Page 43 of Past Present Future

“So he’s going the emotional manipulation route,” I say dryly, as Lucy glances up at me with those soulful brown eyes to wonder why I’ve stopped petting her. I slide a hand back into her fur, trying to keep my voice even. “Please don’t tell me that even though he’s done some horrible things, he’s still my father. We both know the kind of person he was before.”

“I wouldn’t,” she says, walking around to my side of the table and draping a hand over my shoulder. “I can never apologize enough times.”

“And I can never tell you enough times that you have nothing to apologize for.”

We talked about it in family therapy. The guilt she felt over not leaving him when the Moods started, and the ensuing guilt over having those thoughts when he so clearly needed help. Help he refused to get.

We were all victims, our therapist said, and though it broke my heart to imagine my mom that way, she was right.

“I wish you didn’t have to deal with this at all. You have no idea. When you’re in New York, even though I miss you, I’m so, so happy for you. So proud of you. You know that, right?”

Slowly, I nod. She’s never made it much of a mystery, the fact that she wanted me to do something big.

“Whatever role you want him to have in your life—or not—that is entirely your decision,” she says. Another thing she’s told me multiple times. “You have my full support.”

The last time I saw him, I was sixteen. The three of us made the journey to Walla Walla together, four and a half hours in the car that felt like forty.

“I know that. Mom—I love you.”

A hug. “You too. Always.”

I rinse out my bowl and place it in the dishwasher while my mom heads out for a morning jog. Lucy trots behind me down the hall. This dog has always been so attuned to our moods, ready to give (or request) love when we’re at our lowest. In fact, she wasn’t even a cuddly dog until after my dad went to prison. Then she started sleeping with me or with Natalie when she used to prefer her own bed. Like she knew we needed it.

“I could hear you guys,” Natalie says after I knock on her door. She’s at her desk, still working on the menorah. “The walls in this house aren’t very thick.” And then, before I can decide what to say: “He sends them to me too, you know. The letters. Sometimes I don’t read them.”

I did know, but the letters to Natalie are more infrequent. She was so young when he left. So young now, too—too young to have to deal with this unfairness. Every time there’s space between them, I hold out hope that they’ve stopped.

But then my overactive brain wonders the opposite. If they stopped, would it mean he no longer cared about us? Which would be worse: to be loved by a monster or not loved at all?

“I’m sorry.” I lean against the doorway as Lucy leaps onto Natalie’s bed, turning in two and a half circles before lying down. “It’s not fair to you. It’s… more complicated than it needs to be.”

“I wish he’d just stop.” Natalie’s ponytail quivers just the tiniest bit. A hunk of wax lands on her neon-yellow nightgown, and she brushes it off. On paper, we couldn’t be more different—her, with her love for adventure sports and bright colors, me with my preference for the indoors. This has eternally tied us together. She was five when he was arrested, and I used to envy her, if only a little, because she’d spent less of her life with him. But as I grew older, I realized that maybe I had it backward. Worse, I think, to have known the man only as he is now. I have never felt such a fierce protectiveness as I do over my sister—a desire not just to keep her safe from the world, but from our family.

Maybe the age gap prevented us from fighting with each other, or we figured our parents had enough to deal with. Whatever the reason, we’ve never had a disagreement that lasted longer than a few minutes.

She scrapes at the wax with renewed gusto, a small rainbow pile on her desk. “All Christopher has to do is the bare minimum, and he’s already a million times better as a dad. Even if he’s not our actual dad.”

“He’s pretty great,” I agree, because we both know he does far more than the bare minimum. “Do you want to talk about any of it?”

She tries to shrug this off, but I don’t miss the quiver of her chin. As tough as my sister wants us to think she is, she’s still a kid. “It’s bad enough that I barely remember him. I definitely don’t remember anything good about him.” She looks up at me, misty-eyed and curious. “Was there ever anything good?”

There was. Of course there was.

It’s just that the anything good is trapped beneath a layer of impenetrable bad.

There were the times he’d take us to the park with puppy Lucy and we’d just let her run, and he’d marvel at how fast she was. When our whole family snuggled up to watch a movie, not caring the couch was threadbare or the TV was shitty or the fact that everyone else had already seen it in theaters when it came out.

When I was ten and my sister was four, we went to Ocean Shores on vacation. Wet sand and saltwater taffy. My dad chasing us into the water, even as we shrieked that it was too cold.

The last happy memory of all of us together.

Before the Moods and the ever-present exhaustion. Before the anger, before the night he changed all our lives.

“Some,” I say finally.

He’s invaded my brain too much lately. An unwelcome visitor, taking up space that doesn’t belong to him.

The way this has affected my sister—the teasing at school, the fight she was in last year. I had plenty of it when I was in middle school. People would make jokes about my dad, try to pick fights with me to see how I’d react. Never with violence. I wish I could shield her from all of it, even though I know that’s impossible.

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