Chapter 13
Jacob stays parked out in front of our house until I’m all the way inside, and then he stays there a few minutes longer. I watch him through the lace curtain at the front door until he finally drives away. My heart aches as I watch the SUV roll out of sight, but I know this is for the best.
“Lily, is that you?”
Shit. Dad. I wasn’t expecting him to be home. He’s barely been around lately, and of course now, when I’m so furious with him I could scream, he chooses to be here.
“Hi Dad. Just going to my room.” I know I need to talk to him, but I can’t bring myself to do it just yet.
“I was just making myself a grilled cheese sandwich,” he says, appearing in the hallway. “Can I make you one?”
“I’m really not hungry.”
Dad frowns, peering at me. “Lily, what’s wrong? You’re white as a ghost.”
“I’m not feeling well.”
“Everything okay at school?”
“Everything’s fine, Dad.” Even the word Dad sends a lick of anger up through me. My stomach churns.
His frown deepens and he takes another step forward. “Is this about that guy you were dating? Did he hurt you? Lily, if he hurt you, just tell me, and I swear to God I’ll —”
“You’ll what?” I yell, cutting him off. “Let him go to prison? As long as it saves your own ass, right?”
His face goes ashen. “Lily, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Jacob, Dad. He told me the truth — everything that happened. About you stealing money from the company.” The words fall bitterly out of my mouth. I’ve never been so hurt and angry in my entire life.
Dad’s face goes even paler. “Lily, I…”
That’s when the smoke alarm goes off.
“Shit,” Dad curses. “Hang on. I’ll be right back and we’re going to talk about this.”
“Whatever,” I huff. I head to my room while he goes to tend to his smoking sandwich.
In my room, I throw myself down on bed dramatically. I want to cry, but I’m too angry. I want to punch something, but I feel too hurt. I feel torn and confused and just plain stupid. How could I have been so wrong about Jacob? About my own father? I bury my head under the pillow until I hear a knock on the door.
“Go away,” I mumble.
“Lily, we have to talk.”
“No, we don’t.”
“We do.” I hear Dad push the door open and then feel him sit down at the foot of my bed. I refuse to take my head out from under the pillow.
“Lily, I’m so sorry. For everything.”
“How could you do that? Steal from innocent people? Let Jacob go to prison for you?”
He shakes his head. “I have no excuse.”
I slowly take the pillow off my head. That wasn’t the answer I was expecting — I thought he’d have a million excuses.
“Well… what am I supposed to do with that?” I ask, clutching the pillow to my chest. The entire room smells like charred grilled cheese.
Dad’s face looks incredibly sad. “I don’t know. But maybe you’ll let me explain?”
“Fine.” I clutch the pillow tighter and focus on picking at a stray thread in my quilt.
Dad leans back, so that his back is against my light-yellow wall. “When your mom got sick, I lost my mind. That’s not an excuse,” he adds hastily. “But I had never loved anyone in my life the way I loved her, and the thought of losing her was unbearable. It was honestly unbearable, Lily. I don’t know how else to describe it. I felt like my heart was dying right along with her.”
I twist the stray thread around my fingertip, so tight it almost cuts off the circulation. I can’t look up at Dad. I remember the agony he went through when Mom was sick, and I know that’s what I’ll see on his face now.
“Anyway, I did some terrible things in that time. I didn’t tell Jacob she was sick, because I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t take care of her on my own. But I wanted to fix her. I had to fix her. And I needed money for that, more money than we had, more money than I could have made in a lifetime.”
He takes a deep breath and continues. “So, I stole the money. I took it. I didn’t care who else I was hurting, if it meant there was a chance I could keep your mom alive. I regret it, but… I also don’t,” he admits.
I finally look up at him. His face looks as broken as I expected. But there’s a steeliness in his eyes too. I remember what he used to be like when he worked with Jacob — a ruthless businessman, a tycoon. Not the broken man I’ve lived with these past three years.
“I can sort of understand taking the money,” I grudgingly admit. “But how could you let Jacob go to prison?”
The words catch in my throat, and tears spill out of my eyes again.
“I’ve regretted that decision every day of my life since then,” Dad says. This time he’s the one to look away. “I justified it to myself in a million different ways. If I went to prison, I wouldn’t be able to take care of your mom. If they found out about the embezzlement, our whole family would lose everything. You’d never be able to go to college; your reputation would go down with mine. I didn’t want you to be the daughter of a criminal. Jacob was young, he was single, he had nothing to lose. I know it’s wrong, Lily, believe me, I do.”
We’re both quiet for a while. Then Dad shifts on the bed.
“So… how did you find out about all this?” he asks.
I bite my lip. “Jacob told me,” I finally admit.
Dad’s eyebrows raise. “I heard he was out of prison. Was he your date from the other day, by any chance?”
I nod reluctantly. “You don’t have to worry about that though. It turns out he’s not the man I thought he was.”
“Oh?”
I shake my head. For about the thousandth time, tears threaten to spill from my eyes. “Turns out he’s kind of a shit.”
Dad gets a funny look on his face. “He’s a better man than I am.”
I snort. “Well, that might be true, but that’s not exactly a high bar. I don’t think I’d go so far as to say he’s a good person.” I know it’s cruel, but I can’t help it — I’m still so overwhelmed and angry. At both of them.
