Chapter 27 Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter 27 Chapter Twenty-Seven

I stood there. My feet wouldn’t move.
He looked older than I remembered. Thinner too. His hair had gone gray at the sides, and there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there seven years ago.
“Daddy,” I said again, like saying it twice would make it make sense.
He set the glass down on the counter and opened his arms.
I didn’t decide to move. My body just did it. I crossed the kitchen and pressed my face into his chest, and he smelled different, sharper, nothing like the aftershave I remembered. He pulled me in tight anyway, one hand cupping the back of my head the way he used to when I was small enough to carry.
“I missed you,” I said into his shirt.
“I missed you more, cup cake.” His hand moved over my hair, slow and careful.
Mom hadn’t moved from the sink. I felt her watching us before I turned around and saw her face.
She wasn’t crying. She looked worse than crying. Her jaw was tight and her eyes had gone flat, like she was looking at something she’d already decided not to feel.
“He’s leaving,” she said.
“Love”
“Don’t.” She cut him off without raising her voice. “You don’t get to call me that in my own kitchen.”
I stepped back from him, my arms still half raised, not sure where to put them now.
“I just got here.” His voice cracked on it. “Five minutes, Helen. Give me five minutes with her.”
Her arms crossed over her chest. 
“You had seven years to call. Seven years to write one letter, you did none and now you want five minutes?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” She laughed, and it didn’t sound like a laugh at all. “You want to talk to me about fair?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry, don't undo seven years, Kenneth.”
He flinched at his own name like she’d thrown something at him.
I looked between them, my heart slamming against my ribs, my mouth opening and closing without any words coming out.
“Mom, can’t he just-”
“Go to your room, Mira.”
“But-”
“Now.” Her eyes stayed locked on him, daring him to say one more word.
He looked at me, and something in his face begged me to stay, to fight for him, to do something. But I didn’t know how to fight two people I loved at the same time.
“I’ll call you,” he said quietly. “I promise.”
I nodded because I didn’t trust my voice.
He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair, slow, like he was giving her a chance to change her mind. She didn’t. He stopped at the door and looked back at her. She turned her face to the window. He looked at me last, and then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.
The kitchen went silent except for the sound of Mom’s breathing, too fast, too controlled,as if she was counting each one on purpose.
“Mom.” I moved toward her. “What was that? What’s going on?”
“I’m not hungry anymore.” She wiped her hands on the towel by the sink, folded it, set it down exactly where it had been. “I’m going to lie down.”
“Mom, please. Just tell me something.”
She walked past me, without another word.
I stood in the kitchen alone, staring at the spot where he’d been standing, like if I looked hard enough I could still see him there.
I went to my room and shut the door and sat on the edge of my bed with my phone in my hands for a long time before I called Elma.
“He was here,” I said the second she picked up.
“Wait, what? Who?”
“My dad. He was in our kitchen when I got home.”
“Oh my god, M.” Her voice dropped. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I don’t know. Mom told him to leave. They were arguing, and then he just left, and now she won’t talk to me.” My voice cracked on the last part. “She won’t even look at me.”
“Do you think he’s out? Like, actually out?”
“He has to be. He was standing in our kitchen, Elma. That’s not something I imagined.”
Neither of us said anything for a second. I could hear her breathing on the other end, waiting for me to keep going.
“I don’t know what to feel,” I said finally,pulling my knees up to my chest. “I wanted to hug him the second I saw him. I didn’t even think about it.”
“That doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“Doesn’t it? Mom looked like I’d stabbed her.”
“M, you were happy to see your dad. That’s normal.”
“Nothing about tonight felt normal.”
I heard her shift, a door closing somewhere on her end. “My mum’s calling me. Call me later, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hung up and sat in the quiet, staring at my closed door, wondering if she was staring at her own ceiling right now, replaying his face the way I couldn’t stop replaying it.
I don’t remember falling asleep. One second I was staring at the ceiling. The next I was somewhere else completely.
“Truce,” Kem yelled, hands up, soaked through.
“No truce.” I sprayed her again.
Elma tackled us both into the grass, and we lay there laughing so hard my stomach hurt, the sun too bright, the grass sticking to my knees.
Then the sirens came first, before the lights. A low wail rolling in from the street. All three of us went still, the hose slipping out of my hand, water pooling around my sneakers.
Men in uniform walked up the front path. Daddy stood in the doorway, his hands already behind his back. Mom was on the porch, one hand pressed over her mouth, her whole body shaking.
I ran towards them, Kem’s hand tried to catch my arm and missed. I didn’t stop until I hit the fence, close enough to see his face.
“Daddy, wait-”
He looked back at me over his shoulder as they walked him to the car, his mouth shaping something I couldn’t hear. I read it anyway.
‘I love you’
The car door shut, and he was gone.
I sat up so fast from my bed my head spun, the sheets tangled around my legs, my heart slamming against my throat.
The room was dark. I checked my phone: Past 3 a.m. I sighed, wondering why this dream had come back now, and I knew I couldn’t lie back down. I got up, my legs unsteady, and stood outside Mom’s door.
I knocked once, soft.
“Mom?”
A pause, then her voice, thick with sleep. 
“What is it, Mira?”
“I had a bad dream.”
“Go back to sleep.” She blurted. “You have school in a few hours.”
“Mom, can we talk about-”
“Please. Not now.”
I stood there a second longer, my hand flat against the wood, then let it drop and went back to my room.
I didn’t sleep again, not really. By the time the sky outside my window, I was already dressed for school, my bag packed since five.
The apartment stayed quiet the whole way out. Mom’s door was still shut, but I heard her mumbling something too low to catch.
At the bus stop I kept catching myself looking down the street, at every man who walked past, every car that slowed near the curb. Some small, stupid part of me thought he might show up. He didn’t. By the time I got to school, that hope had curdled into something heavier. 
Immediately I made it to my locker. Three girls stepped out from behind the row, blocking the hallway in front of me.
Chloe stood in the middle, arms folded tight across her chest.
“We need to talk, now!”