Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
My dad blanches, and he gives me the—is she serious? Do you really live next to all that out here—look. I turn my head and take in Gerry. He looks stunned, standing half in half out of the pool on the steps in all his clothes. His sneakers will probably dry out. I like that they’re the dad kind with Velcro straps, white with blue accents. I can see them shimmering under the water. They also look huge. It’s not the shoes that catch my attention, though. It’s how much Gerry has aged. I hadn’t seen him in years before the card game, over a decade, but I really didn’t notice the fine details that night because I was too focused on the hand I was playing, the dangers of what was going down, and the anger suffocating the room like a toxic gas.
Maybe it’s the water that clings to the deep grooves in his face or the sodden clothing on a shrunken frame that was once big and strong. Maybe it’s the sadness in his eyes or the way his hair is plastered against his head, but I realize he looks old.
My dad too. I take in all those same details, too—gray hair, deep wrinkles, a frame that is smaller than mine when it once used to be so huge. I know that’s part of growing up, how you realize your parents look smaller, but I think it’s more than age that’s stooped both our dads over. It’s this stupid feud, years of stress, and losing our moms. The years and trials of life have worn them out. Neither of them ever found love again. And they wrecked their brotherhood over a disagreement.
I haul myself up, too, the water sluicing off my T-shirt and shorts. My hair is already starting to dry under the hot sun as I wipe the salty droplets of pool water from my face with a swipe of my hand. “Hatred isn’t good for anyone.”
Behind me, Patience tenses. She looks like she wants to run away, but not to the house. To the woods. She looks like she’d rather take on all the death birds and poison ivy in the world than sit through trying to get our dads to agree to put aside their hurt feelings.
“It’s like cutting off your own arm,” she whispers. “Will you stop hurting each other and everyone around you with your anger, or will you work even harder to outdo each other? Will you try and vie for our affections now that we’re married?” That word is careful on her tongue. Like she thinks it’s dangerous. “Is this going to become a competition?” She pauses for a second. “Dad?”
He looks guilty. Sheepish. He won’t look at my dad, but he does look at his daughter. It’s obvious how much he loves her. “You know egg salad is my weakness,” he mumbles. “I might just have to stay for lunch.”
My dad doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t disagree either. Instead, he huffs and swings himself over the edge of the pool. Neither of them leaves. Neither of them goes for each other’s throats. I guess that’s about as good as it’s going to get at the moment.
CHAPTER 8
Patience
My mom told me something right before she left my dad. I might have been young, but the whole her leaving and me never seeing her again has basically made sure it’s stayed embedded in my brain. I don’t know if I’ve ever really understood it until now, even though I’ve tried to practice it my whole life.
You’ll only ever get the kind of love you give.
Pretty much my whole life, I thought it was her fancy way of telling me that I would only ever get back what I gave. Everyone says that. You get what you give.
Dripping wet and leaning over the fancy-ass antique dresser, which somehow completes this forest-themed room because it’s round and bubbly-looking while being elaborately carved with lion feet and a mirror that is at least eight feet tall and has two smaller side companions that are also round, bubbly-looking, and intricately completed at the top with scrolling detail, I realize I was wrong.
She wasn’t saying you get what you give.
Why is it only now that I hear the rest of that statement? She’d bent down to me so we were eye to eye. She was so much taller. Blond and slim. So pretty. She always smelled like roses. That was her favorite flower. Mine have always been bleeding hearts and thistles. How fortuitous, except they’re also remarkably beautiful. It doesn’t matter that one is the national flower of not liking people, and the other is the emblem of funerals. I didn’t know any of that as a little girl. I just thought they were pretty. I thought she was pretty—the prettiest woman in the entire world. There was no one more beautiful than my mom. No one I trusted more. When she spoke, I listened. It felt like she was imparting secret wisdom that day.