Page 63 of Splintered Memories
After a beat of silence, the doorbell rang again. And then again, the person on the doorstep losing their patience.
August let out a low curse as his footsteps headed toward the front door.
My heart sank, but curiosity got the better of me as I peered out of the bedroom door.
August unlocked the dead bolt with a click, and the front door creaked open. I couldn’t see from my position in the threshold of August’s room, but the place was small enough that I heard every word.
“Now is not a good time,” August said, his tone a low warning.
The answering voice had my heart shudder in my chest.
“You are working forme, dammit!” My father’s voice shook as he yelled. He sounded desperate. So unlike the unruffled businessman I remembered. “You have kept her away from me for a week. That’s long enough.”
“I’m not keeping anyone from you. She doesn’t want to see you.”
“I don’t care,” my father snapped.
I hadn’t made the decision, but my feet took me toward him before I stopped them.
August’s back was rigid as he stood in the doorway. My father’s face was visible over August’s shoulder. My breath caught at the sight of him. He looked a mess. More of a mess than I even felt.
His face was unshaven and covered in stubble. He was pale, and purple shadowed his dark eyes. He wore a dress shirt but it was untucked and rumpled. I had never seen him like this before, not even when Delainey died.
“Daddy?” The word left my lips as a breathy squeak.
My father’s eyes cut to me and widened. His shoulders sagged with relief. “Emersyn,” he said. “Are you okay?”
August looked at me from over his shoulder, not moving his body from where it blocked the doorway.
I wasn’t sure how to answer his question, so I ignored it. “What are you doing here?”
My father’s brows narrowed. “I needed to see you. I needed to know that you were okay.”
My spine stiffened. My chest burned, laced with my newly unbound emotions. They ricocheted around inside me, almost making me nauseous. There wasn’t one thing I could focus on. Normally, it was the anger I clung to when I thought of my father, but there were so many. There was concern at how much thinner his body looked after only a week. There was hope that he truly cared about me. And there was that all-too familiar hatred for everything my siblings and I had been put through under his roof.
I couldn’t fight the tears that surfaced to my eyes, blurring his form in my vision.
“Why?” I choked out. “Why do you act like you care about me?”
I thought he took a step closer, but August wouldn’t move, his body a shield between my father and me.
“Idocare about you. You’re my daughter, Emersyn. You’re my—my little girl.” His voice sounded as thick and unsteady as mine.
A fresh cascade of tears rolled down my cheeks as I shook my head. “But you never cared then. You never cared when I was actually little and my mother starved me as a form of ‘discipline.’”
My lungs seized on a deep breath, and I smeared away the wetness from my eyes with the backs of my hands.
The silence he fell into was deafening. I sniffed, pinning him with a stare that I refused to relent.
His eyes were wide and horrified. His mouth was tight and brow pinched, as if he were in pain.
“Emersyn.” He said my name on a sigh of sadness. “I know I wasn’t a good father to you. I never measured up. I didn’t—I didn’t protect you like I should have.” His voice broke, and a crack formed in my heart.
“Then why didn’t you?” I spat. “Why didn’t you protect me? Protect us?”
“Because I didn’t want to see it,” he hissed. “I didn’t want to believe that the woman I loved, the mother of my children, could ever hurt them.” Shame and guilt coated his words like poison.
I shook my head, because hearing him saying it was like cracking open my chest and yanking out my heart with bare hands.
