Page 56 of Our Crooked Hearts
“I know, sweetheart. I worry, too. But I promise she can take care of herself.”
“What about us?” I pulled away to look at him. “Someone’s been hanging around the house, looking for her. Messing with her.Yousaw the rabbit. And they…” I paused, the look on his face making me falter, hedge. “What if they could’ve broken in?”
“Whatif?” All his quiet sympathy evaporated. “What are you saying? Was someone in the house?”
His alarm infected me, dialing my anxiety up into something frantic. “Not in the house. Near it. This girl, about my age. Blonde hair, really pale.”
“Your age?” he said, almost to himself. “Someone she fired from the shop, maybe?”
“I doubt that’s it,” I said. “She’s the same person who—”
I cut myself off, remembering I hadn’t told him about seeing a girl the night Nate drove off the road.
“The same person who what?”
“Who left the rabbit.” I grabbed his hand, with its flattened nails and dinged-up wedding band. “Mom’s in trouble, Dad. I know she is.”
He squeezed back. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said helplessly. I could see him making his own calculations, trying to hide his own fears.
“Did she tell youanythingbefore she left?”
“She said she had to take care of something. That’s all she said.” His face showed a fleeting stab of fury. “If I’d known she wasn’t coming home last night, I never would’ve left you and your brother alone.”
“What are we supposed to do? Justwaitfor her?”
“We stay here, together, and we try to trust her. Take her at her word that she’s handling this.”
“Trust her,” I said bitterly, and dropped his hand. “I know about Billy, okay? I know she did something to make me forget him.”
The look on his face was unbearable. If I’d been at all unsure whether he knew, I wasn’t now. “Why, Dad? Why would you do that to me?”
His eyes circled my face. I’d inherited their color, but not their gentleness. There was so little of him in Hank and me, he had to see my mother every time we walked in the room.
“We have so much to talk about,” he said. “But I promised your mom this conversation wouldn’t happen without her.”
“What conversation?” I asked sharply.
“Not until she’s here.”
“Make an exception? Make a ‘we’ve got a stalker, Mom’s run off’ exception?”
“No,” he said with surprising vehemence. “This has gotta come from her. I can’t even make myself say the words she owes you.”
I started to fathom, then, thesizeof what he wasn’t saying. And suddenly I wasn’t sure I was ready to know. He must’ve seen my hesitation, because he grabbed my shoulder.
“Hey. Look at me. I’m not telling you to back off,” he said fiercely. “I’mproudof you. Iloveseeing you ask questions this way.”
I shook him off. “Here’s another one for you, Dad. Why did you marry her?”
The softness in his face compacted. “Ivy.”
“I mean, I know why you married her. Because of Hank. But why did youstaymarried?”
“Because I love her,” he said dangerously. “She’s my wife. We have two wonderful kids together, we have a home. We have a history that started long before you came along.”
“How is that enough for you?” The question burst out of me. “Do you two even talk anymore? Did you ever? Don’t you get sick of being lied to? Of the way your wife looks right past you?”
My dad’s temper lived way down deep. When it did surface, it was with the vast inevitability of a leviathan.
“It’s time for you to stop talking about what you don’t understand,” he said through gritted teeth. “She’s your mother. You got me? You’re seventeen now, well. She was an orphan by seventeen. She was a mother at twenty. She didn’t have the luxury of a childhood, parents dragging her toward college, giving her a bedtime. She’s been working since she was ten years old. Ten! There are things you should ask for and information you are owed, but an accounting of my marriage is not one of them.Christ,Ivy. You need to know when tostop.”
Eyes down, quiet as I could, I fled the room.
“Ivy. Ivy, come back here.”
I ignored him, sprinting up the stairs.
“Do not leave this house!” he shouted at my back.
I didn’t start crying until I’d slammed my bedroom door.
