Page 78 of City Of Thieves

I glance towards the living room. “Is Mom here?”

“Yes, she’s waiting and anticipating, but I wanted to intercept you first.” Placing his glass down on a vintage French Empire gueridon, he flicks me the glimmer of a smile. “No coaster. No telling… She’ll have my balls in a vise for it. Truth is, I wanted to apologize.”

“Dad—”

He holds up his hand “Hear me out. This is my keynote speech to you, complete with liberal cursing and self-flagellation. Pay attention. You’ll enjoy it.” He closes the distance between us and gently takes the package from my trembling hands, his face turning serious for once. “I thought I was good at reading people’s pain, Tatiana. God knows, I’ve had enough practice of it. Turns out, it’s different when it’s your own kid falling apart in front of you. You’re blinded by hope. You put faith in the law of averages. You tell yourself that all the crap you dealt with over the years automatically gives your offspring a free pass.” He stops and grimaces. “Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.”

“You don’t need to say this…”

“No, I do.” His easy drawl takes on a harder note, and it’s sounding a lot like regret again. “I fucked up. The changes were there, but they were too subtle, and then one day my only daughter left home at eighteen without an explanation, except for a bleeding heart trailing her out of the door.” He pauses. “I set you free, Tatiana. I loved you, and I set you free like all those stupid fucking memes told me to do. I didn’t listen to my instincts.” He takes a step closer, his tone easing up again. “I should have kept you close, not let you go.”

“I pushed you away,” I say, my voice cracking.

“I should have pushed back.”

“The things I said…”

He scoffs and tucks the package under one arm. “Did you know your mother pointed a gun at me before we were married? Words are just posers, after that.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “There were reasons.”

“There arealwaysreasons. Tricky little bastards. I like to wave my middle finger at them as they fuck off into the night—”

“I have a daughter,” I blurt out, my admission sounding so much louder than I intended. “She’s beautiful, and I can’t hold her anymore. I can’t hold her—”

The rest of my words end up muffled into his shirt as he closes the distance between us with a lightning quick step and pulls me into a fierce embrace.

“Shit,” I hear him say, managing to sound lost and angry and soothing, all at the same time. “Oh, fucking shit. Now it all makes sense.”

“It’s not... It doesn’t…”

“Tatiana?”

A softer voice joins us, dancing on the edge of our periphery. After that, my father’s strong arms are replaced with another’s—ones that soothe the part of me that needs her forgiveness the most.

She’s whispering things I’ve waited five years to hear:

“Whatever you need from us, it’s yours.”

“We love you. That never stopped.”

I read somewhere that the best kinds of embraces have to last at least ten seconds to matter.

I don’t know how long my mother and I stand here in the lobby like this, clinging to each other like floating driftwood, but it’s enough to make those portraits of hurt in my head finally start to fade.

* * *

We’rein the living room. I’m watching her rip open the packaging to the square parcel I brought with me.

My father is sitting on the edge of the coffee table opposite us, three whiskeys down and counting. There’s a lot of pain to dismantle, but there’s something else that needs to be unpacked first.

It’s worth it.

So worth it.

Mom’s breathless cries as the last of the foam strips fall away seem to be healing another part of me.

“But how?” she gasps, flipping the painting around to show my father. “I never even knew it existed!”