Fear Itself

When his fingers gingerly removed the paper from the envelope, I walked away, just into the kitchen to give my father some space. If the letter was anything like mine was, I knew he would need it. The again, I was just a few feet away, just in case he didn’t want the space after all.

The kitchen was more cluttered than usual. Without me at home to clean the house every day, things had become dusty. Plates were piled up in the sink, not disgusting, maybe rinsed, but still unwashed. The refrigerator door was still covered in photos of my father and me along with drawings I had done for him, spanning from the stick figures of my childhood to the detailed still-life sketches from just months ago. The island counter still had that decorative wicker bowl on it, but it wasn’t filled with anything now. It was just empty. Just past that were a lot of empty glass bottles all lined up, and they looked quite a bit like what Dean and I drank out of from time to time.

My fingers skimmed the neck of a tall bottle, and it was only moments later that I was alerted by the sound of shuffling against the sofa cushions. Peering over my shoulder, I saw my father shifting position, folding the letter back up and trembling a little. “Dad,” I called out as I moved back toward him. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” His voice was low and hurried as he dug through his pants pocket to pull out a phone. He handed it to me. “Call whatever friend brought you here and go home,” my father instructed before he headed for the steps to the second floor.

He left me with his phone in my hands, and my eyes lingered where he once stood for just a moment before I finally shook off the uneasiness and began to punch in Avery’s number. The phone was ringing into my left ear just as I heard choking sounds coming from my father’s room, just sullen whimpers and muffled cries.

“Hello,” Avery’s gruff voice echoed through the receiver.

“Hey, Mumbles,” I answered after a slight delay. My eyes never left my father’s door. “I think… I think I’m going to stick around for a few days.”

“You sure ‘bout that, Princess?” He didn’t seem to share my sentiment.

“Yeah,” I assured him. “It’ll be fine.” Without so much as another word, I ended the call and deleted Avery’s number from the phone history. Phone in hand, I ventured up the stairs to my father’s door. I took a moment to listen in, which only confirmed my suspicions that I would open the door to see my father crying, and I did. He was was sitting on the floor against the bed, clutching the letter in his hands. His face was wet and stained, eyes red and puffy with what I could only imagine was eighteen years worth of emotion.

“Tali,” he sniffled. “I told you to go.” He could barely look at me. He rested his elbows upon his bent knees and turned his head from me, running a hand through his thinning hair. Shaking my head, I inched across his carpet with utmost caution. I didn’t want to frighten him, and I certainly didn’t want him to snap. When it came to light that he wasn’t budging from the floor, I slowly took a seat beside him.

“I’m staying as long as you need me to.” His blue eyes lifted to meet mine in a surprised gaze, but his face faltered and crumbled in seconds. His arms locked around me like a vice grip, and he pulled me down toward his chest where I could feel his sobs shaking his entire being, every fiber of his core. This was a sadness I had never seen in my father. Usually a man of poise and resolve, he wasn’t one to burst like this, yet here he was: holding my face against his chest, his heart pulsing and throbbing like a wound ripped open deep in his chest. I could feel tears splashing against my bare scalp, and all I could was try to stay quiet because this wasn’t the kind of sadness I could fix, just like Dean couldn’t fix my nightmares, or like how I couldn’t fix his either. The only thing that healed this sort of wound was time, and if Dean was any example, even time wasn’t the ideal prescription.

“Tali, I’m sorry,” my father sputtered. “I’m sorry, I never… I didn’t mean to…” His voice was so heavy with tears that he sounded like he choked on every word. His chest puffed and shivered out of time with his breathing. He grabbed me tighter, squeezing me. I tried to hush him quietly, tried to calm him down.

“It’s okay,” I murmured, but he just shook his head.

“It’s not, Pumpkin,” he sobbed. “It’s not okay, it never will be.” I closed my eyes for a moment and stayed still. “Tali, I stole your entire life from you because I…” He sputtered and stopped. Another sob racked his entire frame and left him trembling, his voice shrill and pained. “I never thought she really loved me.” There was another pause, some more crying, more shaky breaths. “Everything I took from you… a childhood, friends, your family… you can never get those back, I can’t—“

“You tried,” I interjected softly. I didn’t know if I believed what I was telling him. I didn’t know if he deserved to feel better about what he had done, but I knew that hearing my father cry tore a gaping hole in my heart. His grip loosened on me, and I pulled back to look at him. “Nobody can really expect anything more.” He looked me dead in the eye like he couldn’t believe the words were coming out of my mouth. “Dad, nobody… nobody tells you how to cope with your wife being a traitor, and I…” I paused, swallowed back the lump in my throat. “You tried.”

He watched me, bewildered. His mouth hung slightly agape, and his head shook softly as though it barely even moved at all. “You have every reason to hate me,” he whispered.

“I know,” I told him, shrugging my shoulders. “But you’re my dad.”

