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CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

arden

I’m leaving the hospital when my phone rings. Serena’s name stares up at me and it hits me that it’s been a while since we’ve spoken. I answer it, slowing my walk so I’m spared from the cold November air for a moment or two longer.

“Hello?”

“Hey Biggie,” she greets me, sounding a bit more tired than usual. Definitely less chipper. Not as angry as Anya, but worn down. “How's life as a hockey wife?”

“Not a hockey wife,” I clarify. “But I’ve been busy. Sorry I haven’t called. How are things on the home front?”

There’s a small pause. A pause that feels like a weight on my heart.

“It’s not good,” she says, letting out a long breath. “I know you hate it here, and I know you’re still mad at him, but I think we’re reaching the end of the road. We need our sister. He needs his daughter.”

A weird burst of pain grips my heart. At first, it’s pure rage and resentment.

That’s what smacks me in the chest, hard and unrelenting.

He’s not allowed to need me now, not when he spent the entirety of my childhood wanting me out of sight.

Not when he hasn’t looked me in the eye since Mom closed hers.

Another part of that sting is the fact that it probably isn’t true.

It’s Serena and Anya inferring that I need to be there.

It’s them deciding that our father needs me.

But then there is this deep, aching sadness that sweeps in and soothes the burn like a tidal wave.

The sand in the hourglass has almost reached the bottom.

The time that I had to fix my relationship with my father has run out.

He’s been sick for years, and I’ve been angrier at him for longer.

I’ve hated him for longer. There’s a piece of me, buried deep inside my heart, that has always dreamed of a life where this wasn’t the outcome.

Where I had both parents, or maybe I just had Dad, but this time he held me close instead of pushing me away.

I was a little girl who needed her dad to be her dad.

To love her. To help her comprehend the immeasurable loss of her mother.

I needed a parent to step in and step up because life got hard the moment she passed.

I should have had him to lean on, to get advice from, to take care of me.

I should be closer to my sisters. I should be happy.

But I’m not. Because he ruined that. He ruined it all.

Not only do I not have a mom to call when I need her, to answer the phone when someone breaks my heart, or to talk me off a ledge when I am stressed out and wondering if I’m doing this adulthood thing right—I don’t have a dad either.

Not only am I never going to have a mother to watch me try on wedding dresses, I don’t have a father to walk me down the aisle, either.

All I needed from him was love, and it’s one of the many things that he refused to give me. He didn’t need me then, but I needed him. Desperately. He may need me now, but I don’t need a single thing from him anymore.

“Do you have his paperwork?” is all I say .

“Arden,” Serena says tightly.

I need to see it. If this is happening, I need to look over the medical documents and confirm that he’s dying.

Only then will I know what I have to do, what I want to do.

I always told myself that I’d be there at the end of the line, that I’d stand next to his bedside as he took his last breath.

It wouldn’t be for him, though. It’d be for Serena and Anya. That’s it.

“Can you send it to me?” I ask. “I’ll read it over and then see what I can do.”

She takes a big, long breath. “I think you have time, Arden. A couple of months, maybe. But not much longer.”

“Okay,” I say, running a hand over my face.

“He wants to see you,” she tells me carefully, and my whole body tenses up. “He’s asked for you a lot this week. Maybe give him a call, at the very least.”

“Paperwork, Serena,” I snap, and I instantly feel bad, but I’ve been fortifying these boundaries since I left and I refuse to let them waver. “Don’t guilt trip me. You know where I stand on this, and I’m not going to listen to why I’m wrong.”

“You know what?” she seethes, and I brace myself.

Serena is the levelheaded one, but everyone has limits.

“I’ve been making excuses for you for years because I understand.

I have told Dad you’re busy, explained that you’re the reason we can keep him in these nice homes and get him the care he needs.

I’ve calmed Anya down when she paints you as the enemy because I get it. ”

I rest my head against the wall, closing my eyes.

“You lost your mom and your dad in the same breath,” she continues. “We lost our mom and gained another. You lost your sisters to become that person for us.”

Tears burn behind my eyes. We’ve never talked about this. We’ve never acknowledged the role I played in their upbringing, what we all lost, and how it impacted each of us differently.

“I give you grace and respect because I know it has been hard for you,” Serena says.

“I’m not guilting you into anything, Arden.

Not even close. I just don’t want you to live with any regrets when you’ve already had to go through so much.

I’ve never heard anyone regret being there at the very end, but I’ve heard of many people regretting not being there. ”

I blink away tears, staring up at the horrible fluorescent hospital lighting.

“I’m trying to be your Biggie for you right now, and a bit of Mom. I’m trying . I’ll send you over the paperwork. If Anya calls you, don’t answer it. She’s not handling this well.”

