Page 320 of Tell Me I'm Enough

I look up at him, confused, like I didn’t hear him right.

I can’t help but laugh in his face. “That’s it? That’s what I came here for?”

His face falls, and for a second I see something almost human under all that polished cruelty. It makes me angry. I don’t want it. Not now. Where was any of that for the past thirty-two years? Where was the sorry at when I was thirteen and begging for his comfort while I held my dying mother’s body, and all he could do was try to drag me away and stop my tears?

I don’t want it. He can keep it for all I care.

I’ve moved on from being that little boy, begging his dad for love. I’ve healed. I’ve become the man and father he could neverdreamof being.

He drags a hand down his face. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Yeah,” I say spitefully. “You’ve never known how to be a decent human. Why try now?”

I really have done a lot of healing over the years. A lot of therapy and a lot of talking to God when no one was around to watch me break down and cry over the version of myself I never got to be when I was younger, because it was taken from me every chance it got.

Still…there’s anger under all the healed parts. It doesn’t look the same as it used to. It doesn’t come out on the people I love, and it doesn’t come in the form of numbness from a bottle. But it does come out in times like these.

His eyes glisten, and he starts blinking hard, like he’s trying to keep the tears from spilling. And then he does something I’ve never seen him do in all my thirty-two years of life. He breaks. Fully breaks. Hands to his face, tears running down his cheeks. It makes me uncomfortable, like I have no idea what to do with all of this right now.

“I loved your mother,” he says, the confession ripping out of him like it hurts. “Dammit, Mason. I loved her.”

I don’t respond at first. I don’t know how to.

“Why…” I eventually strain out, “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’ve been seeing a therapist in here,” he tells me.

“Great, probably should have tried that three or four decades ago. Maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here now, having this conversation.”

“I—I just need to get this out, son.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Mason—”

My jaw tightens, feeling too many emotions right now.

“Just say whatever it is you need to get off your chest so I can go back home to my actual family.”

“We met in high school. We were kids. She was…she was a light. The kind that makes you think you can be better just by standing close to it.”

I cross my arms as I listen, still needing some kind of barrier against him with how I’m feeling.

I know what a light my mom was. Trust me, I know that light. I married that light. I found someone who was brighter than Ideserved to experience. The only difference is that I didn’t kill her light like Scott killed my mother’s light.

“She got pregnant when she was sixteen,” he continues. “And we were terrified. We told ourselves we’d make it work. That we’d be a family—”

Confusion hits me as he keeps talking, and I have to stop him. “She didn’t have me until she was nineteen? What are you talking about?”

His throat bobs, and his eyes go even more glassy now. “That’s because you weren’t her first.”

I go still, hands freezing on top of the table. “What?”

“You had an older sister,” he says. “Her name was…was—Hailey.” He swallows hard. “We don’t talk about her. We never did after—”

My heart slams against my ribs so hard it hurts. “After what?”

He looks like he doesn’t want to say it, but forces himself to. “After she died.”