“Language, CJ. I’m still your father, and—”
“You haven’t been my father in almost a year! The therapist happens to suggest I ‘go away’ for the summer, and boom! Bye, CJ!” He raises his hand in protest, but before he can utter a word, I immediately reload and start firing again. “I take that back. There was no good-bye, was there? Just you burning rubber out the driveway at the market. You couldn’t wait to get rid of me!”
The crowd’s eyes bore into our scene, sending shivers down my spine. The emotional whirlwind wraps me in so many threads of anger and accusation, I scream like a banshee, putting our dirty laundry on blast for the world to see. I glance over my shoulder, connecting with more than ten sets of eyeballs that magically divert to other items of interest in a second. Dad grabs my shoulders and pulls me sideways, physically manipulating my back to the onlookers.
“That’s not true, CJ. I never wanted to get rid of you. It’s just—”
“It’s because I messed up.” Tears sting my eyelids, puddling on my lower lashes. “I know I did, Dad, so you can quit blaming me now. Because I blame myself. For everything.”
His fingers squeeze hard around my arms. His eyes are shadowed and sullen, like the skies before a storm. “It’s nothing like that. You can’t see—”
“Then tell me what I missed. You exiled me to Edisto with Memaw, the other person in your life you threw away.” Words rolls off my tongue as quickly as they formulate in my brain. No filter, and absolutely no regard for subjects that may or may not be off limits. “And what’s with that, by the way? What’s Memaw done so wrong that you’ve shut her out for an entire decade? Explain it to me, because I’m so interested to see how it’s all a simple misunderstanding.”
“I can’t tell you that, because it wasn’t a misunderstanding.” His voice is calm, almost thoughtful, but I’m so past buying anymore of his excuses. I yank away from his grasp, slide my computer bag back on my shoulder, and turn to walk away when he says something that stops me cold. “It was regret and fear and my own damn foolish pride. You should know all about it, CJ. You inherited that from me.”
He might as well have chucked a brick at my back. His words hit me square between the shoulder blades, shooting pain across each limb. I spin back to face him as he stands there, swiping his hand back and forth over his brow.
“I shut Memaw out intentionally. I was mad at her for moving on so quickly after Grandpa. You’re probably too young to remember his funeral, but—”
“I remember everything.” My eyes lock with Dad’s. “Memaw and Grandpa, his funeral, when you called Memaw crazy and said she should be committed.”
“Oh. I never realized you heard all that.” For the first time, shame crosses his face as he pinches his lips and glances at his shoes. “It’s just, the damn thing was more like a party than a funeral for a well-respected Charleston businessman. I mean, what did all of Grandpa’s colleagues think when they arrived at a cocktail party instead of a conservative time to focus on—”
“On what, Dad? The grief? The loss? You and I both know how that works out. But that’s not Memaw. And it wasn’t Grandpa, either.” I step closer to Dad, leaning my head to the side to catch his gaze. “The party was his request and so was her selling the house and moving out to the island so soon afterwards. Did you even talk to her about it?”
“No. I didn’t.” He spits the words out, but then quickly retracts the angry edge of his words to a more somber tone. “I felt disrespected, and I reacted by shutting her out. The same way I shut you out, CJ, when the anger consumed me after the accident.”
Tears sting my eyelids at his admission. I’d been right all along. “I know you hate me because I killed Mama and Noli-Belle.”
His eyes snap to mine, narrowed and stormy, and his jaw drops ever so slightly as he shakes his head. “I’ve never thought that. I was mad at myself. I sent you to Memaw’s so I wouldn’t hurt you anymore.”
His words are like a puzzle I can’t piece together. Why would he ever be mad at himself? He wasn’t even there when the accident happened. “I don’t get it,” I mumble as a slight tremble courses over my skin in response to my frayed nerves.
He walks over and grabs both my shoulders, his fingertips pressing into my skin with enough force to keep my attention firmly grounded on him. “We’re too much alike, CJ.”
