Page 121 of Unmanageable

“My dad used to take me to places like this,” she says quietly. “Before they split. I mean, I don’t remember much from when they were together, but I remember him taking me places like this.”

“Sounds like a smart man,” I say.

She smiles faintly, but it disappears almost immediately.

“He was just tired,” she says.

Her eyes stay on the water outside the window.

“I think that’s what makes everything with my mom so complicated,” she says after a moment. “Because everyone acts like you’re supposed to have this relationship with your mother. Like no matter what happens, there’s supposed to be some kind of bond there.”

I look at her carefully.

“Scottie—”

“We’ve never really had that,” she says. “Not the way people mean it.”

She lowers her hand from her chin and starts picking at the corner of the paper basket.

“She’s been drinking for years. Constantly. Some days she’s my mom, and some days it’s like I’m talking to a completely different person.”

She laughs softly, but there’s nothing funny about it.

“And she always tells me I’m going to end up just like her.”

My eyebrows pull together. “She says that?”

Scottie nods. “All the time. That I’m not actually that different. That eventually I’ll get tired, I’ll stop pretending, and I’ll become exactly like her.” She swallows. “Like all the work I’ve done to build a life for myself is just me running from something that’s already waiting for me.”

“You don’t have to tell me any of this, you know.”

She looks over at me.

“I know.” There’s a small pause. “But I want to.”

So I let her. I sit back and give her the space to find the words, even though every part of me wants to reach across the table and take some of the weight from her.

“My dad left when I was four.” She clears her throat. “He just… left. And he never came back. Not for birthdays. Not holidays. Not even just to see if I was okay.”

Her voice gets quieter, dropping an octave. “I don’t even really blame him for leaving her, you know? I get it. The house was a war zone half the time. If I was him, I probably would have packed a bag and driven away too.”

She exhales. “But he left me, too. That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. I think I spent years waiting for him to change his mind. Like one day he’d knock on the door and explain everything, or at least look at me and decide I was worth sticking around for.”

I don’t know what to say to that, the ache of it sitting right in my chest.

“Scottie.”

“I know it doesn’t make sense.” She shrugs, trying to make it smaller than it is. “I know it sounds stupid. I know that. But, like, I’m looking at her and I’m thinking—I mean, you saw us. I’m a literal copy of her. Everyone says I have her eyes, her mouth, her hair. Who’s to say she isn’t right? Who’s to say I won’t actually turn out like her, and that’s why he didn’t bother fighting for me?”

“You were four, Scottie,” I say again, firmer this time, leaning across the small table so she has to look at me. Her eyes lift to mine. “What were you supposed to do? Make him stay? That was never on you. He’s the adult.”

Her face crumples just slightly before she looks away. “I hate that I still care. I hate that I’m sitting here in some grease-joint talking about a guy who hasn’t thought about me in years.”

“That’s not something to hate.”

She wipes beneath one eye quickly with the back of her wrist. “It’s pathetic.”

“No,” I say. “It’s human to want the people who brought you here to actually love you the right way. It doesn’t make you weak.”