Page 89 of Ebbing Tides
I looked toward Sid, resigning myself to making a quick getaway, and asked, “You’re good if I leave Lido here?”
He nodded, a sorrowful expression in his eyes. “Yeah, man. You know it.”
Then I turned and headed for the door, leading the way for my sisters and leaving my heart behind.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lucy and Grace crowded both sides of my father’s bedside while I sat stiffly on the leather couch. The room was dark, save for a singular stained-glass Tiffany-style lamp on the desk, its soft light casting shadows across my sisters’ faces and glinting off their tearstained cheeks.
Felicity had waited until we arrived. She told us he’d been unresponsive since she had come earlier in the day.
“His vitals are low,” she had said, her face regretful as she gave us the news. “I’m not sure he’ll make it through the night.”
My sisters responded with tears as I listened to her instructions on what to do after his passing.
Felicity had given her condolences and left, and just like that, a person I had known for nine months was once again nothing more than a stranger.
Sitting on the couch, with my hands tucked into my pockets and my legs stretched out long, I thought about how unexpected it all seemed … but it hadn’t been though, had it? It had been nine months. Nine whole months of rigid routine, surviving, only to care for my tyrant of a father, yet suddenly, it seemed to have all happened in the blink of an eye. A blip among the other moments that had come together to make up this life, and, boy, what a fucking life it had been.
What the hell do I do now?I thought, tipping my head back to lean against the wall.
I hardly remembered what life had been like before Dad got sick. What had I even done with my time? The thoughtof reverting back to any semblance of a normal life seemed unnatural and wrong, but once he was gone, I was free, wasn’t I?
Free. Fuck, I hardly knew what the word meant. Had I ever been truly free of anything?
“Max?”
I lifted my head to look toward Grace with her arms folded on the railing beside Dad’s bed, her hand holding one of his.
“Yeah?”
She pulled in a deep breath and dropped her gaze to the blanket. She seemed to hesitate, seemed unsure of herself, then said, “I’m sorry we didn’t defend you more.”
Taken aback, I furrowed my brow. “What? Where is this coming from?”
“I’m just … I’m just thinking about how horrible it must have been for you to watch us have a good relationship with him. And I know you spent so long worrying about us when it turned out there was nothing really to be worried about at all, and I’m just so sorry it was like that for you.” Her lips parted with a sob as she shook her head. “I’m sorry we didn’t do more.”
Her breakdown had come out of left field, and it left me momentarily stunned.
“Grace, don’t … i-it’s okay,” I stammered, swallowing. “Seriously. It’s fine—”
“Oh my God,” Lucy groaned, hanging her head. “Do not say that it’sfine. Stop saying everything is fine when it’s not.”
“Well, what else am I supposed to say?” I asked, lifting my shoulders to my ears with a helpless shrug. “You want me to say I hate you both? You want me to say I’ve held a secret grudgeagainst you my entire fucking life? You want me to say that I’ve hated you for having a halfway decent relationship with this psychotic son of a bitch? That’s not going to happen. I hate …”
My voice trailed off as my eyes fell on the sick old man, lying in the bed. Pain wrenched in my chest at the thought that this was it. Oh God, this was really, trulyit. The last time I would see him alive. The last time we would breathe the same air. Did I want to spend it saying the things I’d always wanted to say but never felt I could?
Lucy and Grace watched me expectantly, swiping tears away and sniffling loudly.
Their silence encouraged me to continue, and as my nose prickled with the tears I didn’t want to cry, I said, “I hate him. I hate him so fucking much. I can’t remember a time when Ididn’thate him. But I don’t hate him for loving you guys. That was the one thing he did right. I just hate that he could never love me too. No matter what I fucking did, it was never good enough. Never ever,evergood enough.”
Grace reached for the box of tissues and grabbed one to blow her nose. Then she said, “It’s because you were his son. He was hard on you because he expected more—”
“No,” I interjected, shaking my head as I stood up and pulled the letter from my back pocket. I dropped it on the foot of the bed. “He hated me because he’d fucked up.”
With that, I turned from the bed and left the room, suddenly desperate to breathe air that wasn’t also his.
***