My anger coils inside. The hurt from his absence over the past year tastes bitter in my mouth. “I’m nothing like you.”
Dad throws his head back, laughing. The sound of it makes me want to lash out. Slap him. Push him away the way he did to me. “There’s a reason Mama always called you my clone. Same auburn hair. Same freckles. Same piss-poor attitude.” He tilts his head toward me and arches his eyebrows as if to say amiright? before continuing. “We’re runners. We don’t face things head-on. Instead, we absorb them, bury our heads in the sand, strap the blame on our own backs, and shut everyone else out.”
There’s validity in his words, even if I can’t admit that to him. I shove his hands off my shoulders and readjust the strap of my duffel across my chest, stepping backward. “Whatever.”
“Time to quit running.”
“Like you have any right to say that to me!”
“I didn’t before, but I’ve changed this summer. I thought you had too.”
I did change—in some respects—but I’m not ready to face my part in my mama’s and sister’s deaths. “Guess not. Nothing’s changed.”
Dad grabs my suitcases with each hand then leans in close, his nose nearly touching mine. “Everything’s changed, CJ, and we have a lot to talk about. Mama’d want us to figure this out, and that’s what we’re gonna do. Right now.”
Okay, so he’s right. Everything has changed. But it’s a bittersweet truth, because the people responsible for that change are no longer part of my life.
Up ahead, on the right, the green street sign glints in the fading afternoon sun. Oak-lined Kensington Avenue—with all its southern charms and wrap-around porches and neighborhood block parties and backyard barbecues—was an idyllic place to grow up and call home.
Only it doesn’t feel like home anymore.
Instead of slowing down to turn, Dad accelerates past our street toward the rural stretches of highway beyond the city limits.
“Where are we going?” My voice trembles as I eyeball Dad, who keeps his focus glued to the road. He doesn’t answer, only kneads the steering wheel. His chin tucks back to his throat and his forehead angles toward the windshield as if he’s running headlong into something. The Explorer jolts ahead, the engine purring louder as the speedometer needle progresses.
“Dad,” I ask again through gritted teeth. “Where are we going?”
“You know where we’re going.”
No. I don’t take this route anymore. Ever.
Oh God. He’s taking me to that grassy pasture where I’d hung upside-down, still strapped in my seatbelt while Mama and Noli-Belle died in front of me. I promised myself that night when the firemen finally cut me free that I’d never, ever go back there. Now, he has the audacity to drag me here against my will. My fingers clasp the door handle as I consider tucking and rolling out the side of the car. But that won’t happen. He knows it, and I know it. Fear pins me to the seat.
That is until the familiar stretch of road comes into sight, and my switch flips. Paralyzing fear gives way to explosive anger. My hands grapple with the seatbelt as a high-pitched whirring crams in my brain. I can’t come back here. I won’t. And the only way to stop that is by stopping Dad. I unstrap myself and reach toward him—to choke him or knock him out of the way, I have no idea—but his arm slams against my chest, trapping me against the vinyl interior.
“This is for your own good!”
“I hate you! I really hate you!”
The Explorer pulls slowly onto the shoulder, gravel crunching beneath the tires. My fingers rake over his skin, leaving red raised streaks in their wake. He’s unfazed, his hold strong and unre
lenting, while I squirm like a worm on a fishhook.
He shifts to park, then leans across the console to finagle his grip securely on my shoulders. “You don’t hate me. You’re scared.”
“I do hate you…for bringing me here!” My fingers once again wrap around the door handle, and with a sharp pull, the door flails open. Halfway dumped onto the grass, I wrench away from his grip and scramble to my feet in a full sprint toward the tree line opposite the accident scene. But Dad, whose legs are twice as long as mine, catches up easily, grabs my arm, and jerks me back to his chest. I pummel my fists against his shirt with an endless stream of profanities and garbled words, but as the urgency burning in my chest dissolves, the screams morph into uncontrollable sobs. My shoulders heave under the heft of his arms. My face smooshes into the cottony folds of his polo, wet with tears.
