Page 117 of On the Ropes
Alexis brushed the hair from my face and smoothed it over my shoulders. The gesture was so sisterly and soothing, I wondered how I’d so freely lived apart from her all these years.
“Is this why you always leave?” she asked quietly.
“It’s easier,” I admitted. The pressure in my chest was shifting like tectonic plates. “Especially once we cut Mom off. It was the right thing to do, but I knew then I had to keep what I’d done a secret. What if you stopped trusting me too? I already blamed myself enough for what happened to us. If you felt the same way, if I compromised the most important relationships in my life…” I shuddered. “I made a choice to lock it all away, and the guilt and the shame has kept me from opening up. I hide it instead.”
Kathleen was unusually quiet next to me, although she never once stopped holding me by the shoulders. Eric perched on the edge of the coffee table, one hand holding Alexis’s and the other on my knee. Dad shifted next to me and cleared his throat.
“Tabitha, look at me,” he said. I did and was bowled over at the love in his eyes. “If you are punishing yourself for the actions of your mother, you can stop now.”
My breath caught in my throat. Dean had said the same thing this morning.
“There is nothing that you can do or say that would make me love you less,” he said with a kind smile. “And I wanna make this clear, okay? Your mother should not have done that to you. You were a child. She was an adult making adult decisions to end our marriage. Her lies were not your responsibility to tell. And this guilt is not yours to carry either. Your mom did not want some cordial ending. If I’d known earlier, filed for divorce earlier, it wouldn’t have changed her behavior one bit. I can’t imagine how lonely you must have felt, keeping that to yourself.”
Lonely.There was that word again. For the first time in years, I allowed myself to ache for the girl I’d been at eleven, confused and in the middle of complex dynamics I had no ability to understand.
“Mom was really good at making the people around her feel guilty,” Alexis said. “I always, always saw her being more critical of you than she was of me, Tabitha. And I still beat myself up over it, like I didn’t do enough to stand up for my little sister. Like I went away to college, escaped, and left you here by yourself.”
I grabbed her wrists. “I never felt abandoned by you. Ever. And my memory is that she was harder on you.”
Her eyes searched mine. “It’s so normal to do what you did, to keep a secret instead of hurting the ones you love. I don’t think there’s a family that doesn’t have secrets like that. Or tells a lot of little white lies to cover up the past. And we always view ourselves differently too. I’m devastated, knowing the way Mom manipulated you, the way she put you in the middle and you didn’t feel like you could ever talk about it. And, meanwhile, I’ve been over here thinking I was always the worst sister ever—”
“Nothing, and I mean nothing, is further from the truth,” I said firmly. I pulled her into a long hug. “You’ve always been my hero, and I mean that.”
I released her, both of us laughing at our matching tear-streaked faces. It was more than sadness. It was acceptance and relief and welcoming the beginning of forgiveness. Without my usual armor, I was just a Philly girl who missed her family and wanted to come home.
Dad touched us lightly, drawing our attention his way. “I carry a lot of guilt about exposing the two of you to a person like your mother. She wasn’t like that when we met, wasn’t like that when we first got married. I swear to God if I’d known…” He coughed into his fist. “The stuff she used to say to you two wasn’t how I wanted us to parent our daughters. Not at all. But sometimes after pulling a double shift at the diner, I’d come home, exhausted to my bones, and whatever she was doing I’d just leave it. I wouldn’t engage. I wouldn’t step in. I’d head to bed and swear I’d fix it in the morning. Half the time I didn’t. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still feel bad about it. I’m sorry about that and will always be sorry.”
“Oh, Dad, you don’t have to be sorry,” Alexis said. “We were all doing our best in a horrible situation.”
“And you’re the best dad, the coolest dad, and our favorite dad,” I said, watching the regret on his face transform into a tentative smile. “Nothing will ever change that.”
The knowledge that Dad and Alexis had carried their own confusion and remorse was as heartbreaking as it was affirming. Though I couldn’t be that shocked—we’d all lived in that house together. Escaping our mother’s manipulations wasn’t an option.
Kathleen made a frustrated harrumph sound that had the four of us turning toward her. The fierce protectiveness etched into her face settled over me like a warm blanket. “My feelings about Theresa are well known so I won’t repeat them again. It’s even clearer to me now that everything that she’s done has been about her choices. She chose to hurt. She chose to lie. She chose hatred and close-mindedness. I believe every one of these things is unforgivable. Being more honest with your family is a good thing, a healthy thing. But continuing to blame yourselves for the past helps no one.”
The intense, unspoken emotion shared between Dad and Kathleen broadened the relieved smile on his face. “You’re right. As always.”
“Of course I am,” she said, lifting her chin.
“And I like what you said about being more honest. Tabitha’s back home; we’ll be seeing each other even more. I don’t want to hide from the tough stuff when it happens,” he said. He directed his next words at me. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to protect us anymore.”
I closed my eyes, unable to stop a hot rush of tears. Dad hugged me through the worst of it, and I resisted the urge to fake a smile or a joke or twirl around until I’d convinced myself it didn’t bother me. I allowed the beautiful threads of this story—the one I’d been telling myself from the second I stepped out of that cab—to root me here, with my family, my community, my home.
“I love you more than words can say, Tabitha,” he said. “I always have. I always will, okay?”
“I love you too, Dad,” I said, laughing as I sat back and accepted a handful of tissues from Alexis. “Now you’ll never be able to get rid of me at the diner.”
“Good,” he said. “I prefer it that way.” Then he cleared his throat, gaze darting around the room.
“What is it?” I asked, slightly nervous at the scattered gleam in his eyes.
He drummed his fingers on the coffee table. “I’m not trying to pry or get into your personal business, but, uh —”
“Are you and Dean going to get married and have babies, or what?” Kathleen asked, pointing at her phone. “The book club needs to know.”
I raised an eyebrow, still wiping my cheeks. “I thought the book club was ‘activating their networks’ to save the pocket park?”
“What, they can’t multitask?”
