Page 80 of The Apparent Trap

“Look,” I say, firmly enough that he turns toward me too. “Yes, you did put too much on me at that time. I mean . . . I had to be the one who received Mom’s ashes because you said you didn’t want to see her like that, and I just insisted on doing it. But . . . I also didn’t want to see that. I always felt like I had to be the obedient kid for you, because I was so afraid . . .” I pause, not sure how to say this. I think about what I yelled at Lee the other day, that some piece of him died with her, and realize what a long time this realization has been coming. So much has been unearthed for me in recent weeks, but it was always there. We buried it away so long ago, as though if it was only kept in a drawer, it would stay there. But unlike ashes to ashes, grief is a denser object. It only grows heavier the longer it’s hidden. And it’s time to put it into the light so we can move past it.

“I really don’t blame you, Dad,” I say quietly. “In a normal scenario, the kid eventually outgrows the parents’ being number one because that’s the natural order of things. But when the natural order gets upended—when a mother dies before her child is grown—then maybe some other parts get disordered too. And I lost my mom, but you lost your person, your soulmate. There’s no way to be prepared for that. It’s nobody’s fault. But we have been doing this wrong.”

He puts his hand on my knee. “I’m so sorry I never realized.”

“To be fair, I didn’t either.”

He shakes his head and looks back out at the sleeping leopard, the layer of snow now making her harder to spot. “But that’s the mistake of this whole thing, isn’t it? You shouldn’t have had to.”

I want to console him. It’s my natural impulse when it comes to him. But it’s not helping us. “No, I shouldn’t have had to,” I admit slowly. “It can be no one’s fault while also having been bad for both of us.”

He nods, the movement reflective. “My instinct is to ask you how we fix it, but I know that’s probably the wrong answer.”

I chuckle. “See, that’s progress already.”

“I don’t want you to think that I’m not asking you things because of Carmen. I don’t like that I’ve left you feeling less important.”

I put my hand on top of his. “I know, but . . . it’s time, though. We shouldn’t be relying on each other for the everyday stuff. I think because we took on Mom’s death as a team, we’ve never really gotten back to a parent-child dynamic. And we should have a long time ago. It’s okay for you to have your own life and me mine. I have to get used to that, and that’s on me too. But the part that I should’ve talked to you about . . . It’s not Carmen specifically. The issue isn’t you having a girlfriend. My issue is worrying that dating someone so much younger than you will inevitably come to an end, and that will hurt you.”

“I worry about that too,” he says.

My eyes widen. I wasn’t expecting that. “You do?”

He looks back over at me, his smile sly. “You think I’m unaware of how unsuitable we are for each other on every exterior dimension?”

“You don’t have to talk about her like she’s a science project, Dad,” I say through a laugh.

“I know,” he replies, laughing along with me, and it feels good. “So much about her is just extraordinarily wonderful,” he continues. “I love talking to her—I could talk to her forever.” Filing that away for things I’ll never understand. “We have the best time. And she’s beautiful, there’s no denying that. But I think most importantly, she’s given me back the belief that I can love someone else without loving your mom less.” My heart squeezes. I’ve never considered how hard that must be. “Carmen asks questions about her, and genuinely wants to listen. She’s had her own complex relationships beyond her years, with her dad and feeling like her mom didn’t do right by her in that equation. So she understands that you can hold more than one thing. I never thought I’d have someone who saw that. You know, she took me to a new Titanic exhibit the other day because I’d told her last month how fascinating your mom found it. She knew I’d enjoy it because of your mom, and that wasn’t frightening to her. It was really touching.”

I wipe away a tear that’s forming, moved by the thought of my dad having a partnership like that, even if I don’t know that side of Carmen. And maybe also from having not told anyone else in my life that that’s why I’m always watching anything related to the Titanic. That I barely admit it to myself. I shouldn’t be holding pieces of her alone, like Georgia and I apparently had been doing in parallel.

We’ll do better from now on; I know we can.

He doesn’t notice my blubbering and keeps going. “But I can’t ignore the rest of it either. I worry about holding her back. I worry if she wants to have kids and I can’t be that person for her. I don’t want to be that person at this stage of my life, but I don’t want to take that joy away from her. And I don’t want to feel old alone. Not being alone when I’m old, but more . . . being alone in understanding getting old. She’ll never experience that while I’m experiencing it.”

I turn his words over in my head. All the fears I’d worried about . . . it was foolish to think he wasn’t seeing them too. Of course he’s thought about them as much as I have, if not more.

But the multitude of dimensions to his relationship weren’t ever mine to recognize. Every relationship of value—whether friendship or family or sexual—is its own little precious bubble that can only really be understood inside. It’s not anyone else’s place to judge a relationship when they can’t know it.

It’s frustrating that instead of my dad or Georgia, Lee is the person who comes to the forefront of my mind. All that understanding we’ve quietly handed each other isn’t a piece of ourselves anyone else has gotten to see. We’ve kept it in our own bubble, even as everything outside of us has made it seem impossible not to pop.

I can’t help but want that understanding back.

But maybe I should be hoping for something different for both me and my dad. Maybe some people are only meant to come into our lives and pry us open after a long period of being rusted shut. Not every love story is forever. Surely both of us getting to have my mother should’ve taught us that.

The leopard is completely covered by snow now, impossible to make out if you didn’t already know where she was. Once we get up, the next people who walk in might think there isn’t one nearby.

But no sooner do I think it than she’s standing up and shaking all the snow off, then walking to the back of her enclosure. What’s lost can always be found.

Chapter 25

The snow all melts by the next day, the magic predictably done in by the not-quite-cold-enough December temperatures.

And over the next couple of weeks, that’s what happens with me and my dad too—something about the way we interact has softened, no longer seventeen years frozen in place. The way he’s showing up has shifted. He doesn’t pop by without asking. He doesn’t make assumptions about my days or ask me for input on the problems he should be solving himself. But he also asks me more about how I’m doing.

He even brings up my mom unprompted, sharing a photo of a panettone he saw in a store and texting, remember when your mom went through this phase of trying to make panettone’s happen even though in the US they were basically all stale and terrible? It’s the kind of offhanded thing I know I always think but hesitate to tell him.

It feels like that snowy day was the start of progress.