Page 141 of Hello Stranger

“I guess it did,” I said.

“I remember worrying afterward that you might have overheard us,” my dad said. “So I went to check your room. But you were fast asleep. I didn’t think to check on Parker.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Mom?”

“I didn’t want you to blame yourself.”

“But you blamed me.”

“That was my problem. I knew it was wrong. I knew it wasn’t fair. That’s why I married Lucinda so fast. I knew I was letting you down. I hated how quiet the house was. I wanted, honestly, as strange as it must sound… to find you another mother. I thought,Let’s hurry up and heal and get back on our feet.”

“You can’t replace mothers like appliances.”

“I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

“And now you’re stuck with Lucinda.”

“I actually like Lucinda.”

“I kind of do, too. Occasionally.”

Then I forced myself to ask: “Do youstillblame me?”

My dad rested his hands on my shoulders. “Sweetheart… of course not.”

His voice sounded dismayed that I could even ask. But how could Inotask? “You did once.”

“I did once,” he confirmed, “yes—but I was…”—he searched for words to describe it and finally settled on—“crazed with grief.”

I looked down.

“I couldn’t even see straight,” he said. “I blamed everyone. You, yes. But your mom, too, for being so damned stubborn. And the doctor, for explaining her situation so casually that she could think putting the surgery off was even an option. I even blamed the Norman Rockwell museum. I had fantasies of driving to Massachusetts and burning the place down. I blamed her friends, her travel agent, and most of all—more than all of the rest of you put together—I blamed myself. How had I not insisted? How had I let her just ignore it? Knowing what I knew? Doing what I do for a living? I could have stopped her. She could still be here right now. Our lives could have been so different. Everything could so easily have been okay.”

I nodded. “She wasn’t really one to be bossed around, though.”

My dad laughed a little.

I went on. “You make it sound easy when you say you should have stopped her. But how would you have done that?”

He shook his head. “Stolen her keys? Tied her to the newel post? Kidnapped her for the surgery?”

“She wouldn’t have taken too kindly to any of that,” I said.

“And then we lost her,” he said, his voice going gravelly. “And I didn’t know how to go on.” He took my hand. “This isn’t an excuse,” he said then, “but it’s true. I couldn’t look at you without seeing her, too—getting flashes of the two of you dancing to oldies, or spraying me with the hose while you washed the car, or disco skating. I don’t know how to describe it, but my chest would seize up so bad I thought I might suffocate. It hurt so much, it scared me—and I was afraid to feel that pain. So I turned away.”

“I remember that,” I said. “You averting your eyes whenever you had to talk to me.”

My father nodded. “I was ashamed.”

Then I added, “You still do it. To this day.”

We’d been talking like this was all the distant past. But so much of it was still going on.

“I want to apologize to you,” my dad said then.

“For what?”

“For lots of things. But right now—for the way I disappeared after your mom died.”

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