Kylie
The first thing I do when I leave Dr. Medio’s office is tell my contact to cease collecting information on Luther Greene. He isn’t what matters now. If he does make a move I’ll be right there to help Dalton fend him off, but he is no longer going to take up space in my head. I’m choosing to put him aside for me, because I want to like the person I see in the mirror—not just sometimes, but all the time.
I put my car in gear and drive somewhere I’ve avoided for years. A place I’ve never turned to for advice. My mother was always the guidepost I traveled toward. That’s how I ended up where I am today. I’m looking for balance, so maybe it’s time I hear from the other side.
As I pull into the driveway of his business I realize it’s looking a hell of a lot less rundown. New windows. The yard has been cleaned up. Even his sign is new. I wonder what my father will think when I come knocking on his door, but I don’t get the chance to find out.
He’s sitting on the steps sipping on a soda and rocking out to a song on his small FM radio. The funny thing is he doesn’t know it’s me pulling in, and he looks thrilled to have company, no matter who it is.
“Oh my word,” he says as he jumps to his feet. “Kylie-bo-Bylie. What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”
I want to tell him everything is fine. I’m here for a visit and to see how he’s doing now that he’s gotten some business help from Dalton. His small employment agency was in shambles and had been for years. The metaphor about giving the shirt off his back was reality for my father. Too proud to take my money and too stubborn to take my rigid advice, he never let me help.
Dalton found a way to bridge his pride with his needs. I could have done the same, but I was too centered on the negative to see solutions. Things seem to be looking up around here. So the easy thing to tell my dad, who is looking at me with nervous anticipation, is that everything is all right in my life.
“Oh Dad, I’m a mess. I had something good and I screwed it all up.” His wiry arms fold around me.
“Oh Kylie, it’ll be all right. Tell me what happened.” He guides me to the steps, turns his radio down, and pats the cement next to him. “Sit and talk with me a while.”
I wipe at my stinging eyes and rest my head on his shoulder. “I don’t want to become Mom.”
“Beautiful? Strong?”
“Toxic. Angry.”
“She’s not toxic.” His voice is stern, which is new for him. “She’s driven.”
“Like me?” Part of me wants him to agree, part of me wants him to say I’m nothing like her.
“There’s nothing wrong with being driven. You have so much to give to this world, and you give it every day. I’m proud of you.”
“You have to say that, you’re my dad.” I sigh. “I also have a horrible temper and next to no patience.”
“I would imagine a little bit of that anger in you is from me. I made my mistakes, Kylie, and you paid for them. More than anyone, you paid the price.”
“You did what you thought was right. You gave everything you had to people who needed it. I know I sided with Mom, and I hurt you in the process.”
“The fact that you felt you had to choose is where we failed you. I’ve learned a lot over the years. Giving away my last dollar wasn’t fair to the people who were counting on me to support them. I wasn’t fair to your mother. She couldn’t count on me, and that’s why our marriage didn’t work.”
“If you could go back you’d do it differently?” I take in a deep breath and imagine what my life would have been like had my father and mother stayed together.
“Absolutely.” He pats my leg gently. “I love helping people. But I wouldn’t put the high I feel when I do it above the welfare of the people I love. That’s what it was for me. I felt good when I did good. What I couldn’t see was how I could have helped people more by not going to the extreme.”
Extremes. Yeah, I’ve been there. “I’ve hurt people. People I care about because I needed them to prove they could love me no matter who I was.”
“Love doesn’t work that way, Kylie.”
“I see that now.”
“You’re smart, Kylie. You’ll figure out how to make it right.”
“I’m definitely going to try. It might be too late for some, but there are changes I need to make regardless.”
I wrap my arms around him and do something I haven’t done since I was a child; I give him a tight hug. “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too, Kylie-boo.” He chuckles, but I also see tears fill his eyes.
They fill my eyes too. I smile.
In that moment what Dr. Medio said really clicks. Not everyone I love will stay with me. Ben may not want me in his life after what he saw, but the changes I want to make can’t be about him. Healing has to be about me first.
“Dad, what do you think about going out to dinner with me this week?”
“I’d love that, Kylie.”
“We could invite Penny and Dalton.”
Dad is smiling.
I say, “Things are going to be different from now on, Dad. I want to be part of your life.”
“You always have been, Kylie. You always have been.”