Page 38 of Stone Rules

I have to keep my eyes from closing and remembering the voice of the protector he once was. From remembering how, when my mother would become mad at me, he would intervene and get her to walk away, thwarting what I feared would be another slap across the face. Or painful tug of my hair. Or deliberate push into a doorway.

But then I remind myself of what happened after he left. That’s when the beatings really started. I don’t know if she blamed me for his leaving or if she felt like without him around, she could get away with more. Whatever the reason, it’s his fault. It’s always been his fault. None of it would have happened if it weren’t for him.

I take in his appearance. He’s ten years older than when I last saw him. That would make him fifty. The sprinkling of gray hair along with the lines on his forehead and around his eyes speak to his age. But there is something else. Something behind his eyes that ages him even more. A tiredness that doesn’t come from age alone.

I raise my brows at him, and without speaking, I question why he’s here. With my eyes, I let him know I’ve no intention of talking. Only listening. I fear if I open my mouth, two things might happen. One: I won’t be able to control my fury and I’ll scream and yell and lash out at him in every way possible, causing a scene that would only hurt the people who truly love me, the Mitchells. Or two: I’ll cry.

“Okay, you don’t want to talk to me,” he says. “I get it. I get that you hate me. I hate me, too. And I’m not here to try and change that.” He rubs a hand over his jaw. “Well, maybe I am, but I know it may not be possible, certainly not after I stayed away so long. But I hope since you’ve come this far, you’ll stay for a few minutes and hear me out. You don’t have to say a word. Just listen. I know you don’t owe me anything. But please, just give me a few minutes to try and explain.”

Skylar comes over and places two glasses of water on the table. We make eye contact long enough for her to make sure I’m okay. I nod at her, assuring her I am.

I take a drink of water, wetting my bone-dry mouth. Then I look at my father, giving him permission to begin.

“I want you to know that everything I tell you today is not meant to take away from the hell you went through after I left. What I’m about to tell you pales in comparison to what became your life. But I hope it will at least provide you with an explanation. It may not be a good one. I failed. I failed as a husband. I failed as a father. I failed to do the right thing. I failed because of fear. I was a coward. And nothing I can do or say now can change that. But I’m going to tell you anyway.”

I wring my hands under the table. And despite the cold March weather, I feel beads of sweat emerging on my forehead. But I keep my face stoic. I refuse to show him any emotion. There is nothing he could say that would make him deserving of my pity. I’ll never feel anything but abhorrence for this man. I train my eyes on the table, refusing to even look at him while he talks.

“I don’t expect you to believe me,” he says. “But I truly had no idea your mother was hurting you in any way. I didn’t know about any of it until recently. I just assumed you hated me because I left the two of you. And I let you hate me because I knew I deserved it. I knew I failed you as a father.”

Anger climbs my backbone and I know I’m about to break my own rule about not speaking, but I can’t help it. And it takes every ounce of self-control not to yell at him. “Liar!” I spit at him in a loud whisper. “I know you knew what she was doing. I heard you fighting about it before you left. I heard you specifically talk about how the hitting had to stop.”

He nods. “I don’t doubt what you heard, Charlie. We did argue a lot, but we argued about what she was doing tome, not you.”

“What?” I ask disbelievingly.

“I don’t know if you remember the day she cut off your hair when you were six,” he says, nervously running a finger up and down the side of his drink. “But that was the day my life changed forever.”

Spiteful words spill from my mouth. “Your life?You weren’t even there that day.”

He nods. “You’re right. I wasn’t there when she did it. But when I came home that night and saw what she’d done—that she’d cut off the hair I knew you loved to your very soul—we had a fight. I told her she had no right to do it. That she had to get over whatever she was feeling about getting older and not working. I had felt for some time that she blamed you for her lack of work. That somehow she thought it wasyourfault she was aging out of the roles she once coveted.”

He sighs and looks around at the neighboring tables. Then with a weak voice, he looks directly at me and says, “I said those very words to her. I said them to her and then she hit me.”

My eyes betray me as they look up to catch his.

He nods, his gaze falling to the table, as if embarrassed by what he just revealed to me.

“What?” I ask, again, not quite understanding what I think he is trying to tell me.

I think back to when I was younger and it dawns on me. I’m sure every girl thinks their daddy is a big strong man. I was no different. I mean after all, he would pick me up and twirl me around. He would carry me to bed when I would fall asleep in the car. He would scream and shout at the television when his team wasn’t winning the game. To me, he was this larger-than-life alpha male. My protector. My dad.

But in reality, he couldn’t have been more than a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet. He was tall, but impossibly thin.

“I was thirty-four years old when your mother started abusing me, Charlie.” He clears his throat and takes a drink. “It started out as a slap here and a push there. But she was a woman and I wasn’t going to fight back. She was frustrated about her job. She was under a tremendous amount of pressure to be this perfect person to everybody outside of her family. And I was blinded by her beauty. Her power. Her celebrity.

“She controlled everything about our lives. Our finances. My career. You.” He shakes his head in shame. “I felt inferior to her in every way. And when the slaps turned into punches, that just made me feel even weaker. At first I wouldn’t fight back. But then it got to the point where I couldn’t fight back. I was ashamed. I was a man and should be able to stand up for myself. But I didn’t.”

My heart is pounding into my chest wall. I try not to show any emotion. Despite what he went through, he should have never left me there. With her. How could he not know?

“I had no idea, Charlie. No idea about any of it. I watched her closely with you. I never saw any aggression towards you. She was frustrated with you, yes, but what mother isn’t frustrated with a rambunctious child?”

It’s hard for me to feel bad for this man. He doesn’t even know the half of it. I’m sure he thinks she just slapped me around a bit. Maybe I should enlighten him. “She hit me that day, too,” I say. “The day she cut my hair—she slapped me. She slapped me and told me she didn’t love me anymore and that you wouldn’t love me either if I wasn’t a good girl. After that, she didn’t touch me much. A few slaps here and there. Until you left, that is. I guess when you left she lost her punching bag, so I became it.”

I roll up my sleeves and display my forearms across the table. Anyone who looks closely at my scars can clearly see they are burns. And he knows my mom smoked like a fucking chimney.

“Oh, God,” he says.

This is when it happens. This is when the tears start to fall. His—not mine.

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