Page 39 of Maid of Dishonor

At some pointin my freak out, I call my father. He doesn’t live here anymore; he moved once I went to college. Said it hurt too much to be surrounded by the home and the town he’d only ever known with my mom. He’s in Florida now, stashing away the sun lamp his doctor advised and enjoying the natural vitamin D instead.

I get it, I guess, wanting to not be surrounded by all the things you were seeing when your wife died. Kind of feels like he’s forgetting all about me, the best child ever, but whatever. Didn’t stop me from moving right back here when I got the chance.

He answers on the sixth or seventh ring, as per usual. Just long enough of a wait to tell me he doesn’t feel like talking. He rarely does.

“Hey, Dad,” I say when he answers with his customary grunt. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Normally I would be cool about it. I would be casual and tactful and I would ease into the topic. But right now I don’t have the patience or the willpower for that. Fear is flooding me, and I’m about to drown in it. I don’t have time for niceties. Not today. Not right now.

“Go on, then,” he says gruffly.

I nod, even though he can’t see me. “Right. Okay. Was it worth it? That’s what I want to know. Was it worth it?”

“Was what—”

“Mom’s been gone for years.” He’s not going to appreciate the way I’m handling this conversation, but he’ll live. “She’s been gone for years, and you died with her.”

I don’t mean for it to sound so accusatory, but that’s how it comes out. My dad doesn’t respond, though, so I go on.

“You’ve never been the same. So what I want to know”—I take a deep breath and then exhale roughly—“is if it was worth it. If falling in love and getting married was worth it when it left you with so much pain.”

Something inside of me shifts when I ask this question, and for the first time I realize that I’ve wanted to have this conversation with him for a long, long time. It just took me recognizing my feelings for Sam to realize it.

My dad is silent, but I expected that. He’ll answer eventually. So I throw myself down on my crappy little couch and wait. The patterns my floor lamp throws onto the ceiling look like Sam’s ponytail; if I turn them over, they look like the curve of her neck. I sit there for a minute like a child finding pictures in the clouds, noting all the ways the shadows and lights on my ceiling remind me of the woman I can never fully get out of my mind.

“Yeah,” my dad finally says. That’s it—just the one word.

I sit up, my attention on him once again. “Yeah, it was worth it?” I say.

“Yeah.”

“But you had to think about it,” I push.

“Your mother was my entire world,” he says in his gruff voice. “She still is. Now that she’s gone, every good memory I have of her is also a sad memory. It hurts to think about. Can you understand that?”

“Yeah,” I say grudgingly, his words penetrating deep within my soul. “I can.”

“But I don’t for a second regret it. I’ll see her again someday. And I have you, anyway.”

“Yeah,” I say absently, my mind churning over his words. “You have Maya, too,” I add, ready to navigate out of any potentially sappy waters. “You know she’s getting married?”

He grunts, which tells me he disapproves. “Yeah. She called me up and told me. Stupid thing to do. I’ve never heard her say anything good about him until she was trying to convince me he’s worth marrying.”

I laugh, surprised. “I thought the same thing. Well, I’m trying to talk her out of it. We’ll see.”

He just grunts again, and I picture him nodding, his skin tan from the Florida sun, hair gray, eyes blue like mine.

We say goodbye, muttering ourI love yous so that they’re barely discernible—because we’re stereotypical men, according to Sam, but we’re not unfeeling or unappreciative, and this is a good middle ground—before hanging up.

Sinking back into the couch, I think about everything he said. He said it was worth it, but healsosaid that every happy memory is a sad memory now too.

No. My dad is wrong. If your happiness turns to sadness, there’s no way it’s worth it.

That’s not going to happen to me, to Sam.

I won’t let it.

Eleven

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