Discovering Delilah (Harborside Nights, Book 2) (28 page)

I pace again. “Why?” The need to understand gnaws at my stomach.

“Delilah, honey. Why don’t I come talk to you in person? I can be there in a half hour.”

This is bad. I can hear it in her voice.
I grab my father’s desk to steady myself.

“No. Tell me, please. I can take it. Just...Was it because of me? Did they know before I told them?” She was with them at my graduation. I’m sure if they’d told anyone about my confession, they’d have told her, since she drove home with them.

She’s silent again, but I hear her breathing. “No, baby. No, it wasn’t because of you.”

Tears spring
from my eyes and my legs crumple beneath me. I hadn’t realized that I was so scared of that being true.

They didn’t know before I told them at graduation.

It wasn’t because of me.

Even though it’s a relief, I can’t breathe. I still don’t have the answers I need.

“Delilah? Are you there?”

They were prejudiced against gays.

I can’t move.

“Delilah, honey. I promise, they
didn’t know until you told them.”

Anger blasts from my lungs. “Then why? Why would my parents be so pigheaded?”

“Dee, calm down. Please. Please, honey. Take a deep breath.”

I shoot to my feet and storm into the living room, feeling completely out of control. This isn’t new information, but it feels new, like because Aunt Lara doesn’t dispute that my father felt that way, it is somehow
more real.

“Dee, you’re breathing so hard.” The cadence of her voice tells me she’s on the move. “Please, just sit down and relax. I’m getting into the car.” I hear her car door shut and the engine turn over. “I’m coming there. Don’t go anywhere.”

I’m panting like I’ve run ten miles. I wonder if it’s hard for her to come here after being in the car when my parents were killed. She was
right there in the backseat. She heard their screams, and may have heard them take their last breaths. I know she’s recovered from her injuries, but it’s not the physical scars I’m worried about. I freeze, weighing my selfish need and her suffering, but my need to put this behind me is so big I can’t move past it.

“I need to understand.” It comes out strangled.

“Delilah…” She says my name
so seriously I stop walking. “I’ll be there soon. Stay put.”

The world spins around me as she continues talking. My head is swimming. I can comprehend only a few words past the blood rushing through my ears.

Our parents were strict…Did the best he could…Loved you…

“Delilah?”

I need answers. Real answers.

“I gotta go.”

I grab my car keys and storm out the front door toward
my Jeep. I start it up and toss the phone on the passenger seat as I pull out and speed toward the cemetery. I don’t remember stopping at stoplights, although I’m sure I did. I don’t remember driving through the iron gates or navigating the winding road toward their freshly turned graves. I don’t remember getting out of the Jeep and walking to their graves.

But I’m here.

Staring at their
headstones.

I read my father’s headstone.
Loving husband, father, and friend.

The word
conditionally
is missing.

Why? Why? Why?

I pace the recently turned earth, too upset to think. “You made me feel like shit. I wasn’t a legal case for you to steer in a direction you approved of. You should have looked at me like I was your daughter, not a case to win or lose. You should have
been compassionate, for fuck’s sake. I hate you for making me feel like shit.” I fall to my knees, and tears steal my voice. My chest burns, and my entire body quakes with every forceful sob.

“Why, Dad?” I plead. “Why would you do this to me?”

I look at my mother’s grave, but I can’t pull the words from my throat. She was also standing beside him, agreeing with the things he said. A silent
partner who wasn’t always silent. I have a feeling that she doesn’t need me to repeat myself. She knows. She’s still beside him.

I bury my face in my hands, feeling like my heart has been ripped from my chest again. How can a person’s heart be ripped out over and over again? I remain there, overtaken by sadness, for a long while. Tears come and go, and my mind continues to swim.

I rise
on shaky legs and stare down at my parents’ graves, crossing my arms to try to gain control of my trembling. It doesn’t work.

“I don’t hate you,” I spit out. “I hate what you did. I hate how you made me feel.”

