Page 100 of Silver Linings
“I don’t think this is the best time to do this,” Mom says, trying to mitigate the rising conflict my dad seems hellbent on seeing through.
“Mom called me. I’m here. There’s nothing more to say.” My voice is clipped as I try to keep my cool in front of the man whose judgment I can feel burning a hole in my temple. It’s a complicated thing to dread someone’s presence while also still feeling like the kid who always begged for his approval. I love my Dad, but that love often felt like trying to hug a cactus.
“The first call you’ve answered in months. Isn’t that lucky?” The blow lands exactly how he intended it to, swift and to the gut. And the worst part is, I can’t even refute it. He’s right. I’vebeen a horrible son, screening calls and never calling back. At first, it was because I desperately needed the space, but then it was because I never thought to. I got caught up in living life the way I wanted to, in a way that made me truly happy for the first time in my life.
I stay silent, trying my hardest to not give him the reaction I know he wants. He’s itching for a fight, never the first to back down, and I feel my hackles rise as I feel him staring at my back. But he just won’t let it go.
“I guess it’s fitting that you’re here, since you were the cause of the accident, after all.” My whole body goes ramrod straight.
What is he talking about?
“Dad. Don’t,” Laurel pleads.
But the thing about my dad is, he always has to have the upper hand. He’s always had it over me, and that’s part of what took me away from here.
“You don’t want him to know that the only reason you were even in the car was because you were going to follow in his footsteps and run off to New York?”
My eyes dart over to Laurel, and she’s looking pointedly down at her lap. “Laurel?”
“I had a red-eye. I was on my way to the airport,” she whispers, still refusing eye contact.
“Why?” My voice is gentle.
“Because you put it in her head that she could run away from this family too.”
I never take my eyes off my sister’s face as dad’s words land, and she flinches in her hospital bed. Something about watching my normally larger-than-life spitfire of a sister, sheltering away from my father’s harsh words, is all it takes for me to finally snap.
“Or maybe she needed to get away from you.”
“Excuse me?” His tone is filled with ice shards that cut through the room, sending an instant chill around the fluorescently lit space.
“I was just coming to visit you.” Laurel tries to dispel the tension, but I’ve already been sent down this path, and all the feelings I’ve been burying around my father for years have finally come to a head.
I rise out of my seat and face my dad. “You’ve never been a warm man, and I convinced myself that was okay because you were never cruel. But since Maddox died–”
“Don’t say his name.” Anger seeps from his tone, but underneath it, I also hear a chord of grief.
“–since Maddie died you’ve become…callous and cold. Before I left, nothing I did was right and I was a constant failure to you. You would berate me over every little thing. Punishing me for the accident. As if I wasn’t punishing myself enough over it. I know it’s my fault he’s gone, I know that! I’m sor–” I choke on a cry, “I’m sorry. He would still be here if I had been stronger, and I’ll live with that for the rest of my life.” I can hear my mom and sister softly crying behind me.
“So the answer is to just leave? I thought I raised you to be tougher stock than that,” Dad admonishes.
“I was dying here!” Everyone in the cramped hospital room goes stock still at the admission I lay at their feet. Even my dad’s fury seems to abate a fraction in the face of my words. “I—” I choke back the tears I’m trying hard not to release in front of the man who will only see it as weakness. If I start, I won’t stop, and I need to get this out. “Maddie tried to get me to see it. He begged me before he died to start living my life for me and I didn’t understand. I didn’t realize it then—that I was just going through the motions. It wasn’t until I met…” I trail off, thinking of Silver, and a small smile creeps onto my face.
“Well, I’m so sorry that being with your family is such a burden,” my dad sneers.
“Jonah,” my mother admonishes, but my dad won’t even acknowledge anyone else is in the room but me.
“That.” I point an accusing finger at him. “That right there is the problem. You’re so goddamn stubborn. Your pride is a monster that fills up every room, allowing no space for me to feel anything or grow in a wayIwant to. You won’t allow it. How am I supposed to have an open conversation with you when your gut instinct is to represseverythingyou feel?”
That infamous pride rears its ugly head now. “No one’s forcing you to be here.”
I can hear my mom suck in a breath as Laurel’s monitors beep behind me.
I wish Silver was here with me. She would probably be telling off my dad in fine form, and it would make my mom adore her, make Laurel want to be her best friend, and it would make me love her even more. I miss the steadying feeling I get just by being around her. I want to hear her raspy laugh floating through the air as we fix the store up for the opening.
The opening…which is today. And I’m on the other side of the country.
“Fuck!” I shout, frantically reaching into my pockets in search of my phone, but I can’t find it anywhere.“No. No. No.”My phone isn’t here. I must have left it in the cab, and the terror I felt over Laurel’s condition kept me from noticing until now.