In the background, a vague recognition registers in my brain that he’s moving me somewhere, maneuvering toward another location, and my feet fumble along at his guidance. It’s betrayal at every step. When we stop, the quiet blankets us as if we’re in a vacuum. The only sound being my own heartbeat echoing in my head, a hollow thump-thump-thump against my eardrums.
Dad pushes me back but keeps his fingers thrust firmly into my biceps. He puts some space between us, and the hot August breeze filters through the gap. “Open your eyes.”
The sobs subside, but tears continue to squeeze out the corners of my tightly-clamped eyes. After spending the last year trying to purge my brain of the memories of this place, there is no way in hell I am going to open them up and usher all the pain back in.
“No.” The word doesn’t come out right. It’s quiet and breathy, as if there’s not enough air in my lungs to actually formulate the sound. I clamp my hands over my face, vigorously shaking my head from side to side the way I did as a child in the throes of a tantrum. “I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
A shudder tears up my spine. Never mind the fact we’re standing on cursed ground, the very place half our family died. Sure, let’s play semantics instead. That makes perfect sense.
“There’s a difference, CJ,” he continues. His voice is heavy, and every word comes out deliberately, as if there’s supposed to be a period after each one.
“You brought me here for an English lesson?” My weak voice is strong and loud again, until I’m screaming at him through clenched teeth. My fists are balled at my temples.
But despite my teeter-totter walk along the thin edge of falling the freak apart, Dad remains calm. Too calm. Too patient. He’s so unlike the man who left me behind a few months ago. “You won’t open your eyes because the reality scares you. But you have to. You can only move on when you acknowledge the truth…and then accept it.”
Accept it. He’s says it like it’s synonymous with coming to terms with a failing grade or one of those über-horrible haircuts where they totally do the opposite of what you’re expecting. But how can I accept the fact Mama and Noli-Belle are dead—and even worse, that I killed them?
I quit writhing in his grip. His fingers relax as he moves one hand to my chin, cupping it and tilting my face towards his. “Look at me.”
A little peek and the waning sunlight floods in, swathing Dad’s face in coppery softness. It’s like looking in a mirror. We’re so much alike, more than the golden-brown freckles dotting the bridge of our noses or the knotted wisps of auburn hair. More than I’ve ever realized before.
“I’m sorry. If only I’d done things different, they might still be here.”
“You have to stop this—”
“I read the accident report,” I mumble, looking at the ground. “I overcorrected. We wouldn’t have flipped into that tree if—”
“See?” He shakes his finger in my face. When I glance up, his lips spread into a grin. “That right there tells me all I need to know.”
Grief has completely consumed his rational brain, which explains the changes I sense in him—the weird calm then and the illogical exuberance now. His gaze locks on mine. His eyes spread so wide I’m nervous. A maniacal smile is plastered on his face.
“I don’t underst—”
“If.”
“If what?”
“You said ‘we wouldn’t have flipped if.’ That’s wrong thinking, CJ. There is no if. There’s only what actually happened. The rest is conjecture we can’t possibly know.”
This all sounds too familiar. It’s the same old song-and-dance, only this time it’s coming from Dad’s mouth and not my shrink-extraordinaire, Dr. Zhou. “That’s therapy talk, Dad. The truth is if I hadn’t overcorrected, then we wouldn’t have flipped into that tree.”
“So that’s what this all boils down to in your mind?” He tilts his head and threads his arms across his chest. “Well then, think about this: If I wasn’t tired from work, then I would’ve been driving, and this would be a non-issue.” He pauses and shrugs. “And for that matter, if my boss hadn’t been a real jerk that day, then maybe I wouldn’t have been so worn out. And if he hadn’t been in the throes of a bitter divorce, then maybe he wouldn’t have been in such a bad mood. So, if I’m calculating this right, my boss’s ex-wife is the one who’s really responsible for the wreck, right?”
“Quit being ridiculous, Dad.”