But Dad’s shaking his head. “Think about what he did, Lily — he went to prison rather than let his clients lose all their money. He didn’t want to see all those people lose their life savings, so he confessed to a crime he didn’t even commit. Not many people would do that.”
My mind is reeling. I guess what Dad’s saying is true… but it doesn’t change the fact that Jacob used me.
I flop backwards onto my pillow again. This is all too much. It’s too much information, too much confusion, just too much. I cover my eyes with my hands, as if I can just block out the world that way.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Dad says. “Take your time processing. If you have any questions, you can come to talk to me. And if you take anything away from this conversation, know that I was the bad guy here. But I was a desperate man trying to make the best of an impossible situation. It’s not an excuse, but it’s the truth. I’m sorry that what I did hurt you.”
I don’t take my hands off my eyes. Mostly because now I’m afraid I’m going to start crying. I feel Dad get up after a few minutes, and then I hear the door of my bedroom gently close. I lie there for a long time, until it’s dark outside and the house is quiet.
I keep thinking my thoughts will eventually sort themselves out and I’ll know what to do, but they don’t. And I don’t.
I know who I want to talk to though. I reach blindly in the dark and scrounge my phone out of my purse.
“Coffee tomorrow?” I type.
The reply comes almost instantly.
“My shift ends at two. Meet then?”
“Perfect.”
—
I’m at the diner where Sarah works promptly at two o’clock the next day. It’s busy in there, and Sarah looks frazzled as hell. Her dark hair is falling messily out of her ponytail and there’s a sheen of sweat on her forehead. She brightens up when she sees me, though, and splays her palm towards me, which I take to mean she’ll be done in five minutes.
Another waitress comes by and I ask for a cup of coffee. I barely slept a wink last night and now I’m groggy and more emotional than ever. I add a shit ton of cream and sugar to my coffee and slurp it back.
“Oof, what a day,” Sarah says, finally sliding into the booth across from me. “My feet are killing me.” She peers at me from under her dark bangs. “Wait, what’s wrong?”
It all comes out. Everything with Jacob and with my father and the fact that Jacob was only using me to get back at Dad. Sarah stares slack-jawed through my entire story. Finally, she leans back in the booth.
“Is that just coffee?” she asks, gesturing to my cup. “Because I’m really thinking we should be drinking tequila right now.”
I laugh. It feels like I haven’t laughed in a year, even though it was just yesterday that my world came crashing down around me.
Sarah signals to our waitress, and soon she arrives back at our table with two dark brown beer bottles.
“It’s the strongest thing we serve here,” Sarah says, nudging my bottle over to me. “So just drink it fast.”
I laugh again and feel immensely grateful for best friend. I take a sip of the beer, and it immediately gives me a welcome little buzz.
“So, let me see if I’m understanding this,” Sarah says, finally. “Your dad stole money from his and Jacob’s company.”
“Yes.”
“But he did it to try to help your mom.”
“Yes.”
“And Jacob covered for him because he didn’t want anyone to lose their savings.”
“Yes.”
“And Jacob decided to fuck you to get back at your father.”
“Yes.”
“But then he didn’t fuck you.”
“Well… yes.”
“Right.” Sarah’s quiet for a minute, peeling at the label on her beer bottle. “Well, that’s just about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I know!” A giggle bubbles out of me. I look at Sarah, and she giggles too. Then the two of us are laughing our asses off. Everyone in the diner is staring at us, but we can’t pull it together long enough to even care. We just laugh and laugh and laugh at how absurd this whole thing is. At one point, Sarah manages to wave at our waitress to get us another round of beers, and then we go back to laughing some more.
By the time our beers arrive, we finally manage to collect ourselves somewhat.
I tap the neck of my bottle against Sarah’s.
“Well, here’s to all this bullshit finally being over,” I say, trying to sound cheerful.
Sarah frowns.
“What?” I demand.
“Nothing.” She takes a sip of her beer.
“You don’t think it’s over? Because it’s definitely over.”
“Okay,” she says, holding up her hands.
“Because why wouldn’t it be over? He admitted he used me.”
Sarah picks at the label on her bottle. “But he didn’t though. Not really.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, he could have just fucked you that first night and got it done with. Instead he’s been… hanging out with you. Taking you on dates.”
“So?”
“So it just doesn’t sound like someone who’s using you, that’s all.”
I gape at her. The time I’ve spent with Jacob plays across my mind like a film reel — the dinner at Babylon, the Empire State Building, swimming in the lake. Sarah was right — I’d never felt like I was being used. I’d felt… smitten. And I’d started to feel like the feeling was mutual.
“Your clutching that bottle so hard I’m afraid it’s going to break,” Sarah points out, and I laugh nervously.
“Look, there’s really one important question this time,” she says plainly. “Do you love him?”
Hearing the question point blank makes my stomach clench.
“I don’t know. Maybe?” Is it love when you feel like you can’t quite breathe right without the other person? Is it love when you want to tell them everything, even the things you’re not sure you can admit to yourself? Is it love when you want to at least try to forgive the unforgivable? I let out a deep sigh.
“So what are you going to do?” Sarah asks.
I look up at her. “I honestly have no idea.”