Mom stepped forward.
“No. I never kept you away. I spent years making excuses for you.”
His face changed.
She continued.
“Maybe your card got lost. Maybe you didn’t have our number. Then I stopped because he was old enough to know I was lying.”
I hadn’t known that.
Mom wiped her cheek.
“Don’t blame me because another man did what you kept choosing not to do.”
My father looked at me one last time.
“That car will still be here if you change your mind.”
“No.”
“What?”
“It won’t.”
I nodded toward it.
“You’re taking it with you.”
He did.
He ripped the bow off first.
I don’t know why that detail stayed with me.
Maybe because it was the first thing he’d done all day that wasn’t for an audience.
He threw it into the back seat, got behind the wheel, and drove away.
The neighbors suddenly became very interested in their own yards.
Mom went inside.
Don’t miss
I turned toward Ray.
He was already walking away.
“Where are you going?”
“Kitchen.”
“Why?”
“Dishes.”
Of course.
Ten minutes after my biological father tried to buy his way back into my life, Ray was standing at our sink washing syrup off birthday-breakfast plates.
I put the wooden box on the counter.
“You know we have a dishwasher.”
“Don’t trust it.”
“You repaired it.”
“Exactly. I know who repaired it.”
I stood beside him.
“Ray.”
He kept scrubbing.
“What?”
“Look at me.”
“Busy.”
“You’re washing a clean plate.”
He looked down, then put it in the rack.
“Next plate.”