“Don’t you get it? You and I have spent nearly a year blaming ourselves for what happened when the honest-to-God truth is no one’s to blame. It was an accident, and sometimes an accident is just that—an elaborate concoction of events that converge into tragedy. No one ever wanted this to happen. Not you. Not me.” He hesitates, clearing his throat, before he tacks on one last name. “Not even Jacob Lanford.”
The mention of his name, the way Dad casually drops it into the conversation, is a bomb ready to detonate. An involuntary scowl crimps the edges of my lips as I spit out his name. “Jacob? You mean Mr. Lanford, the one who ran us off the road?”
The first time I’d seen him had been the only time. He knelt on the ground outside my shattered window, yelling about how he’d called for help and telling me everything would be okay. He was wrong, and I never saw him again. The police arrived and ushered him away. Two days later, when he was officially charged with vehicular homicide, I refused to watch the local broadcasts or look at the online news, terrified of seeing his face again. Looking into the eyes of the man whose carelessness set the entire tragedy in motion and not physically imploding was an impossibility for me. If there’s anyone I hate more than myself for what happened, it’s him.
“It was an accident.”
Seriously? Dad is making excuses for him? “Yeah, he accidentally texted while he was driving. Oops, the phone fell right into his hand. I wonder how many times that’d happened before?”
“Never, actually.”
I snort, shaking my head. “Yeah…right.”
“No, really. He’d never done it before.”
“And how would you know?”
“Because I talked to him. I went to see him.”
His words ignite in me like a firecracker, exploding sparks in every direction. I’m sure they’ll shoot from my eyes and burn Dad to a crisp. “You what?”
“I had to. I needed to hear what he had to say, and believe me, it changed things.”
“It changes nothing!” I lunge at him, pounding my fists into his chest, until a dizzying array of stars swirl through my line of sight. I have to squat to keep my balance.
A shiver crawls through me as the memories filter in. The bright set of headlights in our lane as we entered the curve. The complete sense of slow motion when the awful realization hit just a split-second before the crunch of the fender. The weird quiet when the car was flipping that allowed me to concentrate on minute details, like how a lipstick tube from Mama’s purse bounced on the dash or the exact number of rollovers we endured. I just kept repeating to myself the entire time: dirt, dirt, dirt, sky, sky, sky. Three times, ending with a deafening crunch of metal slicing through the silence. My life never flashed befor
e my eyes.
But maybe that’s because I wasn’t the one dying.
Dad continues, his voice still easy and measured. “Jacob has two daughters, four years apart like you and your sister were. The youngest one has a lot of health problems, and on the night of the accident, his wife had called him in a panic because she was having a seizure. He was on his way home when he sideswiped y’all.”
Well, he sounds like the world’s-greatest-father-material for sure. Imagine his poor wife having to track him down to update him on their sick daughter. “If she was so sick, why wasn’t he at home? And why was a stupid text more important than his family?”
Dad squats beside me and runs his hand down my arm with a chuckle. “You sound like I did a couple months ago, but it’s not fair to make assumptions. Medical bills were piling up, so he took on a second job. The text was from his wife telling him the paramedics had arrived.”
So maybe Jacob Lanford was a good father—a great one—who made a bad decision. But I can’t accept fate for what it is. My mind can’t understand how bad things happen to good people, and it’s only too easy to believe it must all be the result of something nefarious.
But it’s not.
Mama was right all those years ago when I caught her in the bathroom, tissues smashed over her face as she sobbed into them. As a pediatric nurse, she’d taken care of hundreds of kids, but every time one got a terminal diagnosis, she’d hole herself away for a few hours. Occupational hazards of a woman who cared too much for those around her. It was her best and worst feature all rolled into one. We knew to let her have her space, but that night I walked in and put my arms around her. That’s when she said it, the very piece of wisdom running through my head now. “You can’t make sense of the senseless, CJ. Bad things happen, and we may never know why. It’s how we move forward that matters.”
As Much As I Ever Could Page 23
