Page 81 of The Summer List

He already sounds disappointed, and my grip on the phone tightens when I realize he has every reason to be.

I missed his texts because I’ve been sleeping off a hangover all day after raiding his wine cellar in the house I snuck into without his permission.

That voice from earlier pings in my head again.

This isn’t me.

“Oh, sorry. My phone is, um, dead. I need to charge it.”

My voice is so hoarse and groggy it would give the lie away even if it weren’t an extremely low effort excuse.

“I see. What time is it there, anyway?”

I drop into the upholstered armchair in front of the desk and rest my head on one of my hands.

“It’s, um…” I glance at the screen on the phone dock and wince. “Almost five.”

“I see,” he says again. “Well, Sandy just wanted to check that you’re doing all right with the cats. She misses her little updates from Naomi.”

My shoulders tense at the sound of her name, and my chest feels like it’s caving in as I imagine her typing cute little messages about the cats’ lives for Sandy to keep up with.

“Oh, for sure,” I answer. “Yeah, the cats are good. They’re, um, eating, and stuff.”

“That’s good.”

The line goes silent.

He clears his throat.

More silence.

“Well, I should probably get going. Sandy is—”

“Dad.”

I don’t know what makes me say it. I don’t know what makes me keep him on the line when I thought I came to terms with him hanging up on my whole life years ago.

The window I’m sitting in front of looks out onto the back deck, right over the barbeque station where I’ve imagined him cooking with Sandy’s sons. I look past it to the spot on the deck where Naomi and I sat while she told me about accidentally burning her brother’s eyebrows off, and somehow, that gives me the courage to ask the question I’ve wanted to ask him my whole life.

“What did you want me to be?”

At first, the only answer I get is the rattling echo of my own breath, and then he asks, “What do you mean?”

“I mean when I was little,” I say. “Actually, even before I was little. Even before I was born. Even before I existed at all. What did you want your kid to be like?”

He makes a sound like he’s about to say something, but then he stops.

A few more seconds go by before he asks, “Where is this coming from, Andrea?”

I straighten up in the chair, and I can’t keep a bit of irritation out of my tone. “You know where it’s coming from. You know I’ve never been…quite what you wanted. You or Mom. At least with her, I know what she wants me to be. I can keep trying, even if it never seems to be good enough, but with you… You just gave up.”

My voice is shaking, and I’m speaking way too loud. He tries to cut in, but I keep going. I can’t stop. It’s like somewhere inside me, a lock has sprung open, and there’s a whole army of pent up emotions storming out with guns blazing.

“You didn’t even fight for more than a few weekends a year with me,” I hurl at him. “You didn’t even fight to fix things with mom. It’s like we just stopped being worth it to you, or maybe we were never what you wanted in the first place, and I have spent my whole life trying to figure out what it is you do want so I can be it. I’ve tried so hard I have no idea who I am. I’m so scared I’ll end up being someone you and Mom don’t want that it’s literally impossible for me to even think about who I might actually be.”

The phone almost slips out of my hand as it hits me.

That’s the reason those fleeting glimpses of my future never last.

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