Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2) (35 page)

I drop my head into my hands, tears slipping through my fingers, sobs tumbling past my lips.

“If I can just be good enough, he might come back.”

I lift my head and laugh, cheeks wet.

“And I was right because here you are. I finally made it, and you finally came back, but you know what?” I look at him, even though the tears in my eyes make him a wavering line. “I may be good enough, but you’re not.”

It’s his turn to be teary eyed. He opens his mouth and then clamps it closed. What can he say to me that will make it right? That will erase Mama’s years of back-breaking work? Of denying herself so I could have? He wasn’t worth her love. And even though maybe on some level, just about every step I’ve taken to get where I am was to prove something to him, to
draw
him back to me, he’s not worth mine either.

“I think you should go,” I choke out, turning my back on him, an echo of what he did to us all those years ago.

“Kai Anne, let me just say one thing before I go,” he says, voice husky with tears. “I know you’re mad at me, but I’m not giving up,”

“Oh, I think you will.” A harsh laugh abrades my lips. “Giving up is what you do best.”

“I understand if you want nothing to do with me, but you have a little sister who would love to know you. She’s your only blood left in the world, after all,” he says. “I’m leaving my number here on the table.”

For a moment I think he’s gone, and I almost let it all go, but then I hear one more broken whisper before he leaves for good.

“Bye, baby girl.”

I train my eyes on the hands fisted around each other at my waist. I didn’t get to see him leave the first time, and I don’t want to watch him go now. I hold it together until the door closes behind him, and then like the ballerina Mama gave me years ago, I shatter. I’m strewn, my broken pieces so myriad, I could never put them back together into what they were before he re-entered my life. I cry for that little girl who held on to her delusions about her father for too long, and for my mother who loved wrong and only once in her whole life, and could never let go even when that love let go of her.

I sob for hours, or it could be only minutes. I shed a billion tears, or maybe it’s just a few. This is a vacuum that has sucked away all sense of time and reality. In Mama’s shed, I’m suspended in pain and lost in regrets. Hers. Mine. Daddy’s. They’re all here. I pour them all into this room, into these jars, and it’s only once I’m empty that something begins to fill me for the first time. An understanding that I couldn’t have had without this pain at the hands of my father.

Train up a child in the way he should go.

This, like so many of the lessons from my father’s Bible, revisits me.

As a little girl I expected my father to do just that. To train me in the way I should go, but it’s only now that he’s unpacked his life, his mistakes, his weaknesses that I see he did exactly the opposite. Everything he modeled for me was all wrong, but in many ways, I was trained by his failings. Tutored by his mistakes.

Aunt Ruthie told me more than once that I’m just as much my father’s daughter as I am my mother’s. That I’m as much like him as I am like her. I didn’t believe her until now. The secrets. The lies. The hiding. The running. All a latent legacy from my father that, under pressure, has sprung to life.

Hypocrisy scents the air and turns my stomach. I’ve asked so many things of Rhyson that I haven’t been willing to do myself. I let my own fear and insecurity ruin our trust. The foundation he thought we were rebuilding, I’ve cracked with my lies and secrets. San tried to tell me. Rhyson learned from his mistakes and has done everything to show me, but it was coming face to face with my father that held the mirror up to me. My life for the last few months has been one huge blind spot with me overlooking all the ways I’ve done to Rhyson exactly what he did to me. I was blind to it, but now . . . well, now I see.

I MISSED A CALL FROM MY
father.

I’m leaving the studio, debating whether to return or ignore the call. The missed call alert on my phone mocks me, daring me to respond. We’ve had a few more counseling sessions since that initial one, and things have thawed some between my father and me. My mother . . . still frozen.

I may never be able to say the word “frozen” again without laughing. I was only half-joking when I suggested animation for Kai’s acting career. Yet another bridge we’ll have to cross when we come to it. That one—nudity, sex scenes, all that shit with some other guy, even if it is acting—that bridge I’ll burn. Got the match right here.

I don’t even register that I’ve dialed his number until it’s ringing. Only then do I realize it’s almost midnight. I’m about to hang up when he answers.

“Rhyson, hey.”

He sounds surprisingly alert and as strong as ever, even though I’m always shocked that he looks frailer than the man I grew up with. He and Grady are identical twins, but now he looks like Grady’s older brother. Em’s keeping Grady young, and my mother’s
got
to be aging my father. I feel weary after every session, and she and I barely look at each other in those.

“Dad, hey. Sorry to call so late. I didn’t realize it was . . . well, I’m just leaving the studio.” I barrel ahead with an apology before he asks for an explanation. “Sorry I missed yesterday’s session with Dr. Ramirez. I didn’t mean to blow it off.”

“It’s fine,” he says. “But I wanted to call and make sure you were okay.”

I hesitate, weighing how much deeper I want to allow him into my life. Kai’s about as deep as you can get with me, so sharing anything about her would crack open that door between my father and me just that much more.

“My girlfriend, Kai, collapsed during one of her concerts. Not sure if you heard. It was on the news a lot last week. She was in the hospital.”

“I did hear. I actually left you a voicemail checking to see if she was okay.”

His concern startles me. I can’t imagine him doing something like that years ago.

“Sorry. I didn’t check all my voicemails,” I say. “I kind of forgot about everything else. I went home with her to recuperate. I should be able to make next week’s session. We’ll have to see how she’s doing.”

