“Actually, Gordon, I probably know more than you think.”
Dad went still.
Malcolm didn’t say anything.
I looked between them.
“What am I missing?”
Dad immediately answered.
“Nothing. This has nothing to do with you.”
Mom looked at me.
“It does.”
Then she turned toward Dad.
“Malcolm told me what happened before you left.”
Dad’s jaw tightened.
“What did he tell you?”
“That you had already decided to leave me weeks before you packed those suitcases.”
I looked at Dad.
He said nothing.
Malcolm finally spoke.
“Your father and I were still business partners after the fire. While Evelyn was recovering, I covered most of his jobs.”
Dad shook his head.
“That was ten years ago.”
Malcolm continued anyway.
“One night Gordon told me he wanted out of the marriage. I asked him to wait because Evelyn had just come home from another operation. He told me he wasn’t waiting for her sake.”
Mom’s fingers tightened around Malcolm’s.
“He was waiting because he was worried about what people would say,” she finished.
Dad’s face hardened.
“That’s not what happened.”
Malcolm looked directly at him.
“You told me, ‘If I leave now, everyone will make me the monster.'”
I felt sick.
All those years, I had believed Dad stayed those extra months because some part of him still cared.
Even that had been about himself.
Dad looked at Mom.
“I was miserable, Evelyn.”
“So was I.”
“You don’t understand what it was like.”
Mom gave a small, stunned laugh.
“What it was like for you?”
He rubbed a hand over his face.
“I made mistakes. I’m admitting that. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“No.”
Her answer was so calm that it seemed to surprise him.
Dad stepped closer to the doorway.
“Can we at least discuss this inside?”
“No.”
“Just for a few nights. I’ll find somewhere else.”
“You’ll need to find it tonight.”
His expression changed.
After everything he had said, he actually looked offended.
“We have history, Evelyn.”
Mom nodded.
“We do.”
Dad stared at her scars again.
Then he said, “I told you. They don’t bother me anymore.”
That was the moment Mom finally smiled.
Not angrily.
Almost sadly.
“Gordon, I still have the same face you walked away from.”
He opened his mouth.
She continued.
“The difference is that I don’t see myself through your eyes anymore.”
He turned toward me as though he expected me to rescue him.
“Sadie?”
I thought about all those afternoons I had spent sitting near the window, listening for his car.
Then I remembered myself at twelve years old, carefully blending foundation across Mom’s scars because I thought it might bring my father home.
“Do you know why I learned makeup?” I asked.
Dad frowned.
“To help your mother.”
“That was part of it.”
Mom looked at me.
I had never told her the rest.
“I thought if I could make Mom look like she did before the fire, you’d want her again.”
Dad stared at me.
“I didn’t know that.”
“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”
For once, he had nothing to say.
A car passed behind him on the street.
Dad finally looked at Malcolm, then at Mom, and picked up his suitcase.
No one tried to stop him.
