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It feels like I’m in trouble.
Like I’ve spilled the truth about Santa and parents are mad at me because I didn’t want to lie to their child. Relationships are built on a foundation of trust, after all. What is a child going to think when they find out the person they trust the most has been crafting an elaborate lie around them for years?
I know I felt betrayed.
I still have the apology card—with an essay explanation—from my father tucked away in a memory box somewhere.
But this isn’t about Santa—something adults understand isn’t real. This is about faeries—something Pollux believes in. Beliefs are a delicate subject, because like Zahra mentioned earlier, it’s not my job to convict anyone’s kids or teach them what I believe. It’s my job to give them the tools they need to live kindly, with love and intelligence, so they can find their own beliefs.
The water of right and wrong is often murky.
Just like the water around my dreamboy last night.
Before he lifted me out of it and set me on a throne and told me things that are haunting me—just like I asked him to.
I do not think I can stare harder at my menu. It is not humanly possible.
I have read fettuccine so many times, I think I may actually know how to spell it now.
Why did I suggest coming out to dinner to talk? Did I think the carbs would help me stomach a potential that I’m being sued for not calling the cops the second Andromeda disappeared this morning?
After all the other ways authorities have failed me concerning her and Pollux, I didn’t think the trouble would make anything better. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have done the correct thing.
Everything feels so very, very wrong.
Why didn’t I just take this conversation like a man right then and there in front of the school instead of subjecting myself to this painful silence?
Surely I wasn’t subconsciously attempting to offer access to apology pocket food in the shape of calzones, stromboli, and ravioli. I’ve never been in situations quite like these before, and I have absolutely no idea how to react.
My nerves are shot.
My natural defenses and routines and survival mechanisms are falling to pieces around me.
Pollux clears his throat.
I force myself not to shrink.
“About this morning…” he begins, then he looks at Andromeda. “Dear one?”
She slinks down in her seat. “I’m sorry I left the way I did. I know better. And when we know better, we should do better.”
He’s…making her apologize to me?
I’m speechless.
“She didn’t want to tell you all by herself,” he says.
I look between them. “You’re not upset with me?”
A thick, dark brow rises. “Why would I be upset with you?”
“I…told your daughter that faeries aren’t real.”
His head tilts. “She knows that humans can struggle with the truth. It shouldn’t have been that shocking. For her. In the context in which it happened. For her.” He glances at the now-puddle of Andromeda on the seat. I can only see a few curls beyond the edge of the table. Gripping her hair, he pulls her back up, and I tense.
She crosses her arms and frowns at him. “Ow.”
“Did that really hurt?” he grumbles.
