by Cecy Robson
“Hello, Daddy,” I say.
I’m not certain he hears me. My voice is softer than the way Momma spoke.
Dark rimmed eyes scan my face. My clothes are neither flashy like I wear out to dinner with Hale nor conservative enough for church. They speak of how young I still look and how successful I became, despite how badly my father wished for my downfall.
Because I was bad.
Because I was disrespectful.
Because I wasn’t the boy he’d wanted.
Instead, I was a girl he couldn’t submit to his will, who became the woman who’d never succumb.
“I always knew you’d come back,” he says.
My entire body bristles, prepared for a fight I don’t want to have.
Until he smiles.
The corners of his mouth lace with genuine humor. I’m not sure how to take it. I steel myself for bitter words he’ll lash like a whip to scar me more, so I’ll never heal.
He starts laughing, loudly. It’s hard enough to cause him pain, and given his delicate condition, hard enough to crack his sternum.
He’s trying to be funny. With me.
Regardless of how he treated me, there was a side of him that drew friends and made him popular. “Your father is the funniest man I know,” Tim Robinson, our accountant, once told me.
My father was famous for being quick and clever, often bragging how his silver tongue was what had charmed my mother. It wasn’t a side I experienced firsthand. Until now.
My father is joking with me on his deathbed.
That silver tongue was one of the many things I’d inherited from him. I don’t think he noticed, unless it was directed at him. Then it wouldn’t cause him to laugh, but rather spur his anger and vengeance.
I battle with whether I should come back with something just as funny or maybe something wicked. No one has to tell me my father’s number is up. By the looks of it, death is mere hours away.
This is my final opportunity to be with him. I could leave on good terms or pound the last nail on the coffin, dramatizing the spoils of our horrible relationship. I can’t stomach either. I can’t yell at this frail man and demand to know why I was never good enough, why I had to be what he wanted in order for him to love me. I can’t even bring myself to say I forgive you. So, I say the only thing I can.
“I’m here like you asked, Daddy.”
“You’re not scrawny anymore, Becca June.”
It’s an odd thing to say. I always had curves. But the last time he saw me, I still had a thin figure of an athletic twenty-two-year-old. Maybe, like me, he’s struggling for things to say.
“No, sir, I’m not.”
“What’re you doing now?” he asks. “You married? Got yourself a husband and kids?” He gives me the once over only my father can. “Someone taking care of you?”
I almost mention Hale. But the only thing Hale takes care of is my heart and that’s not what my father is asking. “I’m not married. I don’t have children. I support myself, sir.”
My tone is respectful, the same way it would’ve been when I was a teen and wanted to make a point or explain what I needed. Back then, regardless of how softly and intelligently I spoke, depending on his mood, he’d either grant me what I wanted or scream at me for asking.
Old habits die hard. It takes everything I have not to flinch, expecting those cruel words or an inevitable blow.
“No one would have you?” he asks, frowning.
I should leave in a huff right now, turn on my heel so my back is the last thing he sees. Instead, I laugh. This man is honestly stunned some prince on horseback hasn’t picked me up.
“Sir, there were plenty of men who wanted me. I just didn’t want them.”
“You one of dem lesbians now, girl?”
My smile falters. “No. There just hasn’t been anyone yet.” That’s a lie. But I don’t want to bring Hale into this. I won’t risk Daddy putting him down.
My gaze travels to the window, where the heavy curtains swallow any sunlight that dares to bleed into the room. Here, in my parents’ room, only darkness welcomes darkness.
When I was little, I often looked away from my father, too scared to face him. When I stopped looking away, that’s when things really changed between us and the resentment and tension soared to unstoppable heights, leaving everyone else walking on eggshells until the next battle began.
I turn back to him. Only a second or so passed. It wasn’t enough for that feeling squeezing my chest to lessen. If anything, I receive an extra harsh churn when I look back upon his face. There’s nothing left of the strong and imposing man I knew. But even though he looks weak and feeble, he’s still that man capable of causing harm.
“Do you know the Cougars?”
Wrinkled eyelids tent over his hazy irises. “Of course, I do. They’re the best team in the league. Some big shot went in a few years ago and shook everything up, cleaning up a reputation they’d all turned to shit.” He frowns. “Why? You that guy’s secretary or something?”
“No, daddy. I’m the guy who saved the Cougars. I’m the one who shook everything up.”
He makes a face. “You weren’t stupid with all that money your grandmother left you, were you? When you spent it all at once, I thought you’d gone and messed up everything she tried to do for you.” He huffs. “At least you did right by her and what she gave you.”
His comments confuse me. I’d used the money Nana June left me to pay for college. There was plenty left over. When I left, I turned it over to Momma. It was her mother’s money, after all, and there was always a part of me who felt Momma needed it more than I did.
“I used it for my education,” I say, not wanting to rat Momma out. She’d obviously hidden it from Daddy. “The rest of my success came from hard work.” I cross my legs. “You never heard about me with the Cougars? Never read about me in the paper or saw me on TV?”
“Naw, I didn’t want to hear about you. Nothing good, anyway, only the bad.”
