Page 45 of Leah

With a sad sigh, he moved on immediately from that. “So, tell me about your school then. Did you graduate?”

Good. A light and easy topic.

“Of course,” I answered.

“Shit, time flew, huh?

I shuddered. “Ugh, maybe to you. I still cringe from all those nights in front of a textbook.”

“Have you had your graduation ceremony yet?”

“No.”

“When is it?”

I chewed on my lip as I studied him. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I want to know.”

“June 12th.”

He nodded. “Okay. Anyone gonna show up?”

“Like?”

“I don’t know, your Aunt and Uncle?”

“No way. I haven’t spoken to them at all since we left, and that’s the way I like it. I’m not even curious to know how they are, either. People like that don’t change.”

He considered that. “Yeah.”

“How about you? Have you spoken to your dad at all?”

Something passed in his face I couldn’t read. He let out a long breath and shook his head. “No, he, uh… he died.”

I froze. “What?”

He shrugged, pensively. “Yeah, heart attack.”

“When?”

“A little over two years ago.”

I was speechless for a moment. I wasn’t sure what to say. I stared closely at his face, but he appeared passive. “I didn’t know,” I whispered to him in my surprise. “If I had…”

“I wrote about it,” he then said, not meeting my eye. “You didn’t read it, so…there you go. Now you know.”

He’d written to me about it?

Shit, I felt like a dog now. No, worse than that, because at least dogs were loyal and caring. Whereas I was just looking after my own heart, choosing not to read his letters out of some selfish obligation to move on.

Meanwhile, he’d probably sought support, and I hadn’t been there.

I hadn’t been there for Carter at all when he probably needed me.

I thought of Ron. He had been a drunk since the moment I saw him, and he growled an awful lot at Carter, but there was… something about Ron that made me feel depressed. He had always appeared like a cold, lost man, drowning his sorrows away, as if trying to find the answers at the bottom of a bottle.

“Hey,” Carter then said, brushing his thumb against my cheek, drawing me out of my thoughts. “Don’t feel bad, Angel. You didn’t know. If I was desperate enough to tell you, I’d have come to your door knocking. I didn’t even come down. The family had him cremated. I was meant to collect the ashes, but… I mean, what am I going to do with an urn full of my dad? At least with his mom, there’s a place for him in her house.”

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