Page 88 of Infinite

“Was that too much for a father to ask?”

“Then why did you treat me like you did?” I ask, my voice splintering. “Why did you hit me? Why couldn’t you just be kind? Why dideverythinghave to be so hard?”

“I was trying to make you into what you needed to be,” he says, those awful tears falling with what remains of my walls. “The best way I knew how. Even if it wasn’t your way.”

“I was a good girl, Daddy—”

“Because I made you that way. Because you were too afraid not to be.”

He was right, but the harshness he used and the way he went about it was so wrong.

“Come here, child,” he says, his rusty voice groaning from the effort it takes him to speak.

I lean in, swallowing hard when his weathered and deeply wrinkled hand cups my face. His hands are cold, bone white, as opposed to bronzed by the summer sun. Blue veins run across them, sinking into the empty pockets near his knuckles where the skin sticks firmly against the bone.

I sob for all the years I missed that could’ve been good if we’d both tried a little harder. Had I not been so quick to judge and more easy-going, maybe he would have been more willing to listen.

Daddy lets me cry, allowing me to release my pain until I calm and his strength rebuilds enough to speak.

“Becca June, I’ve made mistakes. I’m not so proud to think I’m perfect. But when it comes to you, I did the best job I could.” This time, he’s the one openly weeping. “But it wasn’t good enough, was it?”

“Oh,Daddy,” I say. What’s left of my strength falls away, just like my carefully constructed wall.

“You left me. You left your momma,” he says. He shakes his head. “You’re still that damn selfish bitch you always have been.”

My tears evaporate from my eyes, my heart, from every cell of my being. The feeble old man I first saw, the one I pitied so badly I could barely meet his face, regains that rage I know and taps into that familiar cruelty.

“You’re exactly the trash I always feared you’d become.” He’s yelling, as loud as his vocal cords will allow. “You’re alone with no man, pretending to be something you are not. Successful?” He spits out. “If you didn’t look like you did, if you weren’t spreading your legs like you are, that football team would have nothing to do with you.”

He’s not done.

I am.

I stand on shaking limbs, almost losing my balance. I grasp the dining room chair to keep my feet and still my father screams.

“You’re a whore,” he says. “You’re nothing. No matter how bad I tried to save you—

you hear me, girl? That night, that wasmeleavingyou!”

I abandon the room slowly, using the space separating me from the door to wipe my makeup smeared face. With all the care I can muster, I shut the door quietly behind me. It doesn’t quite muffle his screams, his rants, assuring me that everyone in the hall hears and heard the nasty and vicious remarks of his farewell.

The standoffish and perhaps mocking expressions I expect are not what greets me. Everyone present is aghast, horrified by the encounter and the indecencies my father continues to holler. Even Kirk, whose attention skips between me and the closed door, regards me with sympathy.

Everyone heard him. My only reprieve is that the reverend is mercifully gone.

My mother steps out of the room beside theirs, an armful of carefully folded towels tucked against her and her thin lips pressed into a line. “You shouldn’t have upset him like that. He needs his rest.”

My family’s eyes fly open, every woman present clasping her mouth. It takes everything in me not to lose my shit, my body quaking with the need to lash out. Matthew reaches for me as if fearing I’ll launch myself at my mother and beat her with my fists.

I don’t. Anything I do or say will harm me, not them.

If I scream at my dying father, no matter what vulgarities he throws my way, I’m the one who looks bad. I’ll be the black sheep who kicks him one last time, who smothers him with her filthy wool.

I refuse to take the bait from him or from her. So, I walk away. It’s the one thing I can do.

I don’t plan to stop. I don’t plan to return. They’ll bury him and all the darkness without me. But when I reach the top of the staircase, my mother’s final words hold me in place.

“He’s still your father,” she says.

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