I frown, trying to understand how he can speak to me like nothing was ever wrong between us and then say something like that. “Why?”
His eyes moisten and it becomes the inevitable death of me. “So you could come back here, to me, to your family, Becca June.”
A tear dribbles from his left eye, followed by another.
The sour taste leaves my stomach, crackling like a dying ember until it reaches my throat and causes my eyes to sting beyond measure.
“You don’t get it, do you, girl?” he accuses. “You never have. You were supposed to need me. You were supposed to beg me for advice, seek me out so I could guide you—so I could make you into the lady you were destined to be.”
He coughs, the cacophony of words too much for his weakened state. “You were supposed to need me,” he says again. “I was supposed to be your hero. Just like every father dreams he can be.”
Those giant pieces of cinderblock I’d protected my heart with each time we’d fought, that beautiful indestructible wall I’d created to protect myself against his next blow or terrible word, cracks, falling apart and littering the ground.
It’s not an immediate destruction. No, my walls were stronger than that. But as they fall, piece by piece, behind it, the light bathed in forgiveness shines a brilliant light.
“You wanted to be my hero?” I stammer.
“Was that too much for a father to ask?”
“Then why did you treat me like you did?” I ask, my voice splintering. “Why did you hit me? Why couldn’t you just be kind? Why did everything have to be so hard?”
“I was trying to make you into what you needed to be,” he says, those awful tears falling with what remains of my walls. “The best way I knew how. Even if it wasn’t your way.”
“I was a good girl, Daddy—”
“Because I made you that way. Because you were too afraid not to be.”
He was right, but the harshness he used and the way
he went about it was so wrong.
“Come here, child,” he says, his rusty voice groaning from the effort it takes him to speak.
I lean in, swallowing hard when his weathered and deeply wrinkled hand cups my face. His hands are cold, bone white, as opposed to bronzed by the summer sun. Blue veins run across them, sinking into the empty pockets near his knuckles where the skin sticks firmly against the bone.
I sob for all the years I missed that could’ve been good if we’d both tried a little harder. Had I not been so quick to judge and more easy-going, maybe he would have been more willing to listen.
Daddy lets me cry, allowing me to release my pain until I calm and his strength rebuilds enough to speak.
“Becca June, I’ve made mistakes. I’m not so proud to think I’m perfect. But when it comes to you, I did the best job I could.” This time, he’s the one openly weeping. “But it wasn’t good enough, was it?”
“Oh, Daddy,” I say. What’s left of my strength falls away, just like my carefully constructed wall.
“You left me. You left your momma,” he says. He shakes his head. “You’re still that damn selfish bitch you always have been.”
My tears evaporate from my eyes, my heart, from every cell of my being. The feeble old man I first saw, the one I pitied so badly I could barely meet his face, regains that rage I know and taps into that familiar cruelty.
“You’re exactly the trash I always feared you’d become.” He’s yelling, as loud as his vocal cords will allow. “You’re alone with no man, pretending to be something you are not. Successful?” He spits out. “If you didn’t look like you did, if you weren’t spreading your legs like you are, that football team would have nothing to do with you.”
He’s not done.
I am.
I stand on shaking limbs, almost losing my balance. I grasp the dining room chair to keep my feet and still my father screams.
“You’re a whore,” he says. “You’re nothing. No matter how bad I tried to save you—
you hear me, girl? That night, that was me leaving you!”
I abandon the room slowly, using the space separating me from the door to wipe my makeup smeared face. With all the care I can muster, I shut the door quietly behind me. It doesn’t quite muffle his screams, his rants, assuring me that everyone in the hall hears and heard the nasty and vicious remarks of his farewell.
The standoffish and perhaps mocking expressions I expect are not what greets me. Everyone present is aghast, horrified by the encounter and the indecencies my father continues to holler. Even Kirk, whose attention skips between me and the closed door, regards me with sympathy.
Everyone heard him. My only reprieve is that the reverend is mercifully gone.
My mother steps out of the room beside theirs, an armful of carefully folded towels tucked against her and her thin lips pressed into a line. “You shouldn’t have upset him like that. He needs his rest.”
My family’s eyes fly open, every woman present clasping her mouth. It takes everything in me not to lose my shit, my body quaking with the need to lash out. Matthew reaches for me as if fearing I’ll launch myself at my mother and beat her with my fists.
I don’t. Anything I do or say will harm me, not them.
If I scream at my dying father, no matter what vulgarities he throws my way, I’m the one who looks bad. I’ll be the black sheep who kicks him one last time, who smothers him with her filthy wool.
I refuse to take the bait from him or from her. So, I walk away. It’s the one thing I can do.
I don’t plan to stop. I don’t plan to return. They’ll bury him and all the darkness without me. But when I reach the top of the staircase, my mother’s final words hold me in place.
“He’s still your father,” she says.
Chapter Twenty
Hale
The dogs hurry to greet me when I open the door. Their tails wag as if it’s been days, not hours, since they last saw me. I pop the bag of barbecue on the counter and rub their fur.
“What’s wrong? Thought I wasn’t coming back? Thought I was leaving y’all?”
