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Jonas and I exchanged a look.
“I can’t drive,” I said. “I’ve already had three shots.”
“I can drive you.”
“But your work. The promotion.” I covered my face with my hands. “I’m so sorry I called you in the middle of the day.”
He put his hands on either side of my face, looking into my eyes. “You call me any time you need me. I can always make up the hours later.”
“And the house. I haven’t tested the system yet.”
“Fuck the system. You’re staying with me.”
“And...”
Jonas looked at me. “If you want an excuse not to go see your dad, there will always be one ready. You don’t owe him anything, Mara. The only question is do you want to talk to him?”
For some crazy reason, I said yes.
In a matter of minutes, we were out the door, getting into Jonas’s car, and driving toward LA. In moments like these, I appreciated his dependability, the fact that he never let the gas gauge get below a quarter of a tank because time was of the essence.
We held hands as he followed the directions, not talking.
Now it was me who needed to think. I needed to think about what to say to the man who drank away every dime my family had. The man who beat my mom until she left and then turned his anger on me. The man who tore apart a family for a liquid that would never love him back.
Was it crazy to hope for an apology? Illogical to wish he could become that dad I’d always dreamed I could have? Even if I was thirty, I still wanted a father, someone to love and care for me as he should have.
And what would happen if he didn’t apologize? If he called me in to blame me for his alcohol addiction and failed marriage and everything else that went wrong in his life? Because he laid plenty of blame on me when I was only a child.
Would the little girl in me survive one more attack? I’d worked so hard in therapy to re-parent and heal my inner child. I didn’t want that work to go to waste.
Jonas squeezed my hand, as if to remind me that I wasn’t alone. He was right. I had a boyfriend, for the first time in my life. I had friends I could count on. I had my little corner of the world that was mine, and even though my dad took away my childhood, he couldn’t take my present.
The map led us to a parking lot in front of a dingy building. There was the sign on front, just like the map had said. Free Hearts Rehabilitation Center.
I looked around, half expecting my dad to be lurking as part of some elaborate scheme, but he wasn’t here. People were walking in and out of the building. Women my age, older couples, parents with small children trailing along.
Then it hit me. Today was visitors’ day, and I was here to see my dad.
“Are you sure you want to go in?” Jonas asked, eyeing all the people.
I nodded and unbuckled before I could change my mind. There was only half an hour left, and depending on how this went, it could be too long or barely enough time to say what we needed to say.
We walked into the building, his hand protectively on my lower back, and he led me through the door. There was a short line at the reception desk that moved quickly. When I told the woman behind the glass wall that we were there to see Duncan Taylor, she seemed stunned, but quickly recovered.
She lifted her phone, pressed a button, and said, “Visitors for Duncan Taylor.”
“You can go back to the family room,” she said, pointing to the right. There was a heavy metal door that said the opposite of family. Family didn’t need to be kept behind locked doors. Family didn’t need to leave letters because they didn’t have phone numbers.
We walked into the room, and it was a family room, of sorts. There were mismatched couches, tables with weathered board game boxes, a TV playing cartoons. Several children looked up at the screens, and I wondered if they knew how lucky they were that their loved ones were getting help now.
I said a quick prayer to whoever was listening that their parents would be healed, that they’d get the childhood I didn’t have.
And then my eyes landed on him. My dad.
Up close, he was shorter than I remembered him. Thinner. There was gray in his beard to match the steel in his eyes. But something was different too. The lines around his face weren’t so deep. His shoulders not so broad and scary.
“Mara,” he said.