Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
“Yeah, okay.” She shifted in her boots and peered up at the sky overhead once more. “Did you want more kids?”
“No.”
“With Mom?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Frankie waited him out.
“We never talked about it after you came along, and you were a very pleasant surprise in our mid-thirties anyway,” he said quietly. “We didn’t get that far, I suppose. We were just wrapped up in what we had in that moment. The future didn’t factor into the equation until there wasn’t a future to have anymore.”
“Well, Carina talked to me about it—said she never wanted kids. So, if she sticks to that, then what? You’re gonna be fine if she goes and aborts it?”
Salvatore’s jaw clenched, and his next words came out tight and terse. “This is not a conversation that you and I need to have, as it’s not for you and I to make the choice. So, drop it, please.”
“You could at least answer me.”
“I already did. It’s her body; it’s her choice.”
“But it’s your baby, too. You said it.”
“And if it was you, I would say the same thing. You don’t understand everything, Frankie. And the rest is not my story. Just like what you heard that day in the kitchen also wasn’t my story to tell. That shouldn’t have happened.”
“But it did,” she muttered.
“It did,” he echoed sadly. “And apparently, I am one of the lucky people who are so rare, that they get to be medically documented because of a vasectomy failure long after the time that it should be possible to happen. Statistically speaking, I mean.”
She made a face, not bothering to hide the disgust.
Salvatore must have noticed. “We are a little late, so maybe we should get going in, hmm?”
Frankie eyed the church again, still wondering something. “Who attends church at two in the afternoon anyway?”
“Lots of people, depending on the church and location. That’s not why I’m here, or why I asked you to come today.”
“So...why did you?”
Salvatore sighed, taking the steps slowly and letting her stay in stride beside him. “I haven’t been here in a while, but when I do come, I attend the meetings.”
“Meetings?”
“A.A. That one’s not mine, though. I need N.A.”
Her confusion must have been clear.
“Narcotics Anonymous, Frankie. I’ve been an opiate addict, recovering, since you were a kid, and when I had the accident, I accepted pain management while they handled the mess of my hand. It’s been hard ever since.”
She blinked, stopping on the top step while he continued forward. It took him a few more paces before he realized she’d stopped following him altogether. In that moment, she saw her father differently than she ever had before.
Usually, he was her hero.
A victor in every sense of the word.
Her dad.
Right then, he was just a man. And it kind of hurt.
“Pills?” she asked.
He tipped his head toward the door. “I don’t like to talk about it outside of the rooms of recovery, if I can help it. Are you coming, or not? Because either way, I really fucking need a meeting right now.”
“You’re not using, are you?”
Would she even know if he was?
“No, but I want to. More than I’ve ever wanted to in the last ten years since I stopped.”
“Because of Carina?”
“My addiction stems from my own inability to cope. My cowardness. Not anyone else.” His sadness bled through in his dimmed gaze and forming frown. “Because I hurt someone I love, again. Because it’s easier not to feel guilt by swallowing pills than it is to face it and make amends. Because if I tell her any of this, it also means opening a door I can’t close.”
Frankie nibbled at the inside of her lip before whispering, “You love Carina? Like, you’re in love with her?”
His hand remained on the church door, but he didn’t pull it open quite yet. “I think I always have. I just don’t know how to say it after so many years of telling her that I can’t. That I don’t. I know her and I are bad together sometimes, that we’ve done and said horrible things to one another, and yeah, we’re beyond toxic a lot of the time, but...”
“But?” she pressed.
Salvatore shrugged. “But nothing. I’ve spent a lot of years tacking things on to that statement because it was easier than letting myself feel how I did. Because I’d already loved someone else so much, and then she died, and I just...I wanted to die with her. But I had you. You can’t imagine the guilt and the grief it caused me, the heartache.”
“It shouldn’t hurt to love someone, Daddy.”
He smiled little. “Maybe it does when it also feels like letting go of something else. And maybe it does when you’re familiar with all there is to lose.”
•••
“I started to think you weren’t coming home,” came a familiar voice from down the hall.