I Held My Blue Inhaler At My Birthday Dinner While She Said I Was Faking...

The apartment smelled like garlic and butter that night. Dad was making pasta because it was Friday and I didn't have school the next day, and the little kitchen window was fogged from the pot boiling. I was at the table doing a maze from a kids' menu we'd taken home from somewhere else, not the restaurant, just a diner near his place. My backpack was on the floor by my feet. My inhaler was zipped in the front pocket.

His phone buzzed on the counter. He glanced at it while he stirred the noodles, then turned the burner down and picked it up with a dish towel still in his other hand.

I watched his face change. He didn't say anything at first. He just read, scrolling with his thumb, his mouth getting tight.

"Who is it?" I asked.

He didn't answer right away. He set the phone face-down on the counter, then turned it over again like he needed to check he read it right.

"It's from her," he said.

I felt my stomach drop the way it did before. I put my pencil down.

He came over and sat across from me. He slid the phone toward the middle of the table but kept his hand over it.

"She sent a long message," he said. "She says she wants to talk to you."

I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I put them under my legs. "What does it say?"

He took a slow breath. "She says she was stressed that night. That she had a lot going on. She says you overreacted." He paused and looked at the screen again, not at me. "And she says she wants to see you this weekend to apologize in person."

I stared at the maze. The lines blurred a little. "Is she still mad?"

"No," he said. "But I'm not going to read you the whole thing."

He turned the phone so I could see it was a big block of text, but he didn't let me read it. With his thumb he highlighted a line near the middle and turned it just enough that I could see a few words. I saw stop pretending in there, the same words from the restaurant, not exactly but close enough. You know how you get when you want attention. You were pretending.

My throat got tight even though I was breathing fine.

"She still says that?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "She does."

He locked the phone and put it back face-down. He didn't forward it to me. He didn't hold it out so I could take it to my room. He left it on the counter where I couldn't reach it without standing on my toes.

Later, after he drained the pasta and we were actually eating, he picked the phone up again and typed. I could hear the little tap tap tap. He read it out loud as he wrote, not for me to approve, just so I would know.

"I'm not passing messages to him without accountability," he said, typing. "If you want contact in the future, it needs to be a written acknowledgment of what you did — that you took and threw his prescribed medical device and that it put him at risk — and completion of a parenting and medical education course. Not just an apology. He doesn't need to manage adult feelings right now."

He hit send and set the phone down. He didn't wait for dots to appear. He turned on the faucet and rinsed the colander.

"Will she do that?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "That's her choice. Our choice is to keep you safe while we wait."

I pushed noodles around my plate. The kitchen was quiet except for the fridge humming.

"Is she mad at me?" I asked, and my voice was smaller than I wanted it to be.

Dad pulled his chair out and sat again, closer this time. He didn't tell me not to worry. He didn't say she loved me and that was enough.

"She is not mad at you," he said. "She's dealing with consequences for what she did. That's different." He put his hand flat on the table, palm up, and I put mine in it without thinking. "Adult actions have adult consequences. You didn't cause those. You asked for what you needed. That's always allowed here."

I nodded. My hand was sweaty but he didn't let go.

The phone buzzed again once that evening, and then again. He looked, but he didn't bring it to the table. He left it on the counter until the screen went dark. He never opened it in front of me again.

Before bed, I zipped my backpack to check. The blue inhaler was there, the spacer clicked in place. I zipped it shut and put it right by my pillow, where he said I could always keep it.

He stood in the doorway and watched me do it.