”

The smile on his face softens like the edges of a memory. “I mean, you are in some important ways. But you—you’re a planner. You’re methodical about things. You put a lot of care into them. So did your mom, of course, but she was a whirlwind.” He’s talking to me, but staring outward at something else. “Never liked a plan. Always just went where the winds took her.”

Just then the wind happens to pick up, and for the first time in a long time, I feel my mom’s presence so strongly that it’s as if we’ve conjured her here—like she’s watching, part cheerleader, part referee. The idea of it buoys me, makes me dig deeper. All the way to the bottom of this, so we know how far it is back to the top.

“If it wasn’t that, then what was it?” I ask. “Because it wasn’t just the distance. It was everything else. You barely even called. When you were here, it felt like you had one foot out the door.”

I feel my fists curl with the familiar frustration. Sometimes I’d feel like a little windup toy when my dad was around, trying to think of anything I could say or do to hold his attention, to keep him in town. I’d make lists of movies we could watch together. Show him school projects. Text him pictures of things Gammy Nell and I were making in the kitchen. But I could only go on spinning for so long.

My dad is quiet for long enough that I’m worried he’s going to deny it. “I didn’t mean to,” he finally says. He lifts his head back up to look at me, and it’s with the kind of regard I’m still getting used to—like he’s not just seeing me as a kid, but someone fully formed. Someone he can be honest with.

“But that whole thing with planning—that’s something you got from me. Your mom would spin big ideas. I’d make the plans, help set them into motion when I could. We balanced each other out. I think that’s the most you can hope for when you’re in love; that you balance each other out. Make each other stronger.”

I try to think back to my memories of my parents together, but all I remember is the haze of knowing your parents are in love, and never questioning it. Never having a reason to, because what they had was built to last.

“But that’s the thing about being the one who makes the plans,” says my dad. “When they all fall through . . .”

I hear a car engine start behind us. At some point the kids in the play place were gathered up by their parents, and now it’s so still out here that it feels like we’re the only people in Little Fells. Nobody else’s grief to handle but our own.

“Everything was just gone. I was overwhelmed. This entire life I’d planned for the three of us—I just—she was my anchor,” he says. “I needed her. I didn’t know how to be without her.”

And then come the words I’ve been avoiding this entire time. The ones that have dug under my skin for years, the ones so private and so raw that they were too much to even let myself think.

“I needed you,” I tell him.

He lowers his head then, nodding just once before staring down at the picnic tabletop. Another breeze sweeps past us, and it feels like a separate wind has been knocked out of me. One I’ve held inside for so long that it felt like a storm in my heart.

But now there’s just quiet. The kind I still need him to fill now, even after all this time.

When my dad speaks again, his voice is hoarse with feeling. “I never meant to avoid you. It’s just . . . you were so happy with your grandmas. You came back to life in this way that you never were with me, and I knew that was my fault. That I was pulling you down.” He clears his throat. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Andie. For you to be happy.”