Page 86 of Infinite

“Yes, darlin’,” Momma replies, her voice louder than she would usually allow. “She’s come to see her daddy.”

For her to address him as such does a lot to me. None of it’s good.

“Tell her to come closer,” he says.

Momma motions me forward and turns to go. She doesn’t wait for me to accept the invitation. She simply presumes that I will, shutting the door quietly behind her and leaving me alone to face my fate.

I no longer have feet; cinderblocks have replaced what my shoes once were. I no longer have legs, just long rods of steel making it hard to bend my knees. I’m sick. It shouldn’t be this way. I should be throwing myself on top of my father, sobbing, begging him not to leave me, telling him to get better—pleading with him tofucking love me.

I shouldn’t be so terrified of a feeble old man. But I am. Once more, I’m that little girl, wanting more than anything to connect with her mother, only for this awful and dark house to close in around me, reducing me to nothing but a fragile, petrified being.

I hate it here. I want to leave. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to hear what he’ll say or have him use this last moment to cut me down.

A small dining room chair is placed in front of the bed. The seat cushion is thick, black velvet, allowing those who’ve come to pay their respects to be as comfortable as possible. There’re two more chairs by the window. But this seat is reserved solely for me.

I stop short of reaching the bed, stunned by the shell of a man my father has become. The round robust face that would flash fire engine red whenever he was angry is nothing more than loose skin and sunken cheekbones sharp enough to cut me. His wheat-colored hair, once peppered with traces of silver, is all but gone. Fragile pieces of silver poke through scattered places along his spotted scalp. The chemo destroyed everything except the cancer.

“Hello, Daddy,” I say.

I’m not certain he hears me. My voice is softer than the way Momma spoke.

Dark rimmed eyes scan my face. My clothes are neither flashy like I wear out to dinner with Hale nor conservative enough for church. They speak of how young I still look and how successful I became, despite how badly my father wished for my downfall.

Because I was bad.

Because I was disrespectful.

Because I wasn’t the boy he’d wanted.

Instead, I was a girl he couldn’t submit to his will, who became the woman who’d never succumb.

“I always knew you’d come back,” he says.

My entire body bristles, prepared for a fight I don’t want to have.

Until he smiles.

The corners of his mouth lace with genuine humor. I’m not sure how to take it. I steel myself for bitter words he’ll lash like a whip to scar me more, so I’ll never heal.

He starts laughing, loudly. It’s hard enough to cause him pain, and given his delicate condition, hard enough to crack his sternum.

He’s trying to be funny. With me.

Regardless of how he treated me, there was a side of him that drew friends and made him popular. “Your father is the funniest man I know,” Tim Robinson, our accountant, once told me.

My father was famous for being quick and clever, often bragging how his silver tongue was what had charmed my mother. It wasn’t a side I experienced firsthand. Until now.

Myfatheris joking with me on his deathbed.

That silver tongue was one of the many things I’d inherited from him. I don’t think he noticed, unless it was directed at him. Then it wouldn’t cause him to laugh, but rather spur his anger and vengeance.

I battle with whether I should come back with something just as funny or maybe something wicked. No one has to tell me my father’s number is up. By the looks of it, death is mere hours away.

This is my final opportunity to be with him. I could leave on good terms or pound the last nail on the coffin, dramatizing the spoils of our horrible relationship. I can’t stomach either. I can’t yell at this frail man and demand to know why I was never good enough, why I had to be what he wanted in order for him to love me. I can’t even bring myself to say I forgive you. So, I say the only thing I can.

“I’m here like you asked, Daddy.”

“You’re not scrawny anymore, Becca June.”

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