Page 14 of The Parent Trap

I make it the rest of the way into the kitchen. Above the fridge, there’s a bottle of Blanton’s Dad has kept there for years. It’s his emergency get-your-shit-together-and-deal-with-it whiskey.

I pour a couple fingers into a juice glass and toss it back, hissing as it burns on the way down. I hate whiskey.

It jolts me, as it’s supposed to, and I breathe. Gather my nerves.

A few minutes later—ten? Twenty? An hour? I have no idea—I was dazed, or dozing, or just spaced out, I don’t know—Mom calls me, her voice soft and weak.

“Delia?”

I run into the study.

Dad is still…awake. Mom is lying on the bed with him, curled up against his side, her head on his shoulder, his hand on her waist, her hand on his chest.

He smiles at me. Reaches for me, and I bend over, hugging him and Mom together. His hand rests on my head. “Kiss me, my dear, I’m off.”

I want to laugh—he’s so insouciant about it, so flip. But I can’t. Don’t.

I hug him tighter. “I love you, Daddy, so much.”

He tilts his head to the other side. “Over…over there.” I lie on the other side of him and he rests his hand on my shoulder. “My girls.”

Mom sniffles.

“Dell…” It’s a faint whisper.

No one answers.

“Love you, Ginny.”

Mom’s only answer is to kiss him, trembling. If she whispers something against his lips, it’s too quiet for me to hear. Meant just for him.

His hand tightens on my shoulder, ever so gently. “Cordelia.” Haven’t heard that name out of his lips in living memory. “Dee.”

“Daddy, I’m here.”

“Be happy.”

“I will.”

After a while: “Love…girls.”

How long later is it when his hand drifts away, off my shoulder?

I don’t know.

The front door slams open.

“Dad?” Dell, from the hallway.

The study door opens, slowly. Fearfully—I can hear the fear in the way the door opens.

I don’t move.

“Dad?”

I don’t answer. Neither does Mom.

Daddy certainly doesn’t.