Chapter 8 - What My Father Didn't Deny
Dad showed up at my apartment on Thursday morning carrying a grocery bag of oranges. He used to bring them when I was a child, after he'd forgotten an important day. I hadn't noticed the pattern until I was old enough to buy my own fruit.
“I know you hate these,” he said.
“I don't hate oranges.”
“You hate the way I use them.”
That startled me more than another apology would have. I invited him into my small living room and made tea. His eyes moved over the furniture, the plants I'd kept alive, the framed photograph of my mother Ruth laughing beside a badly frosted birthday cake. He had never seen this apartment. I'd lived here four years.
“I should've come sooner,” he said.
“Yes.”
He sat. “Vanessa says you've turned everyone against her.”
“Is that why you're here?”
“No. I came because I told her you wouldn't be at the family table before she ever moved the chair.”
I put down the kettle. “You agreed?”
“She told me the investors believed you'd moved on. I said I didn't want to start a fight at the wedding. She said there was an easy way to avoid one.”
“By hiding me near the dishwasher.”
“I didn't know she'd put you there.”
“But you knew I'd be moved.”
He nodded. It would have been easier, in a way, if he'd lied again. The truth gave me nowhere to put the hope I'd been saving.
“Why didn't you say anything when Grandma stood?”
“Because I'd already chosen the wrong thing, and I was ashamed.”
“You weren't too ashamed to let me walk out alone.”
He looked at the rug. “No.”
My mother and Dad had divorced when I was six. Three years later he married Vanessa's mother, Elise, a school librarian whose laugh could fill a parking lot. Elise had never asked me to call her Mom. She kept my mother's birthday on the calendar, helped me bake Ruth's favorite pie, and told Vanessa, when we were little, that love was not measured in halves. When Ruth died, Elise came to the hospital before Dad did.
After Elise passed away seven years ago, Dad and Vanessa had begun speaking as though the Blue Lantern belonged to their smaller, more photogenic family. I had stayed at the stove and let silence become a job description.
“I think I made you the dependable one so I didn't have to look at how much I asked of you,” Dad said now.
“You made Vanessa the fragile one so you didn't have to tell her no.”
He winced. “You're right.”
“Being right isn't making me feel better.”
He reached for an orange, then seemed to think better of it. “What can I do?”
“Give Danielle all the records. Tell the staff you signed the transition and failed to inform them. And don't ask me to protect Vanessa from the consequences.”
“I can do that.”
“Then do it before you apologize again.”
Dad left the oranges on the counter. I didn't throw them away. They were food, not forgiveness.
At the diner that afternoon, we held a staff meeting. Dad stood beside the coffee machine with a printed copy of the Aster schedule and admitted he'd signed it without circulating the terms. No one applauded. Keisha asked whether she would still have health coverage. Eddie asked who would be responsible for overtime. Calvin, who worked weekends, wanted to know whether the free employee meal was truly ending.
“I can't answer everything today,” Dad said. “I'll get written answers.”
“From Aster?” Eddie asked.
“And from our own records.”
I watched the staff take that in. They had earned facts, not heroic promises. Afterward, Keisha stopped beside me. “I thought you and Richard were the same voice.”
“We should've been speaking in the same room,” I said.
Vanessa arrived after the meeting, breathless from a call with Claire. Dad was alone in the office when she cornered him, but the door stood open.
“You told them?” she demanded.
“They needed to know.”
“We're twenty-four hours from a financing deadline.”
“They needed to know before that too.”
She came out and found me by the prep sink. “Did you make him do that?”
“He chose to tell them.”
“He never chooses anything when you're in the room. He just tries to keep you from being disappointed.”
I almost answered with every birthday, every forgotten school concert, every time I'd worked a holiday because Vanessa had plans. Instead I asked, “What's the financing deadline?”
She stopped. “Why?”
“Because if the business needs money, we need to know when.”
“Claire wants the documents signed by tomorrow afternoon. Otherwise she's out.”
“Are you prepared to show her accurate numbers?”
“She's not asking for your opinion.”
“That's not what I asked.”
Vanessa stared at me as though she'd forgotten there were ways for me to stay in an argument without raising my voice. “You have always had an answer for everything.”
“No. I have a lot of questions. Nobody liked it when I started asking them.”
Her phone rang, and she let it ring. For the first time all week, we stood together without anyone else watching. She looked tired under her expensive makeup.
“When we were kids,” she said, “Grandma would send you to the kitchen because she trusted you. She'd tell me to go play.”
“She sent me to peel potatoes because I was older.”
“She gave you the keys. She gave me a coloring book.”
“You could have asked her for keys.”
“I wanted someone to hand them to me.”
That was the most honest thing Vanessa had said since the wedding. I wanted to tell her she could still earn a set. Then her jaw tightened and the moment closed.
“I'm not losing everything because you need an apology,” she said.
May you like
“Neither am I,” I replied.
She left. Eddie emerged from the freezer, holding a supplier notice. Our account had been suspended pending payment, effective immediately. Unless we found an affordable way to buy ingredients, Friday's kitchen would open with empty shelves.