I almost laugh. How did I go from big boss with a bite back to a country boy with two furballs with no bite at all? But the laugh that stirs from greeting these pups and from finding a sense of peace with my family doesn’t quite come. Becca’s not answering my texts or calls.
“Our puppies,” as we’ve grown to call them, prance beside me as I open the back door to let them out. I check my phone again. There’s a text from Trin telling me Becca isn’t answering her, either. It does nothing to ease my worry. If she was called back to Charlotte, she would have sent a quick text.
I start to pocket my phone when it buzzes. My brief relief from thinking it’s finally Becca is quickly squashed.
It’s a text from Mason, urging me to call him right away.
I let the dogs in and call Mason. He picks up just as I spot the note Becca left on the counter.
“Hey,” Mason says. “I have incredible news for you.”
I barely hear his voice as my eyes focus on the note.
Momma called. Daddy is close to death. I have to go.
“Hale?” Mason says. “Are you there?”
“I can’t talk right now,” I say. I snag my keys and take off in a sprint toward the mud room, the dogs trailing me like they know something is wrong.
“Hale, it’s important.”
“Becca’s daddy’s dying. She’s with him now.”
There’s an abrupt silence and I almost think he disconnected. “Don’t go there, Hale. A fight is the last thing you need right now.”
I stop in the middle of setting the alarm. “Mason, remember what they did to her last time? What they put her through? Her father broke her nose and left her almost unconscious. Then he and her pussy cousins left her fucking bleeding on the sand. You think that brutality’s going to end just because he’s dying? With all her cousins there to do his fucking bidding?”
Mason hisses out a curse. “Take Callahan with you. Landon, too. Don’t be showing up there by yourself, Hale. There’s no telling what those fools will do when they see you.”
I disconnect and give up on the alarm, slamming my hand against the garage door opener. I don’t care what happens to me. All I care about is Becca and what they might do. Her cousins, I don’t think they would physically touch her. But they don’t have to throw hands to harm her. Her momma will be no help. And her daddy . . . just because he’s dying doesn’t mean he isn’t that same mean son of a bitch.
I reach for my driver’s side door when Becca’s Mercedes pulls up to the front of the house. My heart just about tanks into my stomach. I jog toward her, what little relief her sudden presence offers shooting out of my lungs in a pained exhale when I see her.
Her face is beet red and swollen. I can’t tell if she’s bruised or if her skin tone is due to how hard she’s crying. I’ve never her seen her like this. Those motherfuckers hurt her badly. I’m ready to rage, to find them.
I throw the door open the remainder of the way when she tries to step out and haul her to me. “What happened?” I ask.
She buries her face against my chest, gripping me as if I’m the only thing keeping her upright. I don’t know compassion. Not now. All I know is the need to avenge her.
I’m so terrified of what they did to her, the tenderness I demonstrate stuns me. I stroke away her tears and sweat-drenched hair. “Did they hurt you, baby?” I ask. “Did they touch you?”
I don’t ask if her father’s dead. These aren’t tears of pain that accompany grief. This is the agony of a battered spirit, something she didn’t deserve.
She tries to speak, but all that comes out are jumbled sounds and syllables that make no sense. I kiss her face and tuck her against me. Then, with as much care as I can, I reach for her keys and purse and lock her car.
I should take her in through the front. There’s more space there. But I go th
rough the garage and close it, setting the alarm as fast as I can.
The need to secure her inside, to make sure she’s safe from any possible harm, overwhelms me. Becca’s hurt, broken. I’ll be damned if I let anything else happen to her.
The dogs whine, circling us as I lead her inside and up to our bedroom. They’re frightened by what they sense in Becca. I am, too. It’s all I can do not to pay those people she calls her family a visit.
I sit her on the bed, kissing her head and wiping all the tears that fall. It takes her a long while to calm, long enough for the setting sun to crawl across the room and leave us with only a trickle of light.
Sam rests at my feet, quietly whining. Rosie alternates from hopping on the bed to jumping on the floor, until finally settling in front of Becca. It’s a bad sign that Becca has barely acknowledged her sweet pups. It’s also a bad sign that she can’t seem to let me go.
“I saw my father,” Becca finally says. “It was awful.”
I knew anything involving her family would be. But in my wildest dreams, I never would have guessed how bad, until she tells me.
Every word is like a physical blow. Every detail of the event is like something from the worst of dreams. What Becca describes isn’t an angry man. It’s a twisted man. A man so hateful and full of spite, he had to cast the last insult.
Wilton Shields couldn’t bring himself to leave this world peacefully with a kind thought or a chance at forgiveness. No, he used the moment to hurt his daughter and to make sure she’ll never forget it.
Damn him. Leaving Becca with this last memory of him was her daddy’s final ‘fuck you.’
In a way, he’s lucky he’s dying. If he wasn’t, I might kill him myself.
Mason had warned me not to go by myself. He wasn’t really afraid of what they would do. He was afraid of what I would do in response. Like me, Mason knew Becca’s daddy was incapable of gentleness, of thoughts meant to be kind, or a final act of forgiveness.
I don’t realize how tight I’m clutching Becca until I ease my hold. She doesn’t complain or struggle. She simply allows me to hold her in the way we both need.