His eyebrows sank, furrowing eventually until his blue eyes closed. “You are just like your mother,” he sputtered through a disheartened, breathy laugh.

It was beginning to dawn on me why my father never kept anything of my mother’s around. We never had photos of her, and he certainly left no trace of her in his bedroom. There was nothing, save for the musty old box in the attic. He didn’t need to remember her because he saw enough of her in me. A pang of remorse echoed in my chest as I looked at him. He had spent 18 years constantly reminded of a woman he loved, a woman who betrayed him, every time he looked at his child, a child he was trying to protect from the cold, cruel world that hurt him.

My father used to tell me that the world was no place for a girl like me. Truth be told, I didn’t think the world was place for anyone… not a world like this. Not a world who left helpless men to harden on the streets, not a world who left intelligent men holed up behind four walls, not a world who left brave men with scars so deep they kept them up at night, not a world who forced honest men to hide away from the society, and certainly not a world that took everything good and light and tried as hard as it could to break it.

“Tali, there was so much I wanted for you,” my father murmured. He dropped his head just a little, and his arms finally dropped to his sides. His lips puckered for just a moment. “I just wanted you to be safe,” he confessed. “You don’t know how they would have come after you, how they would have watched you…” He rubbed his temples and heaved a sigh. “I didn’t want that life for you, Tali. I didn’t… and that’s why…”

“That’s why you killed me,” I cut in. He nodded. “Well… on paper, anyway.” A heavy, tense silence hung around us, drifting through the air and expelled with every breath. I shifted and sat parallel to my father. I turned to smile a little at him. “So, what’d I die of?” I asked. “Something cool I hope. Malaria? Cholera? Maybe dysentery?” I grinned when I saw a smile crack on my father’s face.

“Um,” my father sniffled, laughing under his breath again. He ruffled his hair a little. “Pediatric leukemia.” His grin faded.

“Well, that’s a logical choice,” I reasoned, nodding. “I knew that I, um… I knew I had died, but I never knew from what.”

“Who told you that?” he asked. “Your rebel friends?”

“They’re nice people,” I contended gently. “They said that they knew, or rather they suspected that I was still alive,” I explained. “One of them’s got a whole board of evidence hung up in his office—“ I paused and cut myself off, remembering that Sam’s office no longer existed. “Well, he did.” I dropped my gaze to the floor. “He lost all that.” I paused again. “We lost a lot down there.” My father couldn’t look up at me, so I looked at him instead. “Dad, you should have done something.”

“I know,” he admitted, still unable to face me.

“Then, why didn’t you?” My gaze didn’t waver. I stared so hard I thought I’d burn holes in his skull.

“Thalia, you know why I couldn’t,” he huffed a little. “Besides, I didn’t see Cassidy running down there to rescue you either.”

“If he was connected to me, they’d kill him too,” I snapped a little.

“And why is my situation any different?” my father argued.

“Dean’s my boyfriend,” I told him sternly. “He didn’t bring me into this world. He’s not the one who should be charged with keeping me safe. But he does. He does it even when he shouldn’t, even when it’s inconvenient, and even when it puts his life at risk. And that’s a hell of a lot more than you do.”

A tiny smile slipped across my father’s face. He shut his eyes and nodded. “You really love him, don’t you?”

“More than I’ve ever loved anything else in my life,” I replied.

“He treats you well, I hope.” My father lifted his eyes. I knew this was more of a question. I knew that my father was looking to know that I was being taken care of, that I was safe. Save for my recent annoyances with Dean, I never remembered feeling so secure.

“He does,” I assured him. “Took care of me after my incident. Made sure everything healed. Fed me. Kept a roof over my head. Kept me alive.” I shrugged. “He used to stay up all night to make sure nobody came by. He didn’t sleep for days,” I explained. “Sometimes, neither of us do, not with… not with those nightmares—“ I closed my eyes and took a breath. “He understands, Dad. He does what he can, and that’s… that’s a lot.”

More silence. Just a short a pause until my father asked, “How long are you staying?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Probably just a few days. I do have things to get done, but I thought that making sure you were okay was more important.” I offered him a gentle smile, and he smiled right back at me.

“Alright,” he muttered. “Hey, why don’t you go get settled in, and I’ll make us some dinner? How’s mac and cheese sound?”

“Perfect, Daddy.” I grinned when he leaned down to kiss the top of my head.

“I’ll only be a few minutes, Pumpkin,” he told me as he walked out the door. “Come down when you’re ready.”

I strode across the hall to my bedroom to find nothing had changed from how I had left it. My bed was made, as I hadn’t slept in it the night I ran away. My closet was half empty, bureau drawers closed tight, probably mostly emptied out. The curtains on my window were still drawn, and not a single belonging of mine had move so much as an inch. My father had placed everything he’d taken right back where it used to go. I had no books left… not since they had gotten destroyed in the bombing, so the shelf was still empty, but things were back to normal.

And sometimes, normal was nice for a change.