Mom stepped forward.
“No. I never kept you away. I spent years making excuses for you.”
His expression changed.
She continued.
“Maybe your card got lost. Maybe you didn’t have our number. Then I stopped because he was old enough to know I was lying.”
I hadn’t known that.
Mom wiped her cheek.
“Don’t blame me because another man did what you kept choosing not to do.”
My father looked at me one final time.
“That car will still be here if you change your mind.”
“No.”
“What?”
“It won’t.”
I nodded toward it.
“You’re taking it with you.”
He did.
He tore the bow off first.
I don’t know why that detail stuck with me.
Maybe because it was the first thing he’d done that day that wasn’t for an audience.
He tossed it into the back seat, climbed behind the wheel, and drove away.
