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I felt myself lean forward in response.
"Tonight you'll be visited by three ghosts," Callan said, and I couldn't help the snort-laugh that escaped my lips. Was thisA Christmas Carol? Three ghosts? I looked around my suite. It was the Dickens Suite, after all.
"First," Callan said. "You'll see the ghost of Christmas past."
Callan's image flickered away and was replaced by footage of snow falling.
My heart was beating very rapidly, and I forced myself to take a few deep breaths, to calm down. What was he doing? And was he going to let me watchHouse Huntersor not? I put the pad and pencil aside on the bed and stood up, but the face that appeared on my screen next had me sitting back down. Hard.
"Hi honey." Someone I hadn't seen in years appeared on my screen, sitting in a folding chair in front of a window through which was a bright green lawn and a blue sky. His face carried more wrinkles than it had the last time I’d seen it—which had been more than twenty years ago now—and he was thinner than I remembered him. A churn started low in my gut as my father continued to speak. "It's a little early, I guess, but I wanted to wish you a merry Christmas."
"Bastard," I whispered through my teeth. I wanted to turn him off, to smash the television, to make him stop talking. How dare he tell me merry Christmas? He'd been the one to singlehandedly ensure I’d never have a merry Christmas again.
"Listen April. I know you're angry with me. I know you have been for years. Since that night…" He had the grace to drop his eyes to his hands. He looked back up at me, and his eyes were shining, pleading. "Since the night I left," he said, voice stronger now despite the unshed tears standing in his eyes. "I wanted to come back for you so many times, I can't even tell you. Second-guessed myself a million times after I left. And the timing…honey, I know the timing was awful." He shook his head.
I sat frozen on the edge of my bed, my hands in my lap. I was surprised to feel a drop of wetness land on my thumb. My father had left almost twenty years before, and he still had the power to make me cry. Why was Callan showing me this?
"The thing I need to say to you, April, is this. I don't ask your forgiveness, I know you can't give me that. I don't ask you for anything, but maybe an effort to understand. Things between your mother and I—well, they weren't good. They had never really been good, if you want the truth, but none of this was her fault. We'd been struggling, and it all came to a head that night. I don't know if you're old enough now that you can understand this, but…" he dropped his eyes again, maybe struggling for words. "Relationships can be hard," he continued. "Sometimes they get complicated and so layered with hurt and resentment that you lose the thread. You lose the reason why you were together in the first place, and everything just feels like hurt and anger. And that's where your mother and I were. But we had you. And so we stayed together. For a long time."
I was crying for real now. This. This was the thing my mother wouldn't talk about. This was what no one had ever bothered to explain to me.
"I don't know for sure what your mother told you, honey. But you need to know that none of it was because of you. I didn't leaveyou. I left what felt like an impossible situation—and I know you won't believe me, but I did itforyou. Because I didn't want you to see me become the angry, resentful man I would have been if I'd stayed."
He looked up again, one of the tears making a steady path down his cheek. "Not fighting harder for you—for a chance to talk to you, to see you regularly—that's been the single biggest regret of my life. And time passed, you know? And then it felt like you hated me so much, and I guess I assumed by then you were better off without me, that I should just let you move on."
He sighed and shook his head. "But honey, I never did. Maybe externally. And yes, I tried to give myself another chance, I tried to forgive myself for whatever part I had in that first terrible marriage. I decided to live in hope instead of regret. And I met Laura. But I never forgave myself for you, for the mess I made with you. And not a day goes by, April, that I don't think of you and pray for you and wish to know you, to be part of your life."
He stopped talking then, and just stared into the camera as tears ran unheeded down my cheeks, spattering on my hands and my jeans. My emotions were jumbled and confused, leaping over one another for a spot up front—hurt, anger, confusion, sorrow…and love—that unwanted longing that had lived in the back of my heart for so many years, that wish that one day my daddy would come back, would tell me it wasn't my fault.
"I'd like to see you sometime, honey. If you'd ever maybe be okay with it. I know you're out in Maryland now, and I hope you're having a wonderful time. Callan seems like a really good guy." My father tilted his head, and a half smile lifted his lips. "It's hard to believe you're old enough to be dating grown men," he said. "But I guess I gave up the chance to have any opinions there."
A strangled noise escaped my lips and I dropped my head for a second. It was too hard to look at my father now, to hear the words he was finally saying, the words that smoothed the edges of the jagged rip that had been in my heart for so many years.
"I'm sorry, April. For leaving you, for not explaining things better when you were little, and for not being a part of your life since then. I would have been, but…well, this isn't about me and your mother. It's about me and you. And for all the things I didn't do right there. I'm sorry." I looked back up to see another tear trailing down my father's cheek. "I'm proud of you, April. And I know maybe it doesn't feel like it, but please know that I'm always here for you."
The screen went blank, and I sagged. It was as if years of tension had been unlocked and had just left my body, flowing from my fingers and toes and leaving me drained and floppy as a rag doll.
For a long minute, the television remained blank, and I cried.
If there were going to be two more ghosts, I wasn't sure I’d survive them.
When I’d regained control of my breathing, I got to my feet, went to the counter, and poured myself a shot of Half Cat moonshine, downing it fast and then putting both hands on the countertop and taking some steadying breaths.
I waited, on edge, but nothing happened. And frustratingly,House Huntersdid not come back on.
As the clock on my mantle ticked and the hour wore on, I wondered if that had really happened at all. It had been such a strange day, maybe my exhausted mind had fabricated my father's appearance on my television. Maybe I was dreaming. I crossed the room to the window, lifting the sash and letting a wash of frigid air sweep into the room, carrying the scent of snow.
"Not dreaming," I said out loud, shivering. Part of me wondered if maybe there was a camera inside my room somewhere, but I quickly dismissed the notion. Callan had hijacked my television, maybe. He wouldn't bug my room.
I turned back toward the television after struggling to shut the window, and frowned at the snow falling on the screen.
"Get on with it," I grumbled, snatching a sweater from the chair back. As I did, the screen flickered again, and Callan reappeared.
"Hi," he said.
My battered heart beat hard at the sight of him, and despite my lingering anger with him, I wished I could find him, maybe press myself into his arms for a few minutes and tell him about my father. I still felt mad at Callan, but more than that, I felt a pull to him. In the past couple weeks, he'd become the person I talked to, the person I thought out loud with, the person I depended on. And that was a lot after years of depending only on myself.
I sat back down on the end of the bed, steeling myself for what might come next.
