Page 120 of Symphony of Salvation

She signed something, and I glared with a quizzically raised brow.

Rolling her eyes, she typed a message on her phone and all but threw the device at me. I had to scramble to catch it before it hit the ground.

“Was that necessary?”

She motioned for me to read.

Why are you leaving?

“Because I have to return to work. You knew that. It’s why I enrolled you here. I promised your mother I would ensure you were comfortable first, and I have.”

She launched off the bed, tore the phone from my hand, and typed again, nose wrinkled and with a murderous glare altering her once fine features. Again, with vitriol, she slammed the phone against my chest and waved for me to read what she’d typed.

It’s not about me! OMG. What is your problem? How are you this stupid?

“I don’t understand.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, staving off the headache from too little sleep and the stress of sending Niles off to work that morning, knowing I wouldn’t see him again for a long time, knowing he would be upset when he learned of my absence.

Constance fisted her hands, and I thought she would punch a wall, then she signed something definitive with jerky and distinct motions I was likely meant to understand but didn’t.

I shook my head. “Constance, you know I—”

She stamped a foot and signed the same series of gestures again, slower and with more emphasis, as though punctuating her feelings on my stupidity.

“Stop it. I don’t understand what you’re signing. If you would—”

She all but screamed with her body language and used her phone to type her meaning instead. For the third time, she handed off the device with unnecessary violence.

N I L E S!!!

I frowned. “Niles?” How had we gone from discussing her comfort level in a new dorm to Niles? “I talked to him last night. He knows I’m leaving.”

Devastation marred her face, and her eyes, so much like her mother’s, glistened with fresh tears. She ripped the phone from my hand and proceeded to type furiously.

“This conversation would go a lot faster if you opened your goddamn mouth and spoke for once.”

The room’s temperature plummeted ten degrees with her icy glare.

If she could have told me to go to hell, I had no doubt Constance would have unleashed a fury like I’d never known, but my nonverbal daughter didn’t have that means of expelling her frustrations.

Instead, she whipped her phone against the drywall, hard enough to leave a dent, and threw herself on the bed, burying her face in her arms. Her shoulders shook with silent tears, and I stood helplessly to the side, unsure what to do and unclear where I’d gone wrong. Why did everything have to be difficult between us?

“Is this how you’re saying goodbye?”

Blindly grabbing for a discarded shoe on the floor, she threw it at me, missing by a mile. The second one nearly caught me in the head, but I dodged its assault.

“Christ, child. What is your problem?”

I didn’t need words typed on a phone or sign language to understand she wanted me to go.

I picked up her phone and examined it, noting the long crack across the screen. When I pushed the button, it lit up, requesting a password. At least it worked. I would order a replacement and have it sent to her once I was settled in Chicago.

I set the device on the empty bedside table and peered down at my distraught, sobbing daughter. “I’m sorry, Constance. I don’t know what you want from me. I’m not good at this.”At being a father, at knowing how to fix your anger, at loving you.I said none of it. She would probably yell and throw more things.

“Call me if you need me. I mean it.”

No response.

I waited a few more minutes, wanting to reach out, wanting to draw her into my arms until her tears stopped, but she would deny me affection, and the rejection would hurt too much to bear. Watching her cry was already killing me. Reluctantly, unsure how to fix us, convinced it wasn’t possible, I left.

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