“It’d be the best thing for you, too, if I made you stop visiting.”
My mouth drops open. “Don’t you d?—”
He cuts me off, “But I guess after a life of pushing you away, kiddo, an old man gets weak. Your visits and showing me these damn pictures that kid of yours draws help keep me going, if I’m honest.”
My hands twist even tighter underneath the table, and I can’t keep holding my dad’s gaze. I don’t know what to do with him saying such sentimental things to me. We barely saidI love youbefore my senior year in high school. That’s never how it was between us.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you told him to stay away since he’s off at Harvard anyway,” I finally manage to say.
I expect that to be the final word on the matter, but then Silas’s deep voice sounds through the phone: “Don’t think so.”
My eyes flash back up to his, and I can’t help sitting up straighter in the uncomfortable metal chair. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t think he’s at Harvard.”
“Why not?”
My heartbeat hiccups in my chest. Dad was notified Helen died not long after he went in—not that hetold methat until a year later, after the baby was born.
I couldn’t do anything about it then, but I told myself Caleb would be coping, probably drowning his sorrows in college life and his studies.
I was in no position to track him down and say how sorry I was for missing the funeral. For everything.
What was I going to do at that point? Send a Facebook friend request sayingI’m so sorry for your loss? Oh, and here’s my four-week-old baby that’s not yours?
“Cause of the mail I get,” Silas says.
“So he is writing you?” My back goes ramrod straight, no doubt showing my interest in spite of my determination to look cool and uninterested.
But Silas just gives one, clipped shake of his head. “It’s just the bills I been getting for the club. I figured he got a manager for the place because the bills still just had me and Helen’s name on them for the longest.
“But now it’s the manager’s name coming through on the bills that make their way to me, since I’m still the owner.”
I frown, shaking my head. So what? I don’t get it.
“It’s Caleb’s name on the bills. I don’t think he ever went to Harvard. He took over at the club instead.”
I can only stare at Silas while my mind swirls a mile a minute.
No. There’s no way. Caleb had Harvard, what would probably be a full ride, all laid out before him. Yeah, the high school bitch who got my dad put away by planting weed in my locker added a little bump in the road by outing Caleb’s and my relationship, but that would have been nothing to a resourceful guy like Caleb; he could’ve gotten that cleared up easy.
The only solace in my shitty life the past three years besides Bruiser has been imagining Caleb off at college living it up and preparing to become America’s future badass lawyer just like he always dreamed of being.
“No,” I try to shrug it off. “No. Harvard was all he cared about. Preparing to go there was his whole identity.”
I leap up out of my chair, the phone still barely held in my hand. Knowing what I know now—that Helen died within days of my leaving—I’m still not sure about the timeline… But it was, like,reallysoon after.
Caleb would’ve been devastated by losing everything—his mom, Silas, and me, all in one fell swoop. It was his worst fear.
If only I’d stayed.
The cancer meds might have been affecting Helen’s mind. She might not have even meant what she’d said.
If only I hadn’t fucked Z that night in the hotel.
But Jesus, how can I say that? Am I saying I wouldn’t have wanted myson? The light of my life?
I feel so guilty and wrong every-which-way I turn.