Kenny’s words come rushing forward.
She said it’s okay for girls to be girlfriend and girlfriend and boys to be boyfriend and boyfriend. I think it’s okay since Mom said it’s okay.

I sink to my knees again, the hurt overtaking my anger.

“Dad, what did your parents do to you, for you to do this to me?”

“It was pretty bad.”

I spin around at the sound of Aunt Lara’s voice. She kneels beside me and touches my shoulder. Her other hand wraps around her rib cage. She broke a few ribs in the accident, and I wonder if she feels the pain anew.

“Delilah, your father
loved you, honey. He adored you.”

“No.” I shake my head. “He only loved the perfect parts of me he wanted to love. I saw it in his eyes. Once I told him, he didn’t love me for
me
. I ruined it.”

“Dee, this is going to be a lot to digest. Do you want to go somewhere to talk?”

I shake my head. “No. I think I should hear it right here in front of him.”

She stares at me for a long time,
assessing me. I know she’s trying to figure out if she can convince me to leave, so I clench my trembling jaw to let her know I’m not going anywhere.

“Okay.” She sits beside me and crosses her legs. “You didn’t know your grandparents very well, but our parents were super-conservative. If you think your father’s rules were strict, you can multiply them by about a million. I don’t claim to know
much about gay lifestyles, and I don’t think my brother did, either. We were from a different generation. Our generation wasn’t as free or as diverse as yours. And our parents? Well, their generation was so…wrong when it came to this stuff.”

Wrong? She thinks they were wrong?

“Your father was only mimicking what he learned. We weren’t brought up to be open-minded.” She covers her heart
with her hand and swallows hard. “But I know, with every ounce of my being, that he adored you.”

“But…”

“Please, just hear me out. Your father didn’t hate gays. He was uncomfortable with the idea. And when you told him about your…preferences, he was forced to confront other fears. Parental fears.”

I bit my lower lip to try to stave off more tears.

“On the way home, he and your
mom talked about you. They worried
for
you. Your father worried that your lifestyle would make your life more difficult for you. It’s different for parents. We worry about how the things our children do—from getting tattoos or nose rings to sexual preferences—will impact their lives. I know you can’t understand this, because your generation is so much more open with these things, but when we were
growing up...” She presses her lips together and shifts her eyes toward their graves. “Things were very different. Biases were everywhere. Your father didn’t want to imagine
you
facing that type of prejudice from others.”

“But it’s not really like that! Things have changed and it’s more widely accepted now.”

“No, honey, it’s not like that with your generation. But your generation kind
of lives in a bubble.”

I can’t keep my eyes from rolling.

“Not just your generation. All generations live in their own bubbles. When we were your age,
we
lived in bubbles. We still do. Only as adults we’re expected to break free of our bubbles as younger generations change and evolve into things that are wildly different from what we’re used to. You’ll see one day, when the next generation
does things that you question. This has gone on for hundreds of years. Every generation thinks the next is worse, doing things that are wrong or unsafe, or stupid.” She draws her brows together. “Not that you’re stupid or wrong or anything like that. I’m speaking in generalities.”

“I don’t understand. I’m his daughter. He should have just accepted me. He owned a house in
Harborside,
for God’s
sake.”

She furrows her brows. “What does Harborside have to do with this?”

“What do you mean? There are tons of gays there. Why would
he
buy in that kind of community?”

Aunt Lara smiles and shakes her head. She covers her eyes with her hand, and when she meets my gaze again, her eyes soften, as does her tone.

“Honey, that’s the bubble I’m talking about. To you Harborside is a diverse
community because you grew up spending summers with Tristan and Brandon, and your generation is more accepting. Those lifestyles are
normal
to you because it’s what you were exposed to from a young age.” Lara has known Tristan and Brandon as long as we have. She usually visits us in Harborside for a few days each summer. Of course, this year everything’s been different, with her recovering from
her injuries and all of us trying to deal with the loss of my parents.

“It’s not
normal
, according to Dad.”

