Page 96 of Break Your Fall

Don’t let me die.

I don’t necessarily want special treatment, butI am special. I am talented, I have what it takes to be a successful artist in this gallery, and I am his daughter. I don’t want him to forget that, especially since he forgot before.

“Why now?” The blaring silence and sudden thought prompts the question, an answer he didn’t give in his letters.

His stare drags up to mine, his eyes blinking away the concentration he was giving to my submission to now give it to me. “That’s one question I hoped you wouldn’t ask me,” he says through a sigh, a small guilty smile as he leans forward. “I don’t have an answer. That’s why I didn’t talk about it. Now or never.” He releases a light laugh, tucking back the strands of hair curling around his ear in a way that makes me smile and want to tuck back mine. My hand moves reflexively and intentionally, tucking my hair behind my ear as he shrugs his hands over the desk. “I should’ve reached out sooner. I don’t have an excuse here.”

“That’s why it’s okay,” I say, over everybody’s excuses. “You’re not trying to give me one.”

He nods but still laments, “I wish I could give you more.”

“You’re giving me you now.”

“Well, don’t hold me too high,” he says, trying to be modest, unaware of how high I’ve already placed him. “I still won’t win any Best Dad awards. I make mistakes like everybody else, and I’m gonna keep making them, but I promise I’ll never leave you again. And I’m gonna spend however long you’ll have me making it all up to you.”

Similar words from his letters. But it strengthens my belief to hear them in person. “And that’s what makes you a good dad,” I point out with a steady stare, then I smile and tease, “I think I’ll keep you around a little while longer.”

He returns my smile and teases back, “Oh, good. I better make the most of it.” Then he looks back down at my work and another question jolts from my mouth as I fight the collapse again.

“Where’s Jessa’s mom? You didn’t talk about her in your letters and Jessa hasn’t said anything, either.”

My dad stills, his eyes remaining downcast but unfocused, his answer a hesitation that makes me feel like I’ve poked a fresh tear in a wound that’s been tucked away, but not healed. “She wouldn’t. It’s a hard topic for her. Her mother died when she was ten.”

Oh God.My stomach pinches. “How?”

He still doesn’t meet my eyes as he says, “Car wreck. They were extremely close.”

“And you were married?” I ask, and he simply nods. He’s a widower like Aspen. Best not tell my mother this news with all the advantage she’s been taking of widowers recently. “And you never moved on,” I conclude.

“Nah,” he breathes through a heavy exhale, freeing himself from the emotional stupor I trapped him in, and leaning back in the chair to finally look at me. “While Jessa’s always wanted a sister, she’s never wanted another mother.”

I take in the way he says this; a simple fact. Like he’s okay to make that sacrifice for his daughter. But now I wonder why he hadn’t reached out sooner when he knew Jessa would’ve wanted to know about me until I remember that he didn’t want to unpack past baggage with my mother. The decision to pick up a pen and start writing wasn’t just about my sister. My father had to be in a place where he could separate, see me as me, give me his best.

And now we’re here.

“Well, she never had a sister to be replaced.” My smile is pointed through my insecurity that Jessa might not have wanted me if she had.

My dad leans back up, the gesture moving his hands closer to me across the desk. “Don’t think of it that way.”

“I’m not,” I ease his concern. “I just … I can understand the feeling.” Shame averts my stare at the passing moment I’d seen Jessa as competition for our father while she has always seen me as my own separate, missing piece to help complete her puzzle.

“She never wanted to see me looking at another woman the way I looked at her mother,” Dad continues. “And I didn’t really want to, either.”

My belief in my father continues to zing at his loyalty. “It must’ve been some love.”

“It is,” he subtly corrects, nodding down at the desk, then looking back up at me.

My father is a romantic. His wife died and his love for her lived on. Jessa didn’t want him to find love with another woman, and his own heart wouldn’t let him.

I now know that if I ask him to stay away from my mother, he will listen. But considering he doesn’t even want to talk about her, I don’t have to ask. Valerie Stokes has made Dominic Wescott stay away from her all on her own.

I sometimes wish I could make her stay away from me.

“I’d love a new mother,” I admit, the words trailing that thought, and I don’t carry the guilt as it tries to cling to its normally reserved space in my chest, but I do study my father for his reaction, slight worry nipping as I wait for him to think me awful for having such a thought.

Instead he smiles and says, “You would’ve loved Kayleigh. And she would’ve welcomed you with open arms.”

I smile back, caught up in my own fairytale. “Was she pretty?”

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