Page 70 of A Love So Hard

The room grew completely still and quiet for several ticks of a heartbeat and then holy hell reigned down on my daughter coming straight at her from her father.

“You spoiled little shit! You got every bit of my attention, rides on my bike – as you pointed out – when your sister didn’t, shopping time with your mom, and anything you’ve ever asked for. That includes the car you used to sneak out of the house tonight. A car, I’ll remind you, that no longer belongs to you. Ever, the sister you just took a shit on, never got that. She got to borrow your mom’s car, because I was a complete asshole to her. She deserves every single minute of my time I can give her now. She deserves to get some of yours too, but you’ve been too stubborn and jealous to give it. And look at your mother! She looks like a half-dead fuckin’ zombie. She’s lost so much weight, her face is sunken in, she’s a fuckin’ mess and instead of helping her try to heal and get better you’re running to the one place that’s been the cause of her distress and fuckin a man you couldn’t even be honest with.”

Ouch. Not that my daughter didn’t deserve his tirade, but that hurt for me to hear. I glanced down at myself. I guess I had lost some weight. I just kept pulling the strings on my sweats tighter when needed. I looked like a zombie? Really? God! He was right, and so was my daughter. I’d been living with ghosts and was half way to making myself one too.

“You’re grounded,” I called out.

“What? I’ve never been grounded before!”

“There’s a first time for everything, honey. You will go to school, come home, go to your room and do your homework. Then you’re going to come downstairs and help make dinner. We’re going to eat together, and then you’re gong to help with the cleanup. When that’s done, you’re going to go get ready for bed.” I held out my hand. “Phone, now!”

“Momma!” She whined.

“Now!” She reached into her back pocket and pulled the phone out then smacked it down into my hand.

“This isn’t fair,” she whined again.

“Oh, well, honey it’s about to get less fair, because you’ll also not have access to the Internet or computers of any kind in this house. If you need to do a school assignment I’ll sit with you while you use it.”

“I’m seventeen!” She yelled.

“Maybe you should have thought more about being seventeen when you were pretending to be twenty. That is your dad’s clubhouse! If you didn’t think it would get back to him eventually, you’re crazy. Not to mention, do you care for that man at all? The one you were seeing,” I clarified.

“Of course, I love him!” She screamed at me. I had to fight from rolling my eyes.

“First of all, Anna, you do not turn yourself into a lie for the person you love. Second, you do not put that person’s life, their livelihood, or their position with the club that is their family at risk because you failed to tell the truth. He can be removed from the club now. Did you know that? He’s a prospect, not a full patched brother. It’s a whole lot easier. Even if he was fully patched, they could make him transfer to another chapter, and that would be after the ass whoopin’ they put on him. Do you want that for a man you supposedly love?”

Her eyes grew wide with each consequence she just heaped on the poor guy. “You can’t do that!” She hissed to her dad. “The club’s all he has. His brother died over there, and that’s all he has. Their parents died when they were kids and… Oh God! Please, he didn’t know! Don’t send him away. I, I’ll stay away from him if that’s what it takes. Just, don’t take his family away from him. I know he’s always telling jokes and stuff to make people laugh, but it’s just so they don’t see all the sadness he has. Everyone has died on him.”

Suddenly, I was seeing what had bonded them. She had lost her brother too. She may not have let on that the brother she’d lost was Toby, but I was realizing how this had all come to pass. “Anna,” I spoke softly. “I’m sure the fact that he didn’t know will be taking into consideration. Go on up to bed now, and stay there this time. I’ll be up to check on you soon.”

As soon as she was gone Double-D scrubbed his hands down the short stubble on his jaw. He had trimmed his beard to the point it almost didn’t exist anymore and that made me a little sad. So did the fact that it was solidly gray now whereas it had still had some darker hair interspersed before. It marked the passage of time when we weren’t together. Time gone since…

“Jesus!” He sighed. “Never knew raising kids would be such an epic adventure,” he muttered.

“You as their father, and you thought it’d be easy?” I teased, and suddenly startled myself because it was the first time I’d cracked a smile in God only knew how long.

“Luce.” My name on his lips in a whisper like that nearly had me rethinking our separation. Nearly. He shook off whatever made him speak my name so reverently. “I don’t know what to do here. Sounds to me like she actually loves him,” he finally said. “I know she’s young, but we were young too, and if…”

“No what ifs,” I reminded him. “We can’t change the past,” I told him.

“No, but we can make sure the future isn’t as fucked for her.”

I nodded my head. That was true. Talk to him. Tell him he can’t see her until after her birthday. If he’s willing to wait for her after the way she deceived him then so be it. If he doesn’t take her deception well,” I hesitated to finish, because I didn’t want that kind of heartbreak for my baby girl. I couldn’t stop it from happening either though. “If he doesn’t take it well that something she’s going to have to live with and learn from.”

“Okay,” he said as he moved toward the front door. He paused a moment there with his hand on the door frame. This time, when he asked to stay, I didn’t think I would have it in me to tell him no anymore. Only, he didn’t ask this time. For the first time in six months he just simply walked out the door without asking if I’d changed my mind, and I was too stunned by his lack of doing so to get up off my ass and beg him to stay. Maybe my daughter wouldn’t be the only one dealing with heartbreak of her own making.

“Am I even going to be able to have a party for my birthday?” Anna asked with a bit more attitude that she was due.

“You made your bed, Anna. I am not doing this to you. You did this to you. No, you’re going to miss out on the party you were hoping for, because the decisions you made for yourself had consequences for people.”

That caused her to perk up. “Evan?” She asked.

I turned to look at her, “I don’t know what happened with him,” I admitted. Her face screwed up into a ball of confusion.

“What do you mean you don’t know what happened to him? How could you not know?”

“Your father wouldn’t tell me. He only said things were handled on that end, that it was club business, and I’d made it perfectly clear how I felt about the club. Then he hung up. Haven’t heard from him since.” I must not have been able to hide the hurt that had caused me because Anna rose to her feet from the kitchen chair she’d perched herself on and came over to throw her arms around me.

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