Page 87 of Penance
Both Theo and I freeze. This conversation was fun before, but now I’m frantically searching for a way out. My mind flashes back to that desperate prayer I prayed at the beginning of summer, and I can’t help thinking about how foolish I’d been. I made a deal with God, and it seems he’s come to collect because there’s no getting out of this—not without doing more damage to my reputation. So I make another deal—this one with the fiery woman before me.
“We’ll be there,” I say, praying Theo goes along with it for now. We can figure out a way out of this later.
Luckily, he doesn’t get a chance to. Abigail walks up behind Ethel, allowing for a change in conversation.
“Lily, dear. It’s so nice to see you.” Her eyes glance over my shoulder, widening only slightly when she sees Theo standing there. “And youtoo, Theo.”
“Hi, Abigail,” he says, and I feel rather than see the smile in his voice.
“I must say, this is a lovely surprise.” She turns to me with a bright smile as Ethel looks on. “Lily, I see you’ve stopped running.”
My stomach churns. Guilt has a funny way of smacking you with reality. I’m lying to the one person who has taken me under her wing since I moved into town. She thinks this thing between Theo and me is real.
She’s wrong. I haven’t stopped running. It’s the one thing I’m good at.
Chapter 31
Lily
In the years between sixteen and eighteen, my mom became a full-blown addict, and I got better at wearing a mask.
I’d given up trying to help her; instead, I’d just started trying to survive. I’d gotten into a good college on a scholarship, but the money wasn’t enough to cover tuition and housing, so I still lived at home. Some days, though, I might as well have been living alone. There were weeks when my mother wouldn’t come home, and I was terrified that one day, someone would show up at my door to tell me she was dead.
It was during one of those weeks that my dad showed up in my life again.
I was coming home from classes on the day he drove in. It had been several years since I had seen him last. He didn’t look anything like I remembered. The carefree man I never got to know was replaced with a man who was steps away from death’s door. Too much alcohol and too little care for life had left him fighting for his.
He was waiting for me on the front stoop, sitting on rotting wood that probably wouldn’t have held his weight had he not been so sick. I didn’t give him a second look as I walked past him up the stairs and to the front door.
“Lily,” he croaked, but I ignored him.
My hands shook violently as I tried to put the key in the lock because for all my masks, I hadn’t quite figured out how not to love yet.
“Lily,” he begged, and I snapped, spinning around to face him. Tearsslipped down my face, and I hoped with everything I had that my mother wouldn’t choose that moment to come home because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that seeing him like that would be her end.
I felt it in my bones.
“Mom’s not here. You need to go.” I started to turn back to the door but stopped, looking him head-on, when I said, “Leave her alone. If you never do anything else for me, just leave her alone.”
I never wanted anything from my father except for that. I wanted him to leave my mom alone so she could finally be free.
I expected him to argue—to beg me not to send him away—but he didn’t. He didn’t say a word as he stood, his movements slow from the sickness ravaging his body, and for a second, I felt bad for him. But then I remembered that my mother hadn’t been home for days, and she could be dead from an overdose for all I knew, all because of him. It had all started with him.
He took two steps toward his van before he stopped and turned back around.
“I’m sorry, Lily. That’s all I came here to say. I’m sorry for all the ways I’ve hurt you and your mother over the years.”
But the words came too late because I didn’t have it in me to forgive him.
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An hour after my dad left, my mom showed up again. It was like a perfect metaphor for their lives: always close but never close enough. I would have laughed at the irony, but nothing about it was funny when you lived it.
I was sitting on the front stoop, contemplating where it all went wrong for my mom, and always ending with the same answer. Love. That was the crux of it all. It was more addicting than any drugs and deadlier, too, and I promised myself that I’d never fall victim to it. Not like she had.
I’d just made myself that promise when a stranger pulled into the driveway with my mom in the passenger side. She giggled as she stumbled out of the car, not even noticing me until she nearly tripped on my feet.
Her hand flew to her chest, a startled gasp slipping past her lips beforeshe started giggling again. “Oh, Lily. I didn’t even see you there.”
