“Why did Heath leave?” I had demanded of my father that afternoon when I had realized that he was gone and I had no way to reach him.
We were in the kitchen, a tired room of sixty-year-old cabinets and almost equally ancient appliances. The curtain on the window had been there when my parents had moved in back in the eighties, and it was yellow with bunches of grapes on it. It was like everything in our house- faded. Dad had asked me to fix him something to eat. I was slapping around the bread, the mustard, the cheese. At that point I was still angry. It hadn’t set in, the hurt, the pain. The loneliness.
“He turned eighteen, Cat. He aged out of foster care. He was allowed to leave whenever he wanted.”
Dad was leaning against the counter, using the crook of his elbow on his bad arm to hold a beer can. With his good hand he popped the top.
“He wouldn’t have left without telling me unless there was a reason,” I insisted. I was wearing a bikini and shorts because Heath and I had plans to go out on the fishing boat. We had plans. He wouldn’t just leave. I quickly spread the mustard over the bread.
One of our new fosters, Tiffany, came wandering in, chewing the ends of her hair. “Is that for me?”
“No. Make your own sandwich,” I said, rudely.
“Caitlyn.” My father frowned at me.
I instantly felt tears in my eyes. Tiffany was tiny and malnourished and I was pretty sure somewhere in her history she’d been abused because if you moved quickly around her she winced. She was about twelve and had big brown eyes. I couldn’t take my anger out on her, of all people.
“I’m sorry.”
“S’okay.” She came toward me, but she gave my father a wide berth. “Can I just have a piece of cheese?”
“Sure.” I put the cheese on a slice of bread and handed it to her. She left the room again, biting it.
I put the knife down and bent over, suddenly feeling like I couldn’t breathe. “Daddy…” a sob choked out of me.
“Hey.” He came over and set his beer down, then put his arm around me. “Baby, it’s okay. Someday, you’ll be glad he left. Not today. Not tomorrow. But sometime when you’re living a good life with a nice guy, you’ll recognize he did you a favor.”
I scoffed, wiping my eyes on his T-shirt. “There’s no way.”
“Guys like him are emotionally unstable. They suck you in and don’t let go and trust me, you don’t want to live like that.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I married your mother. That’s what I know about it.” His voice was hoarse. “I love her. And I can never leave her. But she’ll never love me the way I need.”
He’d never spoken about my mother before. Not like that.
I froze, not sure what to say. He kissed the top of my head.
“There’s a better future out there for you, baby. You just have to be brave enough to take it.”
It was great advice.
I wished, lying there in my small room in the sorority house, that I could ask him for advice again. That I could cry against his shirt.
But I couldn’t.
Because my father was dead.
It occurred to me on Sunday that Heath had to know my father had died. He hadn’t asked me about him. Only my mother. He’d been close enough to my dad, had liked him genuinely. My father had felt the same way about him, despite his advice to me. He had liked Heath well enough as a person, he just hadn’t necessarily loved Heath with his daughter.
So Heath would have asked, I was sure of it, if he thought my dad was alive. He must know that eighteen months earlier my dad had a heart attack. The question was how.
I slept late, my head still pounding when I woke up, my sinuses swollen. I might not have even woken up when I did if Ethan hadn’t called. We had a groggy five minute conversation where I said “Uh huh,” a lot and yawned repeatedly.
“Go back to sleep, baby,” he said finally, sounding amused. “I’ll call you later.”
“No, it’s fine,” I protested, trying to sit up. I had water somewhere. “It’s almost noon. I need to get up.”
“What do you have going on today?”
Shit. Only meeting my ex-boyfriend at his apartment. “Nothing, just studying. I have that econ midterm this week.” I yawned again.
“You sound so cute and sleepy I want to kiss your face.”
“I look like shit. I think I’m getting a cold.”
“Aw, that sucks. Do you want to skip dinner with my parents then? I can just come over to your place and we can hang out tonight.”
Right. Dinner with his parents to tell them about our engagement. I was so not up for that. “Yeah, maybe that would be better next weekend. I don’t want to look all glum when we’re telling them our good news.”
He laughed. “Probably not something that will instill confidence in them, no. Okay, I’ll call my mom.”
“I’m sorry.” I leaned against my wall, feeling guilty.
“Don’t worry about it. You can’t time a virus. I’ll call you later. I can’t wait to see you and my ring on your finger.”
Absently, I glanced down at my finger. Dang it, where was the ring? I’d taken it off the night before, worried it would pop off during sleeping, but now I couldn’t remember where I’d put it. Glancing around, I spotted it on my nightstand. Thank God. I gave an audible sigh. “I can’t wait to see you too,” I said, voice hoarse.
After we hung up, I found my water bottle and sucked half of it down. Then I called Tiffany. That September, after Heath left, she and I had developed a quiet friendship. We’d both been bruised emotionally and I had felt guilty over snapping at her. She’d inspired protectiveness in me, and it had been humbling to realize that while I didn’t have a perfect life, I still had it pretty damn good compared to a lot of kids, Tiffany included. She’d been bounced from one crappy situation to another after being abandoned by her mother.
She’d stayed with us eighteen months until her grandmother had requested custody and during that time we’d gotten close enough that I’d kept in touch. She was still only seventeen but she was wise beyond her years.
And she was the only person I was in touch with who knew the truth about my past.
“Guess who I saw?” I asked her after we exchanged greetings.
“Beyonce.”
“Beyonce? No.” I rolled my eyes. Because Beyonce would be hanging out in Orono, Maine. “Heath.”