Page 321 of Tell Me I'm Enough

I go completely still, and everything around us quiets.

“She was only a year old,” he tells me, voice breaking.

My stomach turns violently. I don’t even know where to put that information in my brain. It doesn’t fit anywhere.

Scott fists his hands on top of the table, squeezing them like it’ll bring some relief to the words he’s saying. “A couple of weeks before her first birthday, she got a fever, a cough that turned into something worse. One minute she was playing and the next—” He stops, breath hitching. “The next thing we knew, we were in the hospital, watching her be hooked up to tubes and doctors doing everything they could until…until she couldn’t hold on anymore. And I…I blamed your mother.”

My teeth grind. “You blamed Mom…for her getting sick?”

His eyes flick up, frantic. “I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t look at myself after she died. I couldn’t—” He shakeshis head, voice wrecked. “I turned it into her fault because if it wasn’t, then it was mine. And I couldn’t survive that.”

I sit back, bile rising. “So you punished her instead?”

He nods. It’s weak…like him.

“She went downhill after,” he says. “She became paranoid—terrified of every cough, every sneeze. Afraid of the world, afraid of herself. She couldn’t breathe without thinking the next breath might be the one that takes her away too. Or terrified everyone around her was going to die.”

I picture Mom, eyes wide, hands trembling, trying to smile through fear that day in the car…the day that changed everything. The one fear she had…came true.

“And then she got pregnant with you,” he tells me, voice softer now. “And it was like…it was like she came back to life. Like she finally had something to hold onto again.”

I dig my fingers into my palm, trying not to get emotional thinking about my mom.

“And I hated her for it,” he tells me, lifting his gaze to me, giving me the raw honesty. “I hated that she could love again after Hailey. I hated that I couldn’t. I hated that she looked at you like you were what fixed everything.”

He lets out a breath like all this is a weight off his shoulders. “So I became a man who turned everything off,” he whispers. “And I made you suffer because of that decision.”

I stare at him for a long time.

I want to scream.

I want to stand up, flip the table, and tell him he doesn’t get to explain his way out of what he did to me. That it doesn’t erase anything. If anything, it makes it all so much worse.

I stand and just look at him—really look at him—and I feel something I never thought I’d feel. It’s not forgiveness, not even pity. Just…clarity.

“I came here because you asked,” I say. “That’s all you get.”

His lips part like he wants to beg for forgiveness, but I cut him off.

“My mother didn’t deserve what you did to her,” I say, and I hate how my voice shakes, but I let the emotions show. “And neither did I.”

He nods, tears still running down his face. “I know.”

I turn away before I can change my mind, before I can let the past get a hold of me and drag me back to those dark places like it did for so long.

I just keep walking out the door of the visiting area and out of the building, not letting myself leave any parts here with him. My life is waiting outside these walls. And it’s loud, and messy, and real. And it’s mine.

* * *

Every mile I drive home feels like it pushes the conversation with my dad further and further to the front of my mind. I feel like it’s trying to suffocate me, trying to reason with my empathy, trying to give him some leeway or excuse for what he made me into.

I don’t want to feel anything else for him.

All I can do is ask God to take the anger, take the confusion, take the emotions threatening to cause old wounds to bleed.

I have to be grateful, though. I feel like his confession gave me an answer to the one question I had for so long growing up.Whyshe stayed.

I can’t imagine what she felt back then. Falling for someone and being so young and confused when you were thrown into motherhood, only to lose your child. My heart breaks thinking about losingmylittle girl. It would break me in unimaginable ways. Losing any of my kids would destroy the man I’ve worked so hard to become.