“Maybe we could . . .” My father’s voice goes somewhere I’ve rarely heard it go. To uncertainty. “Maybe we could have coffee or something when you get back. You know, meet outside the session.”

Holy shit.

“Uh, we could do that.” I tap the steering wheel. “Coffee’s kind of public for me, though. Maybe you could . . . come to the house for dinner or something.”

Thank God it’s almost midnight, and there’s hardly any traffic because this conversation requires my complete focus.

“Dinner?” Surprise tinges his voice. “Sure. I’d . . . well, I’d like that.”

“Kai’s a great cook,” I continue before I think better of it. “Did I mention she’s from Georgia? Can you believe I ended up with a girl from Georgia?”

“A Southerner, huh?” His laugh makes him sound freer than I’ve heard in a long time. Maybe ever. “You sure know how to pick ‘em.”

“And to top it off, she’s a Baptist. As in church. Crazy, right? Anyway, they fry chicken in this big black pot, in like a foot of grease. It’s the best thing you’ll ever taste. I think I’m getting her a pot for our back yard.”

“That sounds nice,” he says, that smile still in his voice. “I’d love to come.”

It’s unspoken between us, but we both know I’m extending the invitation only to him. My mother . . . that’s still another issue entirely.

“How about I call you when I get back from taking care of her? Or . . . I guess you could call. Or whatever.”

“That’d be great.” He pauses. “Thanks for calling me back, Rhyson.”

“Sure. I mean, of course.” I roll my eyes at myself. “Yeah.”

Smooth. Real smooth. You’re such a baller, Gray.

“Talk to you later, son.”

I can’t remember the last time I didn’t flinch when he called me that. The fact that I don’t gives me hope I wasn’t sure I’d ever have.

I’m still processing our conversation when I walk into the house. It’s completely quiet. I’m replaying every word I said to my dad, wondering if I should have said more, less.

I need to talk to Kai. She always helps me sort my shit. I wouldn’t even be wrestling with this had it not been for her forcing me . . .
er, encouraging me
. . . to go to counseling. I’m dialing her number before I think twice about it, not even factoring in the lateness of the hour, the time difference, nothing. Just as I’m realizing it’s about three in the morning there, and am about to disconnect, I hear my song
Lost
ringing up the staircase. The closer I get, I think it’s coming from my bedroom.

I cross the threshold, and sure enough, Kai is curled up asleep fully clothed on my bed, the phone ringing by her side. She sits up groggily, patting the bed to search for the phone. I’m there before she can even get to it, pulling her up, sitting on the edge of the bed and straddling her over me, knees on either side of my legs.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” I bury my head in her hair and her neck, inhaling cinnamon and pear. “I mean, you’re great to come home to, but I was on my way back to Glory Falls tomorrow night.”

She nods into my neck, her fingers clutching my elbows, her slight frame pressing into me.

“I know.” She lays her temple to my shoulder. “I needed to talk to you.”

“You okay?” I tug on the hair streaming down her back until she’s forced to look at me. I know what she looks like at peace. The tumult in those beautiful eyes fists my heart. “What’s wrong, Pep? Aunt Ruthie?”

“No.” She remains on my lap, but scoots back a little, legs folded under her thighs on the bed, arms crossed over her waist. “Aunt Ruthie’s fine. She’s good.”

Her eyes drop again, so I palm her chin, tilting her face back up to me.

“What’s going on?”

She closes her eyes and swallows, pressing her lips together.

“My dad came to see me.”

Of all the things I would have imagined she’d say, that never entered my mind.

“Your
father
? Your real dad?”

“Yeah. He, um, saw on the news that I collapsed at the concert and was in the hospital. He said he wanted to make sure I was okay. When he heard no one knew where I was, he took a chance and checked Glory Falls.”

“Wanted to make sure you were okay?” I squeeze her thighs, wishing I had five minutes alone with his no-show ass. “After all these years he just happens to get concerned when he sees you on
television
?”

She nods, her eyes unfocused over my shoulder.

“Exactly what I said.”

“Hey.” I tug her chin so she looks at me. “You okay? Talk to me. What did he have to say for himself?”

A tear slides down one cheek, and she swipes at it before it makes it very far. She tucks a chunk of dark hair behind her ear, a humorless smile on her lips.

“Not enough. He didn’t say enough to make up for any of it.” She sighs, folding a little to press her forehead to my chest. “Growing up, I used to think there was an explanation. Something we never could have thought of. Like, maybe he was secretly a spy, and for our sake, he had to go into witness protection. Only no one could know, not even us.”

Her laugh is a short, dry bark in the quiet bedroom.

“But he was just weak. He fell in love with someone else and chose her over his family.” She shrugs her slim shoulders. “A liar. A cheat. That’s all.”

I brush a hand over the dark hair tumbling around her shoulders and down her back. God, I hate that guy. The pain comes off her in waves, and if I could take it all, absorb it all into myself, I would.

“I’m sorry, Pep. I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling right now. That’s a lot to deal with.”

“He said he felt trapped in Glory Falls and never wanted to be a preacher. He felt trapped in their marriage, Rhyson.”

She shakes her head, another tear sneaking past her eyelids.

“It would have killed Mama to hear him say that. I’m glad he never came back if that’s all he had to say for himself.”

She pulls back to study me, her eyes holding more than pain. Holding something I can’t quite figure out yet.