Page 38 of Whirlwind (Seattle Blades #4)

T oday, I see my father for the first time since I left for college.

Today, I see my father for the first time since learning he lied to me about my mother.

Today is going to be a hard day.

But at least I’ll be doing it with friends, and not as the same weak little girl he’s used to pushing around.

Tyson is with me, too. He sat by me all night, after reading my grandmother’s letter.

I caught him staring at me more than once.

At first, I thought he might be waiting for the powder keg to explode.

Like I was going to start breaking everything in the house or something.

Then, I realized he was probably expecting another anxiety attack.

What I appreciated most last night was that the three of them didn’t handle me with kid gloves or try to force me to talk about it. Tyson even flirted some, like he did at the beginning.

The initial hit from that letter was hard. Devastating, really. In the back of my mind, finding her was always an option. Not a desire, but an option. There was a chance at…something. That’s gone, now.

I was up most of the night researching. I searched for my mother’s name and found few hits—a couple of news articles that mentioned she was missing, an archive from her high school that had her name attached to a varsity volleyball team that went to the state championship her senior year in Massachusetts.

I didn’t even know that was where she was from.

Other than that, all I could find was basic vital statistics for her.

What I did find was a big, deep hole of information on missing and murdered Indigenous women.

The Crow reservation, where she initially went missing from, is riddled with similar stories.

Very few are ever entered into the U.S. Justice System database, and far fewer are ever solved.

The numbers are terrifying—and grow too quickly because of a flawed system that lets perpetrators take advantage of jurisdictional red tape.

My mother is nothing more than a statistic, now. All but forgotten by anyone.

That breaks my heart. More than not ever getting to know her, because that’s just a selfish want I’ll never be able to fulfill. She should be remembered by someone, though. If nothing else, I could have been that for her—a person who knew she existed and mattered. He stole that from both of us.

Which brings on a slew of questions. Did he ever love her? How could he dismiss her in death so callously, if he did? Not that my father’s version of love has ever made sense to me. Is he why I’m so distrusting in love?

What even is love?

It’s not an emotion I understand. It’s not the only one, but it’s the biggest one that makes little sense to me. If I’d experienced it more in my life, perhaps I wouldn’t be so gun-shy of it. My lived experience has jaded me, I fear.

I don’t want to be fearful of anything—especially not something that brings other people so much joy.

For the first time, I want to experience being in love.

With Tyson, I thought I was heading there.

But I’m not sure if that’s because of the sex.

Was it just a stimulation high? Is my brain addled from our physical connection?

I’ve seen people do stupid things because of lust.

But lust is foreign to me, too. Not that I’m not ridiculously attracted to Tyson—just looking at him sometimes makes me blush with the things I want him to do to me. Except, I think that’s desire and curiosity, not so much lust.

Are desire and lust the same thing? I’m not sure.

What a stupid thing to be thinking about while I’m walking through the doors of a funeral home to bury my grandmother. There’s time to figure those thoughts out. There’s time to figure everything else out, later—and there is a lot of everything else.

It all falls to the wayside when I see my father waiting for me by the mausoleum wall that will be my grandmother’s final resting place. The marble block behind him has already been removed, one urn already sitting inside, just waiting for the other.

There is no till death do us part. Not for Anna Ashcroft. She never found her escape. For the first time since her death, tears well. She deserved better—if for no other reason than that she created the smallest of safe spaces for me as a child.

It wasn’t large. It was a small hope. Never underestimate how hope blooms.

“Kit,” he says as I approach. “I expected this would be only family.” His eyes bounce around my three companions, lingering on Tyson the longest.

“This is my family.”

“I meant mine,” he says, tight-lipped.

“You have no family,” I blurt. The girl he used to know wouldn’t have been able to say such a thing without retribution. I’m not that girl anymore. Even with my heart racing, it feels right to speak my mind. To stand up to him. “It died with her.”

His eyes narrow dangerously on me. I’ve caused offense—he always hated that.

“Who are your friends?” He says the word like it’s an insult. Though, he’s probably never experienced true friendship, so maybe it is to him. Can narcissists have friends? I can’t imagine.

“This is Willa, Damian, and Tyson.”

“Tyson Murphy?” he asks, surprising me. I remember him casually watching hockey, but I wouldn’t expect him to know all the players.

“Yes,” Tyson says with a dismissive nod as he steps closer to my side. My father’s gaze bounces between us, trying to interpret the situation. His mouth opens to say something, but Tyson beats him to it. “We’ll put Anna to rest, now. You can make your assumptions and ask your questions after.”

The funeral director, who has awkwardly been standing to the side, clears his throat.

He says some words—nothing I can focus on—but it sounds like he knew her.

Not surprising, in a small town, and I can be thankful that someone has nice words for her.

I scan the wall, full of names. Some I recognize.

Some have fresh flowers in their vases, most are empty.

This isn’t what I want for myself in death—to be placed in a concrete wall, or a concrete box and lowered into the cold earth. I don’t want even my ashes to be confined. Spread me in a flowerbed where I can become something else. Something fresh, colorful, and alive. A renewal instead of an ending.

I’m not religious or spiritual. I do believe in a circle of life, though, and I like to think that I was part of something before—an atom, an organism that morphed or mutated time and time again. And will continue to do so. Like a continuous cycle of fertilization.

