Chapter 6
I heard my dad say it again the next morning, but not to me.
I was at the kitchen counter getting cereal. The box scraped against the wood. My stepmom stood at the sink with her back to me, and my dad stood in the doorway to the living room with his coffee. The patterned rug was still out there by the fireplace, the framed photos on the mantel catching the morning light.
She said, "You told me to go live with her father."
He didn't answer right away. He took a sip. I heard him swallow.
He said, "I said if Ava doesn't feel safe here, you have somewhere else you can go."
She turned around then. Her ponytail swung. She looked at me first, then at him.
"Her father lives twenty minutes away and he hasn't asked to see her in three months," she said. Her voice was flat. "You know that."
I kept my eyes on my bowl. I hadn't known that. Ava had never talked about her dad. I'd assumed he lived far away, like in another state. Twenty minutes was the distance to the gas station and the middle school.
My dad set his mug down on the kitchen counter. Hard enough that it made a noise.
"Exactly," he said. "So don't use him as leverage when you know it's not a real option."
Ava came into the kitchen then. She wore the same brown ribbed shirt from yesterday. Her hair was still parted in the middle. She stopped when she saw all of us there and hugged the doorframe. Her gold hoops caught the light.
Her mom looked at her and her face changed. Softer.
"Honey, go get your backpack," she said.
Ava didn't move. She looked at my dad.
"Are we leaving?" she asked.
My dad crouched a little so he was closer to her height. I hadn't seen him do that for anyone except me when I was little.
"No," he said. "No one's leaving today. Go get your shoes. You're going to miss the bus."
She nodded and left. I heard her footsteps on the wood panels in the hallway.
When she was gone, my stepmom folded her arms. Her black top with the gold buttons pulled tight.
"You think I was bluffing," she said. "I wasn't."
"I think you want me to pay for an apartment you don't want to live in," my dad said. He kept his voice low. "I won't do that. This house is my house. I pay the mortgage. I pay the power. If you leave because you choose to leave, I will help with Ava for a week or two while you figure it out. I will not fund a separate household because you don't like how my son looks at your daughter."
I stared down at the milk in my bowl. My cheeks felt hot. He'd said it again, that line about how I looked. I still didn't know what it meant. I hadn't done anything except sit on the couch while Ava watched TV.
My stepmom laughed once, without smiling.
"So that's it," she said. "We either live under your rules with your son, or we go live with a man who doesn't return my calls."
"It's not my rules," my dad said. "It's this house. He lives here. He goes to school here. His room is here."
She looked past him, toward the living room. Toward the fireplace and the rug and the photos of me and my dad from before she and Ava moved in.
"You've made that very clear," she said.
Later that afternoon I found Ava in the living room. She sat on the edge of the patterned rug, not on it, with her legs tucked under her. She had a worksheet on the coffee table and a pencil that she wasn't using.
I sat on the couch behind her. Not close. I left a full cushion between us.
"Do you see your dad a lot?" I asked. I tried to make it sound casual.
She shrugged. Her shoulders went up and stayed there.
"Sometimes," she said. "Mom says he's busy."
"Does he live close?" I asked.
She nodded. "By the Food Lion. Mom drives me sometimes but last time he wasn't home."
She said it the way you'd say the bus was late. Like she'd gotten used to it.
"Do you want to live there?" I asked.
She turned around and looked at me. Her eyes were wide. For the first time she didn't look anxious. Just confused.
"No," she said. "I don't want to leave. I like my room here."
I didn't know what to say to that. My stepmom had made it sound like her dad was an option. Like she had somewhere solid to go if my dad kicked them out. But Ava talked about him like he was a place she visited, not a place she lived.
My dad came in from the kitchen and stood behind the couch. He put a hand on my shoulder. His watch caught the light.
He looked at Ava and said, "Your mom loves you a lot. She just wants you to feel safe."
Ava nodded once.
May you like
He looked at me then. "And you live here. That doesn't change."
My stepmom stood in the hallway, listening. I could see her in the reflection of the TV screen. She didn't come into the room. She just stood there with her arms crossed, her ponytail dark against her black top, watching the three of us on that rug that wasn't going anywhere.
