The Unexpected Everything

I stopped and looked at him. “But I drove here.”

“We’ll get your car later,” he said as he beeped open his SUV and started to walk toward it.

“But—” I started, about to say that I couldn’t just leave my car there. What if something happened to it? But I had run out of ways to stall. I went around to the passenger side of my dad’s car and got in.

I buckled in, and my dad started to drive. As he pulled onto the main road that would take us home, I realized it had been a long time since it had been just me and my dad in an enclosed space like this. No menus to hide behind, no way to make an excuse and slip away.

The embarrassment I’d felt at the diner was only growing as I replayed the scene in my mind—my dad showing up, announcing for everyone to hear that I was grounded, like I was still in middle school or something. My dad just showing up—

Something occurred to me, and I turned away from the window to look at my father. He was staring straight ahead at the road, his jaw set in a firm line, his hands clenching the wheel at ten and two. “How did you know where I was?”

“There’s a GPS device in the car,” he said. “It’s part of the security, in case it gets stolen.”

“Wait. What?” I asked, suddenly thinking about all the times I’d said I was somewhere that I very much was not. I’d expected my dad to say something like he’d followed me, or he’d somehow talked to one of my friends . . . not that he was tracking me.

“I’ve never used it before,” my dad said, hitting the turn signal harder than he needed to. “I only turned it on when you brought the car back this morning. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior, Andie.”

With that, it was like my brief calm in the diner had just been an intermission. All the anger from earlier was coming back, full force. My dad pulled into Stanwich Woods, nodding at Earl, who looked up from his magazine long enough to wave us in. I crossed my arms tightly over my chest as I looked out the window.

“Are you listening to me?” my dad asked sharply as he signaled and pulled into our driveway.

“Yeah,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Sure.”

“You can’t talk to me like that, Andie,” my dad said, and I could hear what I was feeling—the anger, the frustration—in his voice. “I am your father, and—”

“Oh, really?” I asked as my dad parked the car in the turnaround and killed the engine. I unclipped my seat belt and got out of the car, slamming the door, then turned back to my dad, who had followed me onto the driveway. I could feel the anger coursing through me like a drug, like I was about to set off the powder keg, with no idea what exactly was inside it. “You’re my father?” I asked, putting a snide, sarcastic spin on the words. “Really?”

My dad stood with his keys in his hand in front of the car, looking wrong-footed. Inside there was a part of me that was yelling to stop this, just make peace and go inside, but the louder part of me wasn’t listening, and I barreled on.

“Then tell me who I went to the prom with this year,” I said, my voice starting to shake. “How many times did I have to take the driving test before I passed it? Who was my history teacher last semester?” My voice broke on the word “history,” and I could feel the tears lurking behind my eyes, which somehow only made me angrier, my words coming out fast and out of control. “I haven’t had a father in five years. So you can’t just show up now and start acting like one.” I felt one tear fall, then another, and I brushed them away angrily, trying to hold myself together.

“You can’t . . . ,” my dad said, shaking his head. He glanced at the house, then turned back to me. “I was doing what I had to for our family.”

“What family?” I asked, and my father’s face crumpled for just a second before he recovered. I swallowed hard, knowing I’d gone too far but also knowing I wasn’t going to be able to stop this now. “I have done nothing but make sure I didn’t do anything to make you look bad. My whole life. I’ve been tiptoeing around, always thinking about how anything I do might affect you. And then you mess it all up. Do you know why I’m not in Baltimore?” I asked, my words coming faster and faster, taking on a life of their own, like a runaway train. “Dr. Rizzoli pulled my recommendation. Because of you. Do you know how much that wrecked things for me? And it’s like you don’t even care.” I stopped abruptly, drawing in a sharp breath.

There was silence in the driveway—just the chirping of birds in a nearby tree—but it was like I could still hear the words I’d just said echoing between us, like I could still feel the reverberations.

My dad crossed in front of me to the door and unlocked it without saying a word, and I followed. We walked inside, and my dad hung up his keys, then stuck his hands in his pockets. I had no idea what happened now, but it was clear he didn’t either, which made me feel somehow even worse. Like there was nobody in charge, nobody even trying to steer this sinking boat of ours.

We looked at each other, and I swallowed hard. For just a moment I let myself think about what my mom would have said if she could have seen us, yelling at each other in the driveway. How disappointed she’d be in both of us—in what we’d allowed ourselves to become.

“It’s not just this summer,” I said, tears falling down my cheeks unchecked. “You moved me to this house without even telling me you were going to. I never got to say good-bye to the farmhouse. There’s none of Mom’s stuff around, we never talk about her or say what we miss—it’s like you want to pretend she was never here at all. It’s like she never even existed.” I was full-on crying, wiping my nose with the back of my hand and not even caring. I could barely see my dad any longer. He was just a fuzzy shape behind the tears I wasn’t even trying to blink away.