you sent him away. You said you weren’t still mad at him but you are. You lied!”
“That has nothing to do with this. Look, this is adult stuff—”
“You always said we were a team.”
Her mom nodded slowly. “You’re right. We are a team. And I know you’re mad at me—”
“I’m not,” Bree said, her face hot and her skin itchy.
“You are and that’s okay. It’s okay to get mad at people sometimes. I’m not going to stop loving you if you get angry with me. And believe me, in a few years, we’ll probably be angry at each other quite a bit.”
“Why did you do it?” Bree asked, wiping her running nose on her sleeve. “Why did you have to send him away?”
“I had to make a decision about what was best for us—for both of us—where your father is concerned. I have to do what’s right for you even when you can’t understand that or don’t agree with it.”
Bree shook her head. “I don’t agree with it. I’ll never agree.”
Her mom sighed. “I have to make the best decisions I know how in order to protect you and help you grow into an independent, capable young woman. Look, I think your dad is trying and that’s great. Really,” she said, repeating it because that’s what her mom did when she was lying but pretending to be telling the truth. “But the fact is that we live here, our lives our here, our families, your friends and school and grandparents and our house and my job. We couldn’t just...take off and move to Seattle.”
“You could’ve told him you wanted him to stay here,” Bree insisted stubbornly.
“No,” her mom said with a short laugh. “I couldn’t. Hey, we got along fine without him before, didn’t we? It’s you and me, babe.”
“I guess,” Bree said. “Dad’s going to go back to Seattle and forget about me again, isn’t he?”
“You don’t know that,” her mom said, smoothing her hair back, and Bree leaned against her side.
“Maybe.” But Bree didn’t really believe it. Once again it was just going to be her and her mom.
And she wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
* * *
“I THOUGHT I’D FIND you here.”
Bree looked up from the book she was reading. Her dad stood over her, blocking the sun with his wide shoulders.
She hadn’t seen or spoken to him in two days but her mom said he was just busy with Aunt Fay. That he wouldn’t stay away from Bree just because he was mad at her mom.
“You’re still here,” she said.
He knelt next to her. “I wouldn’t leave without telling you,” he said, watching her carefully. “I wouldn’t go without saying goodbye.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed him or not but it was nice that he was there, that he’d found her at her spot under the large elm tree in the backyard. “That’s why you’re here? To say goodbye?”
Why did that make her feel like crying? She’d never felt that way about him leaving, had always felt sort of relieved, as though she could go back to pretending he didn’t exist, like he’d done to her for so long.
He sat next to her. “I have to get back to work.”
She stared down at her book. “Oh.”
“Listen, I want to apologize to you.”
She glanced up at him. “What for?”
“For missing so much of your life. For not realizing what you needed. When I was your age, when I was growing up, my real parents, well, they didn’t have much money.”
She nodded. “Mom told me you were poor growing up.”
“We were poor. We were so poor that some days we didn’t have enough to eat and I was always worried about what would happen to me and your aunt Fay. But then Grandpa Carl and Grandma Gerry adopted us and we had each other. And I forgot that that’s what’s most important. Having family. I thought that the best way to be your dad was to provide you with things, with money. And...I didn’t know how to be a dad. Wasn’t sure I was cut out to be a good one or that I even wanted to be one.”
“You were mad I was born.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Did your mom tell you that?”
“No. But I heard Poppa and Nonna talking once about how you weren’t ready to be a father and I figured it out.”
“I’m not mad at you. I was never mad at you. I was mad at myself for not being the father you needed.