Page 70 of Barbed Wire Fences
“Jael! Where are you going?” my mom shouts at my back as I yank the door open and storm out through the hallway, back into the thick July humidity.
When my feet hit the stones of the parking lot I bend in half, pressing my hands to my knee and heaving in a deep breath. But the heat is too much, my anger is too great, and it feels like I can’t get in any air.
“What are you doing?” she hisses from behind me like I’ve embarrassed her.
“I’m going back to my hotel,” I snap, turning to her slowly before backing away towards my car.
“Jael, he said he was sorry!” she says with a tone that almost borders on annoyance. As if I’m the one being unreasonable in this whole entire situation.
“Sorry for not being present!” I shout back, “Not sorry for the abuse. Not sorry for the way he was never present. Not sorry for being a shit father. What does sorry do for me in a letter? He’sdead. He waited until he wasdeadto apologize to me. And then when he apologized, he didn’t even say he was sorry for any of the things that he should have been sorry for!” I pinch the tip of my nose, trying to stop the tears that he doesn’t deserve.
“You know what I just realized, not being a present dad was a blessing to me, not something to apologize for because when he was present, it was a nightmare! My own personal hell!”
“What did you want him to say?” my mom shouts back as she places her hands on her hips. “He knew the end was coming, he was very sick, his liver was failing him.”
“He could have started with, ‘Hey Jael, sorry for screwing up your life and the shitty perception of men that I gave you that you'll carry into adulthood rendering you incapable of leaning on anyone else for help and feeling like you always have to handle everything on your own. Sorry for abusing you and your mother for years. Sorry for not contributing in any meaningful way financially, mentally, emotionally, or physically to your life! I messed up, and I realize that I can’t take back those years, but sorry?’”
My mother rolls her eyes. “Don’t blame him for your horrible taste in men.”
My mouth opens and closes but no sound comes out.
“You could have had things a lot worse,” she snaps, her lips set in a thin smirk.
“A lot worse!?” I shout back. “Going to school with bruises on my body in the thick of summer and being forced to wear long sleeves and jeans to cover themwasa lot worse. I don’t think it could get much worse!”
“You need to learn to get over your childhood,” my mother says, walking up to me and pressing the letter I left in the officeinto my chest with a hard shove. “You’re an adult now, start acting like one. I heard Rhett and Owen got into a fight at the construction site over you. You can’t play the victim for forever.”
I don’t touch the sheet of paper, acting as if it’s a dirty tissue that she’s handing me. I watch it drop from my chest and then slowly float towards the ground before resting in the gravel.
When I look at her again, this time I see nothing but a cold, heartless woman who I was right to cut out of my life years ago. And that’s when I realize that I’m much stronger than the girl that lived in that hellhole of a trailer, I just have to find a way to not let this ruin me.
“I don’t need to learn anything. You need to learn how to grow a backbone and admit, while you’re still alive, how you should have protected me, and you didn’t!” I shout after her as she throws her hands up in the air, waving goodbye pettily, before she slides into her car driving off.
I watch her taillights disappear as I stand there in utter shock and disbelief at the entire interaction I just had.
I draw in a shaky breath, in then out, reminding myself that none of that should have been surprising. She’s never seen things the way I did and maybe it’s because she was the adult in the situation and I was the child. Or maybe it’s because she’s just as emotionally immature as my therapist said she was.
I glance down at the letter now crumpled next to my foot on the asphalt. I know it’s a petty move, and my father and mother can’t see me, but I don’t care.
I press the heel of my wedged sandals into the paper, twisting it back and forth, the stones grinding beneath it until it tears slightly then tip my head up at the sky and shout.
“Fuck!”
Chapter 22 – Rhett
“What the hell?” I ask, alarmed, as I open my front door to find Jael wearing nothing but a bikini-top and denim shorts with tear-stained eyes, and mascara running down her face.
It’s four in the evening now, and the day we’d agreed to go on our date, but I wasn’t expecting her to be here already given we’d agreed for me to pick her up at the hotel in two more hours.
She stumbles forward with the movement of the door opening and I catch her in my arms easily before she falls onto her face. She reeks of vodka, and I realize instantly that the meeting she’d had planned today with her father’s lawyer and mother must have not gone well.
“What happened?’ I growl as her hands reach out to cling on to my shirt. She stands up, steadying herself enough before she reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a crumpled note, pressing it into my chest firmly.
“Read for yourself the great final words of Larry Braddock,” she slurs.
Her tone is dripping with sarcasm and pain, and her eyes are full of sadness. It guts me to see her like this and at the same time, makes me want to burn the world down for her and take revenge on every person who’s ever hurt her.
I take the note from her hand, unfold it and exhale a breath to read what he wrote.
