Page 39 of What We Broke

He shakes himself out of my hold. “I’m going for a walk,” he announces.

“Will you stop by a bar on your way?” I antagonize. “Drink just enough to say you’re not drunk,” I taunt. “Just enough to definitely not have to deal with anything real, right?”

This conversation is a big deal—for him to hear and me to say.

I’ve been tiptoeing around the inevitable since he started drinking. I let him be because who am I to judge his grief, but I knew better and turned a blind eye anyway.

I’m worried about whether or not we can handle one more thing. How much more can we take before the brunt is too heavy for us to hold? But the floodgates are open now and I need to let the river flow.

“I’m going for a walk,” he repeats, his face and eyes now completely devoid of any emotion. He’s shut me out. Again.

Sighing, I drop back down to the couch. “I’ll be here.”

And we both know I don’t just mean when he comes back from his walk.

I’m just about to get up and change out of the clothes I wore to the courthouse when the front door opens.

My heart stutters as I look up expecting to see Leo, but my eyes land on Zara and Raine instead, and the organ in my chest thrums out a mangled rhythm.

There isn’t a day I’m alive that I don’t want to see my daughter. But right now I need Leo, more than I need air, to be the person standing in my doorway.

“Hey, Dad,” Raine greets, completely oblivious.

“Hey, babe.”

Zara follows behind her, but her eyes take notice of my clothes and then nervously dart around the house.

“He’s not here,” I inform her, knowing very well how strained it is when she and Leo are in the same room.

Rising, I walk over to Raine, who’s made her way to the kitchen, and kiss her on the top of the head. “How are you?”

The mood in the house is somber.

It doesn’t matter who’s here or who isn’t here anymore, these four walls have never felt more void of the love and warmth we all spent years cultivating as they do right now.

“I’m good,” she answers. “Mom and I spent the afternoon at the Space Needle.”

Chuckling, I stand behind her as she takes a seat on the kitchen stool. I wrap my arm around her neck and rest my chin on the top of her head. “Are you two attending school and work anymore?” I joke.

Raine is obsessed with people watching. She hasn’t yet fallen in love with the beauty found in simple things, and because we live in the suburbs, she finds it extremely fascinating to ask us to spend all our free time downtown, ticking off the Lonely Planet’s Top Things to do in Seattle.

I’m certain she’s going to be a travel and lifestyle reporter.

“Why isn’t Papa home?” she asks. Hearing her call him that sucker punches me in the stomach without even realizing it.

Right after we got married, he was reciting stories of his own childhood—the happier memories—to her, referring to his grandfather as Papa, and one day she decided that’s what she wanted to call him too.

“What?” I say dumbly, trying to bide time.

“I heard you tell Mom he wasn’t here,” she explains. “Where is he?”

Well, isn’t that the million-dollar question.

“He had to go out,” I lie. “Uncle Gio needed his help on something.”

Poor Uncle Gio. I’ll have to thank him for being the one person’s name I can drop without Raine asking me any further questions.

She’s too intuitive, and at times like this, I try everything to shield her from the hard truths. But when she has complete freedom to spend as much or as little time at our house as she wants, there’s only so much I can hide.

---