Maybe I’ll be used for growing carrots in my next cycle. I’ll be someone’s beta-carotene.

My father stands like a statue throughout it all. His shoulders heightened, the vein in his neck bulging. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s not thinking about his mother. No—he’s fuming over what Tyson and I both said to him. His ego could never take such slighting.

That’s okay. My, albeit much smaller, ego can’t take his lies. And I’m long past putting up with his verbal abuse.

When the funeral director—whose name I didn’t catch—finishes speaking and places my grandmother’s urn in the space, I place the small bunch of flowers we stopped to buy on our way into the vase on the wall.

Coneflowers tied with string—simple flowers for a simple service.

She would have hated an extravagant display; that wasn’t her style.

My father follows us out to the parking lot. I feel him looming behind us—the same dark cloud he’s always been. I wonder if he’s proud of that? Does he get a kick out of ruining people’s day?

I bet he does.

“You gonna leave, never to be heard from again?” He asks the question as we get to Tyson’s rental car.

He’s not wrong; that is exactly what I did. I left and went no contact with him. There wasn’t a point in it; there was nothing left to say. Until now.

“I’ll say what I have to say, here, then yes, I’ll leave and go back to pretending you don’t exist.”

“Ungrateful,” he spits. “You always were.”

“Ungrateful for what? You didn’t give me anything to be grateful for.”

“I put a roof over your head. Food on your plate.”

“You did the bare minimum to take care of a child,” I bite back, incredulous that he thinks his own flesh and blood needed nothing more than shelter and an occasional peanut butter sandwich.

“ Your child. Not some random kid you found on your lawn. The daughter of the woman you loved enough to marry. Me! The child of your dead wife.”

He flinches, looking away from me, surprised that I know. Quickly, he schools his features back to his signature scowl. Willa and Damian stand by my side, Tyson at my back. Towering over me, his silent anger radiating around me.

“She told you,” he states.

“It should have come from you, years ago. I deserved to know the truth, to know her.”

“Don’t blame me for that,” he snaps. “You don’t know her because she left. I told her not to go, I told her not to leave us.”

“She didn’t choose to leave me,” I say.

It doesn’t come out as strong as I’d like, the weight of what I’m saying truly hitting me for the first time. Willa’s hand grasps mine. Tyson’s lands on the small of my back. I love that they want to give me support, but this is a fight that I think I’ve needed for a very long time, now.

“You don’t know that for sure, do you, Kit? She didn’t take you with her. She was there to look for a different life. While you were here. With me. She could have taken you.”

The words cut deeper than anything he’s ever said to me or anything he’s ever done. Or not done. It’s one of the things I’ve asked myself the most since reading my grandmother’s letter. Why leave me behind?

“What have I ever done to make you hate me?”

“I hated the situation—you’re just a casualty of it,” he says, almost looking remorseful for a half second.

“Of the circumstances I was pushed into. I look at you and I see her—a constant reminder of the woman who left us. I didn’t know what to do with you, and you never cared. You were indifferent to everything.”

“I wasn’t indifferent to anything. I felt it all; I just didn’t know how to show you. No matter what I did, you’d scold me for it. You knew your friend raped me and blamed me for it. How could you do that to your own flesh and blood?”

“That is not what happened,” he says, and Tyson steps up next to me.

“I need you to be careful and intentional with whatever words come out of your mouth, next,” he tells my father. “If you think for a second that you will argue with her about her lived experience, you’ll be having that argument with me. Understand?”

“Yeah? You going to punch me like you did him? I heard about that.”

“He got off easy,” Tyson says. “It’s not a mistake I’ll be making again.”

“That’s exactly what happened,” I say when the stare-down between the two men proves to be unwavering on either side. “I didn’t want any part of what happened. When you walked in at the end, you told me I was just like her—chasing men.”

He has enough shame to look at the ground, his feet shuffling. He looks nervous—something I never dreamed of seeing.

“At the time, I didn’t realize what had happened. By the time I did, you were long gone.”

“Just like my mother.” He flinches at my words. It’s a small victory, and enough for me to find the peace I need to say the next words. “I’m leaving, again. I won’t ever be back. You’ll never see me, and we’ll never speak again.”

“Kit,” he says, taking a step forward.

“No,” Tyson says, blocking his path. “If she wants to come to you, she will. It will never be the other way around.”

“Goodbye, Dad.” I say it with my whole heart.

This needs to be over with—I’ve said all I need, and he can never say anything that could make it better or right.

Even an apology, which I likely wouldn’t believe, doesn’t do me any good.

It doesn’t bring my mother back or make my childhood happy.

There is no forgive and forget for us. Forgetting isn’t an option. Moving on is.

He must sense it, too; he nods at me once, then walks away.

There’s no love lost, here. Him being my father was never enough for me to love him, in the same way that being his daughter wasn’t enough for him to love me. Blood runs deeper than water is a lie.

The only person I share it with drives away without so much as a glance back in my direction.

A finality settles over me like a warm blanket.

This was long overdue. Maybe I’ll dwell on the conversation—wish I’d said more, fought harder.

Maybe he’ll do the same, though I wouldn’t expect it of him. I said the most important thing.

Goodbye.

“I’m ready to go home, now.”