Chapter 3
My dad found me in the living room before breakfast.
I hadn't slept much. I'd stayed on the couch with the blanket pulled up to my chest, listening to the house settle. Their bedroom door had stayed closed all night. Hers did too. No one had come out to get water or use the bathroom, or if they had, I'd been holding my breath too hard to hear it.
He came down the hallway in his black polo and brown pants from yesterday, same clothes, his hair still flat on one side. He didn't turn the big light on. The warm lamps by the fireplace were already on, throwing light across the patterned rug and the stone.
He sat on the edge of the coffee table so his knees almost touched mine. He didn't say good morning.
"You heard what I said last night," he said.
I nodded. My mouth was dry.
"I meant it," he said. His voice was low. He kept his hands clasped together. "This cabin is your house. It's been your house since you were five and we built that back deck together. I'm not sending you away."
I tried to swallow. "But she said—"
"I know what she said." He looked toward the hallway, then back at me. "You don't have to leave your own father's house because someone else is uncomfortable. That's not how this works."
He said it like a rule, like he was nailing it into the wall. I wanted to believe it the way I believed him when he taught me how to back the truck out without hitting the woodpile. But my chest wouldn't loosen.
"Okay," I said. It came out small.
He put his hand on my shoulder. His palm was warm. "Okay? You know I got you, right?"
I nodded again, but I didn't look at him. I looked past him at the fireplace.
That was when I started replaying it.
In the hallway yesterday I'd just been standing by the staircase in my grey sweatshirt. She'd been in the living room with my dad, and her daughter was next to me, close enough that I could see her earrings catch the light. When my stepmom said, "My daughter doesn't feel comfortable with the way he looks at her," I'd said, "Dad, that's not true. I didn't do anything." And she'd cut in, "Yes, he does. He's always looking at me."
I tried to remember what my eyes had actually done. Had I stared? I remembered looking at the girl because she was upset, and then looking away because I didn't want to make it worse. I remembered glancing at her when she walked through the living room earlier that day to get a glass of water. Was that a look? I couldn't tell anymore. The more I tried to pull the memory straight, the more it blurred, like I was trying to hold water.
Maybe I had done something without knowing it. Maybe girls her age just knew when someone was looking wrong and boys my age didn't know they were doing it.
"Dad," I said, and my voice cracked. "What if I did? What if I looked at her weird and didn't realize it?"
He frowned. "You didn't."
"How do you know?"
"Because I know you," he said. He didn't hesitate. "And because if you had, you'd know. You wouldn't be sitting here asking yourself if you're a bad person."
I picked at a thread on the grey sleeve of my sweatshirt. The cuff was fraying a little. I wanted him to be right, but the doubt sat there anyway, heavy and stuck.
He stood up and walked to the mantel. I watched him straighten one of the frames without thinking about it, the way he always did.
The mantel had three framed photos. I'd seen them a thousand times but never really looked. One was me at seven, missing my front teeth, holding a fish my dad had helped me catch off the dock. One was just me and him at the county fair, both sunburned, my dad's arm around my shoulders. The third was the cabin itself when it was first finished, bare trees around it, no furniture yet.
There were no pictures of her. No pictures of her daughter. Not a single one with the four of us together.
I realized I'd never noticed that before because I'd never had to think about who belonged here and who didn't.
"She ever ask to put one up?" I asked.
My dad glanced at the photos, then at me. "She mentioned it once. I said we would when we had one."
He said it flat, but I heard what he wasn't saying. This wall was still ours.
He came back and sat on the couch arm next to me, not the table this time, closer.
"Listen," he said. "This is your home. Not hers. Not until we figure out how to be a family without someone having to leave. You understand me?"
I nodded. The blanket was still around my shoulders and I pulled it tighter. The stone fireplace was cold. No fire had been lit since yesterday.
"I understand," I said.
May you like
He squeezed my shoulder once and let go. Down the hall, a door clicked. We both turned to listen, but no one came out.
I kept staring at those photos, at my smaller face looking back at me, trying to remember exactly where my eyes had been yesterday, and failing.