“Right, because your parents lived in a different bubble than you. A different bubble than me, even though they were only a few years older than I am. As far as Harborside goes, they fell in love with the romance of living on the water, the family environment, the slower-paced lifestyle.
The Taproom was a great investment and a fun way for them to keep busy in the summers. Their friends weren’t gay.”

She takes my hand and holds my gaze. “Don’t you see, Delilah? Your generation’s bubble and your father’s generation’s bubble coexisted on the same plane but saw things very differently. They never saw Harborside as a gay community. To them it was a family community. A place to
spend time with you and Wyatt, where you could build memories, which you have. Great memories.”

I try to process what she’s said. Try to see it from her point of view, and I guess it kind of makes sense.

“So you’re saying that I see it as diverse because I’m immersed in my friendships. My
bubble
.”

“Yes, exactly. Your parents’ friends were straight. They saw Harborside completely differently.
They saw Brandon and Tristan as two boys in a sea of thousands of families. You see Brandon and Tristan as two gay men in a pool of a diverse younger generation.”

“But they looked at me like I was such a disappointment.”

“Not a disappointment.” Aunt Lara nodded, and her eyes became hooded, even more worried. “Honey, your parents, your father specifically, didn’t know how to handle it.
He was only human. He needed time to come to grips with it.”

“My mom looked at me funny, too.”

She shrugs, nods. “They were a little stunned. You were their baby, even if you’re all grown-up. They worried about you.”

I steal a glance at their headstones and feel as if my father’s sitting right there watching me. But the eyes I see staring back at me are no longer judgmental. They’re
worried.

Oh, Daddy
.

I reach for Aunt Lara’s hand, and she squeezes mine.

“He used to tell us that same-sex marriages were wrong.” I lift my eyes and meet her sad gaze. “I spent years feeling ashamed of myself, hiding who I was.”

She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, Delilah. I wish I had known how you felt. I wish they had known when they had more time with you, to digest it and
process it and move forward. They never would have wanted you to suffer in silence. When we stopped for gas on the way home from your graduation and your mom emailed you, your father felt terribly guilty for whatever look he gave you. He said he looked at you like his father would have looked at him, and he hated himself for it.”

“Wait. What?” My heart leaps to my throat. “What email?”

Her brows knit together. “They sent you an email when we stopped for gas. They said they needed to apologize. Didn’t you get it?”

I stand and run toward my Jeep. I hear her calling after me, but I keep going. After graduation we took pictures, packed up our room, and after my parents drove home, Wyatt and I went to a party. That was the night we caught Cassidy’s boyfriend cheating and Wyatt
beat him up. Later that night we found out about my parents’ accident. I haven’t even thought about checking email since school ended. I never used it for anything other than school stuff.

I click on the email app on my phone, and sure enough, there’s an unread message from my mom’s email. I’m afraid to click on it.

Aunt Lara catches up to me.

“Why didn’t she text me?”

“I don’t
know. Did your mom text often?”

I shake my head. “No. She always called.” I look up at her, clenching my phone in my hands. “I’m afraid to read it.”

“Want me to read it first?”

I shake my head. “No, but do you mind staying with me while I read it?”

She puts her arm around me, and a minute later I gather enough courage to read the message.

Delilah,

We can’t believe
you’re all grown-up. Graduated! Dad and I are so very proud of you. Watching you and Wyatt walk across that stage was one of the proudest moments of our lives. You have both grown into such loving, strong adults. We love you so much, and we owe you an apology for reacting so poorly to your news. We are very sorry. Your father and I have been thinking about how much courage it took for you to tell
us that you were a lesbian. (See? I can type it. I can even say it.) And that stunned look in your father’s eyes is fading. Mine, too, if there was one.

You’ve probably figured out that we’re not perfect. We have hurdles of our own to overcome in order to fully support you. Skeletons to deal with, harshly ingrained biases to try to navigate past, but we love you, Delilah. We’re going to try
our best to be as supportive as we possibly can, and even if it’s hard for us for a while, please don’t take that to mean we love you any less than we did before you told us. You took us by surprise, but let’s talk about this after you celebrate your graduation.