Page 105 of False Start
“You…know?” She sounded confused, and it made me grit my teeth together.
“About Madelyn,” I said.
The next pause was different, loaded, heavy with an emotion I couldn’t quite place. I heard Mom walking through the house, a gentle knock on the door I could see so clearly in my mind — the one that was shut firmly the last two years of my high school career — and then the muffled sound of her talking to my father with her hand over the phone.
“I love you,” she whispered, and I didn’t miss that her voice wobbled when she said it.
I knew I didn’t need to yell at Mom. She had probably beaten herself up about it since it happened.
But that didn’t buy her a free pass in my book, either.
“Hello?”
My father’s voice sent a chill racing down my spine, and for a moment, I didn’t feel like the six-foot-seven, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound football player that I was.
I felt like a child about to be socked around for fun.
“Let me ask you something,” I said, trying as hard as I could to keep my voice even. “Did you hate me as soon as you found out Mom was pregnant, or did it grow once I was born?”
Only a second passed before he scoffed, and I could imagine him taking his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation the way he used to do when I’d want to ask him something while he was working.
“Are you trying to have some sort of therapy session? Because I’m busy and don’t have time for—”
“Me? Yes, I’m well aware. But you’re going to need to make time for this.”
“I don’tneedto do—”
“Shut up!”
I heaved the words, my chest rising and falling with a painful echo through my ribs.
“I have stayed quiet and listened to you all my life,” I said. “I’ve listened to you tell me I’m worthless, heard you spit your vitriol more than a hundred times. I have felt your fist against my face and never once talked back to you. Because you’re my father, and I thought that alone deserved my respect. But it doesn’t.Youdon’t. You never did.”
“Is that all?”
He sounded bored, and damn, if it didn’t piss me the fuck off.
I sucked in a breath, ready to scream at him, but then realized how pointless it would be. Instead, I forced a long exhale, closing my eyes until I saw Madelyn there behind my lids — calm, poised, strong.
“I thought you were just trying to raise me as a tough man,” I finally said, choosing my words carefully. “Not that I loved getting hit, but I thought I understood you.” I shook my head. “Now, I feel like I don’t know you at all. I feel like… like you’re the type of evil Pastor Root used to warn us about.”
“So many feelings,” he murmured.
I chuffed a laugh.
He was never going to care.
This confrontation… it was for no one else but me.
“I don’t expect an apology out of you,” I started.
“Good, because I don’t have one to give.”
“But,” I continued. “I need to know. I need to hear you explain.”
“Explain what?”
“How you could lie straight to my face about my ownchild,and then move me away from the girl carrying that child, leaving her alone and leaving me in the dark about it all.”
