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A single tear drops down Roy’s cheek. “Youcut me off when I left, remember?Youtold me not to contact you guys! I tried to take you guys with me! It wasn’t you or her that I was leaving. It was my career.”

“Well excuse me for not wanting to uproot our daughter’s whole life and move to fucking Maryland on an unrealistic whim!”

My chest drops at Roy’s words.

He wanted to take me and Mom with him. He wanted us. He wanted me. He just wanted his career more.

“It wasn’t that I was unhappy with you or our family! I was unhappy settling for what everyone told me I should want. We fell in love with each other before we were able to fall in love with ourselves!

“We were so young, and I never got to figure out who I wanted to be because all I knew of myself was who I was with you. I wasn’t happy with the predictability and stability of our lives. I felt like I was just surviving, and I wanted to live.”

Full tears are now streaming down Roy’s face, and his brows are furrowed down. I can’t tell if he’s angry or sad. Or maybe both? Mom’s face is blubbery too, but my sympathy for her is gone.

All these years, she made me think he left us because he didn’t love us enough to choose us over his unrealistic career aspirations. But he tried to take us with him. He loved us enough to want to include us in his endeavors, but my mom didn’t want to be a part of it, so instead, she held me back with her.

All of a sudden, I feel the strongest urge to hug him. I don’t know why, or what’s come over me. I know I won’t actually do it, but it’s the wanting to that scares me.

I want to hug him and squeeze his torso like I did when I was a kid before he went to work. I wanted to squeeze him again, butharder this time, to make up for the last time I squeezed hugged him, not knowing it was the last time I would have seen him in almost ten years.

I want to squeeze him and never let go, so he won’t be able to leave again, even though I’m still beyond livid with him right now. I try to hold back the tears now falling down my face, sniffling ever so quietly so they don’t hear me.

“You left us, Roy. You left for what, a fever dream?”

“Again, it wasn’t a fever dream! Look where the company is now. You didn’t believe in me when you should have. You were my wife, my life partner for fuck’s sake! You were supposed to be my biggest supporter.”

“Supporter in what? We had everything set for the rest of our lives. Why would I support you destroying that? Destroying everything we built!”

“Because I didn’t even want that in the first place! I never wanted to be a lawyer, but I wanted to be with you, and I wanted to make you happy.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true. I loved you, and I still do. But I also really fucking love real estate. I love the gamble, the smell of a new house, the satisfaction of being able to provide someone with the foundation to start their lives!”

“You left me.” Mom’s eyes narrow as she reiterates, seeming to really want to nail this part into Roy’s head. “You left me with her. You left me to raise her all on my own. With no child support!”

Roy goes quiet, but I can still barely make out his words. “I didn’t have the money for that. We were just starting up the business, building from the ground up and all that.”

“Do you know how hard it’s been raising Drew as a single mother? Getting her through her teenage years. Missing work meetings to drive her around town to hang out with her friends,just so she could feel at least half normal. Picking upyourslack. Hell, I was both parents for a whole decade!”

“I’m sorry about that, Anne.” Roy hangs his head.

Then it hits me. Helefther with me. Mom wasleftwith me. Stuck, even. This must’ve been why she pushed so hard for that stupid lunch with him. It was his turn to deal with me. I was a burden that neither of them wanted, and my mom lost the battle. I robbed her of a normal motherhood, and instead, she had to be two parents at once.

Their life together was perfect until I came along. The only issue they ever encountered was infertility, but maybe they were infertile because they weren’t meant to have children. Maybe by going against nature, by adopting me, their perfect world fell apart.

I ruined their picturesque life.

They were destined for a happy ending, had it all laid out and everything. If I weren’t a factor in the equation, Mom would have gone to Maryland with him. With her seniority in the legal field, she could have easily found a job there, and they would have continued their lives together there. They would have stayed on the path projecting the happy ending they were always meant to have.

I can picture them now, maybe on their fourth cat together, rocking on reminiscing on their a porch swing together and good days in Georgia, but appreciating their better days in Maryland. Now, because of me, they’re having a screaming match and throwing plates in the kitchen of a house they could have moved out of together, starting the next chapter of their story.

A story with a happy ending.

18

Laine

“The Lord is a powerful, all-mighty being if only we