Page 58 of Missed Sunrise
This was… fucked up.
Thisbeing me, sitting here for going on an hour as the rain beat steadily against my truck, watching a family of strangers through a bay window like a fucking creeper.
They bustled about quite comfortably in the house I’d lived in for the first thirteen years of my life.
The one where my mother obviously no longer lived.
I rested my forehead against the steering wheel, careful not to bump the horn. The family had somehow remained unawareof my lurking, but honking my horn at them would have truly been the end of the world.
Honk your horn if you’re in crisis.
Just as I had probably a dozen times in the last hour, I scooped up my phone and pulled up Liem’s contact info.
“LL” was only a touch away, but as it did before, my thumb merely hovered over his name instead of clicking it.
I knew he’d answer, just as I knew his sweet voice would either say the exact right thing or distract me from my circumstances enough to allow me to cope.
The problem was that I wasn’t ready to feel better. Some part of me insisted that I sit with this, that I wallow in it.
Unlike the other times when I’d dramatically tossed my phone away as if it’d burned me, I swiped over to a different contact and made a call.
“Son,” my dad answered on the third ring. “Give me juuuust a second.”
I slumped back into my seat.
A moment later, there was children’s laughter in the background.
“The hell,” I muttered, knowing that unless he was walking by the casino daycare or maybe at Dawn’s Diner, there was no reason he’d be around kids, especially happy ones. It was Saturday. Dad always worked on Saturdays, but when I pressed the phone closer to my ear, I didn’t detect the usual din of slot machines either.
“Okay, sorry about that,” Dad said, chuckling to himself. “Jaxon found the linen closet and built a fort that was not what I’d consider structurally sound.”
I frowned, tracking a droplet of rain as it cascaded down my truck’s window. “The hell is Jaxon?”
He cleared his throat. “Sorry, uh, Jeanne’s oldest. I’m, ah…. I’m watching them while she, uh…. Yeah.” He kept pausingand restarting, sounding shadier by the moment. “Um, anyway, what’s up?”
What world had I woken to today? I didn’t know where my mother lived, and my dad—who had no experience to speak of with children—was babysitting.
But maybe this insanity wasn’t new. Yesterday I’d pulled Liem Lott into my lap in a dark stairwell and then embarrassed myself by breaking down on him. And then I’d partially moved onto a houseboat after swearing off boats only weeks ago.
This new leaf I’d been so determined to turn was fucking rotten.
A soft cry sounded. “Baby Maggie’s there too?” I couldn’t remember exactly how old Jeanne’s other kids were, but Maggie was an actual baby, and I had to wonder if Dad had taken more on than he could handle.
As if on cue, the soft cry turned into a wail, and there was some shuffling before my dad startedcooing.
I mean, I understood it. I’d just held her a few days ago, and she was so cute that it made me want to punch a wall, but still. That was not a sound I knew my dad was capable of making.
“I’m going to guess this isn’t a good time,” I offered.
There were more muffled sounds before Dad replied, “Sorry, son. My hands are kind of full right now. Do you want to come by later on for dinner?”
“Yeah, maybe. I’ll let you know. I was just, um….” I hesitated, feeling slightly guilty for the subtle testing of my dad I was about to do. “I was calling to see if you could send me Mom’s new address.”
“Hey!” Dad’s shout was loud in my ear. “Let’s take off our cleats if we’re going to jump on the couch…. Yes, both of them. Good job, dude. Ugh, sorry, son, I’m back, and yeah, sure, I’ll text you the address. Sorry, it’s a little crazy.” There was a loudclatter, like something falling, before Dad said, “I’ve gotta go. See you tonight, I hope?”
“Hmmph,” I sort of grunted to keep the crack that would’ve surely sounded in my voice if I’d spoken at bay, wishing I could’ve kept it from everywhere else too.
The ground beneath me wasn’t just uneven—it was open and threatening to swallow me whole.
