Page 103 of The Fall
“I don’t understand.” His voice drops, loses its usual confidence. “What did I do wrong?”
He didn’t do anything wrong, not really. He loved me the only way he knew how, through hockey, through my successes, through being my biggest fan even when I didn’t deserve it.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. You were a good dad. Youarea good dad. But I’ve been… I need—” I don’t know how to explain it.
I hear him shift, probably pacing the way he does when he’s working through a problem. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I need time.” My free hand grips the edge of the bed. “I need to work on myself. I need… I need to not be constantly worrying about disappointing you?—”
“Torey—”
“Dad.” I exhale. “I need to figure out who I am and what I want, and I can’t do that if I’m afraid I’m not going to measure up to the player or the son you want me to be. I need to figure my shit out. I need to stop performing and start… actually living.”
“I don’t— I don’t know what to say. You’re my son. I should have—” God, I can hear him wanting to scoop it all up and put me together again.
“It’s not your fault. You did everything you could,” I whisper.
His breathing fills the line. “I’ll do anything you need. I only want what’s best for you.”
“I know you do, but right now, what’s best is for me to learn how to stand on my own. I need to… to grow up. Right now, I need space, Dad. I need you to give me space to figure myself out.”
“For how long?”
The question is so simple, and so desperate. How long until his son comes back? How long until things go back to normal?
“I don’t know.”
My father’s breathing fills the silence between us. “Torey, I—I didn’t know you were struggling. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I knew you’d try to fix it. You’ve always tried to fix everything, but you can’t this time.”
My father has defined himself as my fiercest advocate for so long that I’m not sure he knows how to be anything else. For what feels like forever, he’s been the only positive voice in my life. And even when my game was rotting, it still meant everything to hear him say that I was amazing, that I was great, that I was his fantastic son.
“Okay.” He breathes out slowly. “What do you need me to do?”
“Be my dad,” I tell him. “And give me some space.”
Silence pulls between us, filled with twenty-three years of habits neither of us knows how to break. “Can I still text you?”
“Yes.” My fingertip traces the hotel bedspread’s pattern. “But not about hockey. Not about my stats or my minutes or what some analyst said. Tell me about your day,” I say. “Tell me about anything except hockey.”
“I can do that.” He pauses. “Torey? Are you going to be okay?”
I don’t have an answer that won’t worry him more. “I’m working on it.”
“That’s not—” He stops himself, and a swallow on the line cuts off whatever fix-it response was coming. “Okay. Okay, son. I miss you,” he says.
“I miss you, too.” And I do, so much. We were so close when I was little. He was my hero, and I was his, but we lost each other over the years. “But I need to do this. Please try to understand.”
“I’m trying.” His voice cracks on the second word, and I close my eyes against the sound of my father breaking. “I love you, Torey. No matter what.”
“I love you, too, Dad.”
Another pause stretches between us, filled with everything we don’t know how to say. The strain in his silence is him trying to hold onto this connection even as I’m asking him to let go. “Take care of yourself,” he finally says. “And when you’re ready—whenever that is—I’ll be here.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Goodbye, son.”
