My father stood on the porch holding a small gift bag.<\/p>\n
He wore the navy jacket he usually saved for dinners outside the house, and his hair was neatly combed.<\/p>\n
He looked exactly as I expected him to look.<\/p>\n
That made everything harder.<\/p>\n
"There she is," he said.<\/p>\n
I tried to smile.<\/p>\n
"Hi, Dad."<\/p>\n
He leaned forward to hug me.<\/p>\n
I stepped into his arms and kept my face turned toward his shoulder.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I let myself feel safe.<\/p>\n
It was only a moment.<\/p>\n
When he pulled back, I saw his eyes move toward my left cheek.<\/p>\n
My smile almost disappeared.<\/p>\n
"Happy birthday, sweetheart."<\/p>\n
"Thank you."<\/p>\n
He held out the bag.<\/p>\n
"I brought you something."<\/p>\n
"You didn't have to."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
That was my father. He never needed an excuse to bring me something, even when he insisted he wasn't making a fuss.<\/p>\n
I took the bag and moved aside so he could enter.<\/p>\n
He stepped into the hallway and looked around.<\/p>\n
"Smells good in here."<\/p>\n
"I made dinner."<\/p>\n
"I can tell."<\/p>\n
He smiled at me.<\/p>\n
I wished I could hold on to that expression.<\/p>\n
Derek appeared behind me before my father could say anything else.<\/p>\n
"Glad you made it," Derek said.<\/p>\n
My father turned toward him.<\/p>\n
"Wouldn't miss it."<\/p>\n
They shook hands.<\/p>\n
Derek had always been careful around my father. He used his polite voice, stood a little straighter, and remembered details from previous conversations.<\/p>\n
When my father was around, Derek became the sort of man I had once believed he was all the time.<\/p>\n
Helpful.<\/p>\n
Patient.<\/p>\n
Considerate.<\/p>\n
He even smiled differently.<\/p>\n
It was a smaller smile, one that seemed designed to reassure people rather than share anything with them.<\/p>\n
"Emily's been working on dinner all afternoon," Derek said. "You should see what she's done with the cake."<\/p>\n
My father glanced at me.<\/p>\n
"I'd like that."<\/p>\n
I carried his gift into the living room and placed it on the coffee table.<\/p>\n
The bag was plain brown paper with a dark ribbon around the handles.<\/p>\n
I didn't open it.<\/p>\n
I was too busy thinking about the bruise.<\/p>\n
Every time I moved beneath the lights, I wondered whether the makeup had shifted.<\/p>\n
Every time my father looked at me, I tried to decide whether he had noticed.<\/p>\n
He had known me my entire life.<\/p>\n
He remembered when I lost my first tooth, when I broke my wrist as a child, and when I tried to cut my own bangs before a school photograph.<\/p>\n
He had always noticed the little things.<\/p>\n
A change in my voice.<\/p>\n
A forced smile.<\/p>\n
The way I held my shoulders when I was worried.<\/p>\n
I had once found that comforting.<\/p>\n
Now I was afraid of it.<\/p>\n
"How have you been?" he asked.<\/p>\n
"Good."<\/p>\n
The answer came too quickly.<\/p>\n
He tilted his head.<\/p>\n
"Busy?"<\/p>\n
"A little."<\/p>\n
"Work going all right?"<\/p>\n
"Yes. Everything's fine."<\/p>\n
I heard myself speaking, and I hated how practiced I sounded.<\/p>\n
My father didn't immediately respond.<\/p>\n
He simply watched me.<\/p>\n
I looked away and pretended to straighten a cushion on the sofa.<\/p>\n
Behind us, Derek began talking about the restaurant where he had once taken my father for lunch.<\/p>\n
It was a harmless conversation.<\/p>\n
That was the problem.<\/p>\n
Everything sounded harmless when Derek wanted it to.<\/p>\n
He could discuss football, work, the weather, or the price of groceries without anyone guessing what happened when the front door closed.<\/p>\n
I had learned to separate those two versions of him.<\/p>\n
The one other people knew.<\/p>\n
The one I lived with.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I wondered whether the distinction had become so familiar that I would never be able to explain it properly to anyone.<\/p>\n
My father took off his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair.<\/p>\n
"Should I put this somewhere?"<\/p>\n
"I'll take it," I said.<\/p>\n
He handed it to me.<\/p>\n
As I turned, I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror.<\/p>\n
The bruise was still there.<\/p>\n
I could see the uneven color beneath the concealer, and the swelling made the skin around my eye look slightly different.<\/p>\n
I lowered my gaze.<\/p>\n
"Emily."<\/p>\n
My father's voice stopped me.<\/p>\n
I turned back.<\/p>\n
"Are you all right?"<\/p>\n
The question was quiet.<\/p>\n
No accusation.<\/p>\n
No suspicion that he wanted me to defend myself against.<\/p>\n
Just a question.<\/p>\n
For a second, I nearly told him.<\/p>\n
I imagined the words coming out plainly.<\/p>\n
I imagined saying that Derek had hurt me and that I didn't know how much longer I could keep pretending everything was normal.<\/p>\n
I imagined my father putting his jacket back on the chair and sitting beside me until I could finish explaining.<\/p>\n
Then I looked toward the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Derek was standing near the doorway.<\/p>\n
He hadn't said anything.<\/p>\n
He didn't need to.<\/p>\n
I knew the expression he would wear later if I embarrassed him in front of my father.<\/p>\n
I knew the conversation that would follow after the house was quiet.<\/p>\n
I knew how he would make my honesty sound like betrayal.<\/p>\n
"I'm just tired," I said.<\/p>\n
My father studied me for another moment.<\/p>\n
"All right."<\/p>\n
He didn't argue.<\/p>\n
Somehow, that made me feel worse.<\/p>\n
He had given me an opening, and I had closed it myself.<\/p>\n
I returned his jacket to the chair and followed him toward the dining room.<\/p>\n
The table had been set for three.<\/p>\n
I had placed the good plates in the center, folded the napkins, and arranged the silverware as neatly as I could.<\/p>\n
A small vase of flowers stood beside the cake.<\/p>\n
I had bought them on my way home from work.<\/p>\n
They were inexpensive, but I liked the way they looked against the white tablecloth.<\/p>\n
My father stopped beside the table.<\/p>\n
"You did all this yourself?"<\/p>\n
"Most of it."<\/p>\n
"Looks lovely."<\/p>\n
"Thanks."<\/p>\n
He pulled out a chair.<\/p>\n
Derek moved to the other side of the table and began adjusting a place setting.<\/p>\n
For a moment, the three of us looked like an ordinary family preparing to celebrate an ordinary birthday.<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe that appearance could become reality if I tried hard enough.<\/p>\n
I wanted the evening to pass without questions.<\/p>\n
I wanted my father to eat his dinner, admire the cake, and leave believing his daughter was happy.<\/p>\n
Most of all, I wanted to stop being afraid of the people who loved me.<\/p>\n
I didn't know how to do that yet.<\/p>\n
So I smiled, sat down, and waited for dinner to begin.<\/p>\n
My father stood on the porch holding a small gift bag. He wore the navy jacket he usually saved for dinners outside the house, and his hair was neatly combed. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36610,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36590\/revisions\/36610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}