“Serena,” I whisper.

“Talk soon.”

She hangs up and I suck in a breath, my hand dropping to my side.

Being on the defence all the time is extremely exhausting, and it’s not always necessary.

I can’t seem to break the habit. I’m hypersensitive when it comes to my father, but I fail to forget that it’s not my sisters’ fault.

None of it. They’re dealing with more of the emotional load than I am, and all they want is for their sister to come home.

All they want is the one thing I can’t do.

I swallow, zipping up my coat and storming out of the hospital. The cold, November air hits my face, and I force myself to keep moving instead of stopping to let it prick my skin so that I can feel something.

I’m so tired.

I’ve spent years feeling this form of exhaustion, the one that consumes you and clouds your mind.

Each day is exactly like the last. I worry about the same things when I open my eyes each morning, and I go to bed with this dull pain in my heart, knowing it’s never going to feel much better.

It’s a heavy, life-changing type of tiredness.

The kind that changes you. The kind that makes you bitter and jaded and rough around the edges.

It’s only after that phone call with Serena, only after that exhaustion sweeps back over me, that I realize it has been a while since I’ve felt it.

I sniffle, bringing a hand over my face, lifting my shoulders to cover my ears from the cold.

I’ve had to work less lately. I’ve gotten to breathe, to have fun, to forget.

At some point, I began to rest. I started to feel some morsel of peace in my life.

I’m not stupid. I know it’s because of Carter.

As much as I hate to give any man that power, he has made my life so much more endurable since he punched his way into it.

He causes chaos everywhere he goes, but he brings a stillness to me.

He calms me. His generosity allows me to breathe.

His company makes me forget all the bad things that are waiting outside of the moments with him.

Plus, he’s a good kisser. When his mouth is on mine, I can’t even remember my own name, let alone recall that my life is in shambles.

I want to see my sisters, but I can’t even fathom being in the same city as my father.

I miss them every moment I’m away from them. I worry about them more than I breathe, and I always wish I could do more for them. Bring home more money. Fly back and spend time with them. Forgive him so that I can give them some peace of their own.

But I can’t.

They have each other. I find solace in that.

Even though I’ve only gone home twice in the five years I’ve been gone, they have never had to be too far from one another.

They have a sister in each other. They can complain about me, hold each other through the pain of losing our father, and lean on one another for support.

It’s the only thing that keeps the guilt at bay, because no matter how horrible I feel each and every day, I refuse to go back there. I refuse to forgive.

I wish I had spent more time appreciating my life while I had two parents.

Watching a love story happen in real time.

I used to roll my eyes when they’d kiss in front of me, pretend to gag when Dad would force my mother to dance with him in the kitchen, even though the sauce was burning and Anya was throwing a temper tantrum in the corner.

I wish I remembered the way she’d look at him, but I’ve always only been able to recall how he’d look at her.

Hearts in his eyes and bewilderment in his smiles.

Like he couldn’t believe she’d ever given him a chance.

Life was beautiful back then. Happy. I was a kid who got to be a kid.

I had a real, functional family. One who knew love.

I wish I had known that that version of my life would only last so long.

I would have held my mom’s hand more often, and spent time tracing her fingers, memorizing every divet and scar from when her cooking knife slipped.

I would have hugged my dad tighter, wrapped my little arms around his neck, and looked at him with my mother’s eyes—imprinting to memory the way he’d look at me with the same kind of adoration, because there was nothing he loved more than seeing her in me.

I wish I had time to put the world on pause before my life was destroyed. To take one big and clean breath before I spent the rest of my life fighting for another.

I yank my car door closed and press my head against the steering wheel. As much as I don’t want to cry, a tear slips through, and I let it.

He’s dying.

It’ll be soon now .

And I don’t feel anything toward that man besides anger, resentment, and a burning pain of disappointment.

He might be my father, but he isn’t my dad. As far as I’m concerned, my dad died the very moment that truck smashed into my mother’s minivan.

If what Serena says is true, and he’s been asking for me, then why hasn’t he picked up the phone? After all these years, knowing that I’m working my ass off to ensure he’s cared for, why haven’t I heard a word from him?

He’s the parent.

He is the parent!

I know I made my boundaries clear, but for once, I’d like to feel that he actually worries about me.

That he thinks about me at all. It feels like he believes he only has two daughters and he’s happier that way.

They both look like him. Their dark hair and blue eyes are easier to stomach.

Who cares about the firstborn who looks like his dead wife? She’s the spare.

I wipe at my face and take a deep, painful breath in.

Head up, back against the wall, one foot in front of the other.

Survive.

It’s the only move I’ve got.