kissed her lips just to get her to stop talking.
My mom laughed. I hadn’t heard that sound in I didn’t know how long. It felt like forever. Years even, although that couldn’t have been right. Her laugh was like a punch in the gut, a reminder of how miserable she’d become.
“Hi, Sunny. I was just telling Mac how much I like your hair,” my mom complimented.
Sunny started pulling at the strands. “Thank you. It was something new I tried this year, and I’m sort of obsessed. I love it so much.”
“So, are you at home with your family too?” my mom asked.
Sunny nodded. “Yep. My parents, my older sister, and a thousand dogs,” she explained.
My mom touched the screen, as if she could reach Sunny through it. “Why so many dogs?”
“Well …” Sunny tried to figure out what to say, and I told my mom that Sunny’s parents owned a vet clinic. “Yeah. So, my mom basically fosters all these dogs that need their forever homes. It’s only temporary, but she doesn’t know when to stop. There are literally eight giant-sized dogs at our house right now. THERE ARE EIGHT DOGS HERE, MAC!” she yelled to reiterate.
I’d always wanted a dog. And if my memory was accurate, my mom had wanted one, too, but DD had said our house wasn’t made for animals. The floors were too easily scratched, the couches too expensive to be torn, and he didn’t want his suits covered in hair.
I remembered trying to convince him one year, but DD had not relented. Once his mind was made up, that was it. There would be no changing it, no talking him out of his decision, no chance of a compromise. DD said our home was not a democracy and I needed to know my place. Something about if I learned how to take direction now, it’d be easier for me to deal with having bosses in the future. Like the possibility of me being my own boss was completely out of the question.
My dad was a fucking asshole.
Sunny and my mom had continued talking while I was zoned out, and only the sound of my mom laughing again at something Sunny had said snapped me out of it.
That sound.
How could such a genuine melody cause me so much pain?
It only made me hate my dad more. He’d taken so much from us—joy, hope, laughter, our choices. And we’d, what … allowed it? Accepted it? Perpetuated it?
“Mac?” Sunny was repeating my name, and I shook my head to focus back on the phone that was now in my mom’s hand.
“Sorry, babe. I was in my head for a second.”
“It’s okay. I was just telling your mom that she needs to come out for a game when the season starts.” Sunny sounded so excited, and I looked at my mom to try to read her expression, but I couldn’t.
My mom had come to my games in high school but only when DD was out of town. I’d learned at some point during my junior year that if she came up to my games without his permission, he’d punish her. He canceled her personal appointments so that when she showed up, they wouldn’t have her in the books and couldn’t possibly squeeze her in. He always knew what she was doing and was one step ahead.
He’d gone so far as to shut off her credit cards once, but when that only proved to be an embarrassment to him and his name because it happened in front of a lot of people, he never did it again. Instead, he simply hid her cards from her, so when she went to use them, they were missing from her wallet. Apparently, my mom looking like a forgetful lunatic wasn’t a source of shame for him. He played the victim card.
Poor Dick Davies. Look how unstable his wife is. How does he deal with her? everyone whispered instead of the other way around.
I tried to reassure my mom that it was okay that she didn’t watch me, but it wasn’t. It made me just as angry with her as I was with DD. Every other player on the field had at least one person watching them and cheering them on. But not me. And, yeah, I felt fucking sorry for myself because of it.
“Do you think you’ll be able to come out?” Sunny asked. “It’s his last season playing here. And he’s really good,” Sunny continued her sales pitch.
My mom shifted in her