"Look," my father said, clearly uncomfortable as he picked at an old stain on the table. "I don't really know what you want or…"
I looked at the two bottles of beer already next to him on the table. I knew there would soon be three and then four and then five and then God knows how many before he went to pass out on the couch in front of the lonely crackle of the television.
My father was getting just about as close as he ever would again to looking me in the eye; he was looking somewhere around my right shoulder.
"I can't give you money," he said.
The stack of cash I left for Abbi in motel in Glendalough and the credit card I left in the motel just an hour or so away from here flashed in my head. What was it Abbi had said?
That was never what I wanted.
I looked upon the wrinkled, sun-damaged face of my father and shook my head.
"I don't want any cash," I said.
He nodded and went to take a sip from his beer, only to remember that he'd already finished it. He shifted awkwardly in his chair.
"Well then…"
He couldn't imagine that I was there just to talk, to see him, to get to know him, if only for a few minutes. He saw everything in terms of transactions: debts to call in, credits to settle, pluses and minuses. His heart was a balance sheet, black and red.
And I was set to follow straight down that path if I didn't change.
We shook hands briefly at the door. Without another word my father slinked back into the dim light of his apartment like a hermit crab back into his shell.
It wasn't till I was speeding up the northbound interstate in my rental car with the windows rolled down and the sun hot on my cheek that I realised I had forgotten to ask the one question I'd wanted to ask my father ever since he left: Why?
Was it me? Was it something I did? Was I not enough?
I smiled because the answer, whatever it was, no longer mattered. I no longer gave a fuck. I was done living for my father's approval. There was nothing in it but cobwebs and empty beer bottles and more closed doors.
I stuck my arm out the window and rode my fingers along the breeze like I'd done as a little kid and laughed. I was going to live for endless horizons of clear blue skies, desert flowers, wild and brilliant, moonless nights that glowed with countless stars. I was going to live for Abbi, I was going to live for Zara.
I was going to live for us.
Abbi
I chased a penny rolling on its side down the dark wood planks in the hallway outside the principal's office at Zara's private school. I'd been called in this afternoon and I knew exactly what it was about: I was late on Zara's tuition, again. I'd managed to negotiate a longer break from my boss in return for working a double night shift that night and had hurried over to the school without even changing. Between the coins I'd found wedged between the cushions of the couch, the advance I got from Pizza Hut, and whatever was there in the cookie jar, I thought I might just have enough to earn myself a little more time to gather the rest of the money.
I snatched it up before realising I'd just run past Zara, who was sitting against the wall outside. I hurried back and leaned down to press a quick kiss to her forehead.
"Hey, baby, how are you? You good? You're good. It's all good."
I ran back inside the office with a sweaty brow and pleading in my eyes. "Mrs Hamilton, I know that I'm behind, I do," I blurted out, fully prepared to drop to my knees if I needed to. "But I have a partial payment here and—"
"Ms Miller."
"And if you give me just a minute or two, I can finish counting out what I have here in this cookie jar. Oh, that's not a coin, that's a packet of sweet and sour sauce."
I laughed nervously as I tossed the sweet and sour sauce over my shoulder.
"That was rude," I said, shaking my head and immediately bending over to retrieve the sauce packet. But I wasn't thinking straight. In bending over, I ended up dumping half the coins onto the oriental rug.
"Shit," I cursed before slapping a hand over my mouth and delivering a muffled apology.
The principal leaned over her desk as I started scooping the precious coins back into the cookie jar. "Ms Miller, please."
"No, no." I shook my head defiantly. "I can't let Zara down. I just can't."
"Ms Miller."
"Please, I just need a little more time.” My fingers were shaking. “Just give me a week, a week or two, and I'll have the money."
A hand on mine surprised me. I looked past my fallen hair to see kind eyes behind half-moon glasses.
"Ms Miller, you misunderstand," she said patiently. "I called you into my office today to inform you that we received full payment for Zara. I need your bank account details to refund the partial payment you sent in last month. That's all."
I frowned. "What, from some sort of scholarship?"
Mrs Hamilton shook her head. "An anonymous cheque."
"There must be some mistake."
Mrs Hamilton smiled and squeezed my hand. "Trust me," she said. "There was no mistake."
I fell back on my heels in disbelief. "So I don't have to make any more payments for the rest of
