“I’m sure it is, but my parents split up because my dad was having an affair for the last two years of their marriage.”
Well, damn.
The light turns green and we cross the street, moving along with the flow of traffic.
“How did you find out about your dad?” I soon ask.
“He told me the truth a few weeks later. He thought I would understand.”
“And did you?”
“No.” Ryan puts his hand in the arch of my back, ushering me forward to walk a step in front of him as the sidewalk becomes thick with foot traffic.
I don’t know what to say so I don’t say anything.
“No matter how I tried to shape it, it felt like my dad chose himself and this other woman over our family. We were expendable to him—just afterthoughts.”
“Did he stay with her?” I ask softly over my shoulder. “The other woman?”
“Margot. Yeah, they’re married now.” I slow down until Ryan and I are walking beside each other again, and he goes on, “The day he told me the truth, I asked him why he couldn’t have just stayed with my mom. They didn’t hate each other. They didn’t fight. They could have gone on as they were. He told me you shouldn’t make a life with someone just because you could.”
I breathe out a quiet sigh. “How did your mom take it?”
“She tried to put on a brave face but most times she just crumbled. She leaned on my sister and me for support for a long time, especially in the beginning. Now that so much time has passed, I think she regrets how much she depended on us.”
I nod my head, unsure of where to go from here. “How’s your mom now?”
“She’s better. She was on antidepressants for a few years but she’s not anymore.”
Ryan and I step aside as a woman passes with a stroller before we start walking again. “Anyways, she’s been dating this guy, Joel, for a few months. He seems nice enough and she looks happy.”
“That’s good,” I say hesitantly. “The beginning of a relationship is always exciting.”
Ryan forces a smile and it’s hard for me to return it.
“Why didn’t you tell me when it happened?” I ask a few seconds later. “I would have been there for you.”
He lets out an ironic, gray kind of laugh. “I did try to tell you. You remember the day you finally answered one of my phone calls?”
I slow down my pace until I stop walking altogether. Ryan does the same and turns around to face me like it takes all the energy in the world. The months after our breakup still seem cloudy but I remember that day. It’s branded deep inside my memory and never healed right. Ryan called me every day for a month after we split up, sometimes more than once, and I never answered. But that day, I did.
“That was the day of my dad’s funeral,” I tell him.
His eyes go blank as he stares back at me. “What are you talking about?”
“He passed away three days earlier and when you called, the funeral had just ended.”
Ryan is immobile, at a loss and maybe a little in denial. I should have eased into it more. The thing is, there will never be a right way to talk about my dad being gone. It still makes me sick and it comes out awkward, and ten years later, I have yet to process it.
“What happened?” he asks.
I take a breath but it doesn’t help. “He was hit by an elderly driver.”
“He was in a car accident?”
I can feel myself trying to hide away inside myself, burrowing down to a safe space where I don’t have to hear my own story. That place doesn’t exist. “No. He was hit while he was crossing the street.”
Surprise, confusion, anger, contemplation. Those are the phases people usually go through when they learn about my father’s passing.
Surprise that his death wasn’t something typical, like a heart attack or an illness. Confusion when they internally ask themselves, “Did she just say her father was mowed down by a ninety-one-year-old driver who didn’t see the red light?” Anger when I say no, the driver didn’t go to jail. All the DA required was for him to surrender his license. And contemplation when they say to themselves, “I guess it was an accident. The man was extremely remorseful and it was his first offense.” Followed by the inevitable, “I’ll never let my parents drive past their eighty-fifth birthday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ryan asks, pulling me back to the present.
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” he demands. When I talk about my dad, people are always sympathetic. Poor Kara, they think. Ryan is the opposite. His manner is almost accusatory.
“The night before it happened, my dad and I had a fight. It ended badly.” I’m hoping to leave it at that but I can see Ryan is expecting more. I try to speak again but my voice catches. Guilt takes altering forms with me. Sometimes it’s a stab, other times a dizzy spell. Right now, it feels like a slow squeeze around my throat—nothing fatal, but enough pressure to remind me that it’s there and it’s never leaving.
I roll my neck a bit and add, “I just couldn’t talk to you. I needed to suffer and, on some level, I think I wanted you to suffer, too. That’s why I said what I did the last time we spoke.”
Ryan levels a look back at me that hits like a punch to the gut. “What were you and your dad fighting about?”
I should make something up. I should spew out the first generic excuse I can think of. But I can’t, so I don’t.
“We were fighting about you and me. I told him I wanted to go back to you.”
Ryan’s immobile until he shakes his head. “This is ridiculous,” he says, his tone clipped and frustrated. “You should have told me. I could have helped you.”
“I didn’t want your help,” I fire
