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Stepping outside, I closed the sliding glass door to the deck. My
eyes darted to his cell phone, resting in the chair opposite of
him. He had excused himself from dinner some time ago, and
while I couldn’t hear exactly what he was shouting to my mother
over the phone, I had some clue what it was about. It was
always about the same thing. It was still about work.
Mom had met my stepfather Jacob when I was still very young. They didn’t take long dating before I was walking down an aisle
with a basket of flower petals in hand. My mom never took long
when she knew she wanted something and in Jacob, she had
found a kind and loving man. He didn’t make much money, but
that had never been important to her. She was a career woman
and damn good at it. She had clawed her way up from the bottom of the company she had worked at, climbing the
corporate ladder rung by rung.
They say that opposites attract, and her relationship with my stepfather was clinical proof that was the case. Once they were married, he moved in, and I learned what it was like to have an actual parent. My birth father had disappeared shortly after Mom found out she was pregnant and left her to raise me all alone. She had made sure that I never wanted for anything but to say that she didn’t have a single maternal instinct in her body would have been an understatement of comical proportions.
Jacob quickly became everything she wasn’t, and over the years I grew closer and closer to him than my mom, and I had ever been. She was always around, but could never be bothered to
do the things that normal mothers did for their daughters. That’s why Jacob had always been “Dad” in my eyes.
When I went through my first period, he was the one who explained the changes that I would be going through. When I had my first heartbreak, it was Daddy who listened and held me as I sobbed uncontrollably. He didn’t judge me or tell me that I should be more careful who I dated. I didn’t have to listen to some lecture about what boys are actually thinking about and how he should know because he was one. He just told me that he would always be there for me. He had helped me get my first job and was there with me for hours while I picked out my dress for prom. Really, he had been both parents to me.
“What has she done now, Daddy?” I asked.
He looked at the phone, which I had seen him throw across the table at the cushioned deck chair in frustration.
“Same as always,” he said. “Work before me.Work before us.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Probably not,” he said. “Not unless you can convince the travel agency to refund my tickets. But I promise you can’t.”
“What? She canceled?” Daddy just nodded.
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My heart sank for him. He had spent months planning this getaway. To think that Mom would just cancel on him last
minute like this was unbelievable.
He had been planning and looking forward to this for months.
How could she?
“How do you know they won’t refund you?” I asked.
“I am going to call them and check tomorrow,” he replied. I don’t think that I had ever heard him sound so sad. “But I am pretty sure that the whole package is non–refundable. I could try to find somebody to buy the tickets off of me, but I doubt anybody
will. It’s next weekend.”
“Well,” I said. “Why not go yourself?” I asked. “On a couple’s
retreat?” he asked.
“Sure,” I replied. “You have been looking forward to this. Don’t
let her ruin it for you.”
“It wouldn’t be the same,” he said. “It would be lonely, and I am going to get enough of lonely with you going off to college next
year.”
He wasn’t wrong. I had taken a year off after graduation, but next fall I would be moving hours away from him so that I could start college. We sat in silence for a few minutes as the evening grew darker and darker.
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“I could come with you, Daddy,” I said.
He didn’t respond at first. I was worried that I had angered him by inviting myself along.
