If I Fix You. Abigail Johnson

learned to tone it down. Not quiet, exactly—I don’t think he knew how to be quiet—but not his normal thundering volume either.

      But this, this went beyond loud, beyond booming. I remembered this voice like it had been carved into my bones. I knew who he was talking to before I heard him say her name.

      “What do you want, Katheryn?”

      I backed up until I hit a wall, not that Dad could see me through his bedroom door, but it was an instinct I couldn’t control. It was only a small comfort to realize she was on the phone and not actually in the house.

      It was like being doused with ice water, knowing she was talking to him. He was so big and strong, whereas Mom was such a small thing, and yet she destroyed him, destroyed us, as if she were a giant.

      After months of nothing, what could she possibly want? She was never what I’d consider maternal, so I doubted custody was an issue at this point. I’d be eighteen in just over a year, and it wasn’t like she’d tried to take me with her before.

      And yet, what else could it be? What else could she want? The house? The shop? She’d hated both of them. Whatever it was, Dad was more upset than I’d heard him since the day she left.

      “You are unbelievable,” Dad said. “No, you don’t. You haven’t been here, watching her walk through the house like a ghost, and that’s when she can stand to be in it!”

      I backed down the hall into the kitchen as Dad’s half of the conversation still thundered through the house. The words I couldn’t hear were chipping away at my bones like an ice pick. I lifted the kitchen phone from its base and pressed it to my ear.

      Dial tone. He was on his cell phone, then.

      Something about this one-sided conversation was so much worse than the months of fighting before she left, and it took me only seconds to figure out why.

      They didn’t know I was there.

      Dad didn’t know.

      As horrible as their fights had been, there must have been some part in each of them, whether by unspoken agreement or not, that they’d held back for my sake.

      They weren’t holding back now. Not Dad, and certainly not Mom.

      It had always been me and Dad. From the very beginning. But the last few months of fighting would have made me choose Dad even if the lifetime before hadn’t.

      Mom was petty. Calculating. Cruel to the point that shredded any love I held for her.

      But not Dad. Oh, he got mad. He yelled. But he never sought to inflict the same kind of personal damage that she did. No matter what she said to him, no matter how vile her insults, he never spoke to her the way she deserved, the way I would have. The way I wanted to so badly in that moment that I was striding down the hall before I could stop myself.

      “Kate,” Dad said, and I hated his calling her that. She didn’t deserve it anymore. “Don’t do this. Please.” And then I jumped and froze outside his door when I heard him slam something—his hand probably—against the wall. “You selfish— Don’t tell me you’re sorry. You haven’t been sorry for anything your entire life.” More silence followed by a harsh laugh. “Right, except that.”

      There was a lot of yelling after that. It was all things I’d heard before, except reenergized somehow. It was as if all the fights they would have had if she’d stayed were all converging and breaking through at once.

      “Please, Kate. Just wait a second. Think. You haven’t been here, you haven’t seen her.”

      My stomach soured the way it always did when they started talking about me. Dad’s voice lowered after that. He was speaking so softly that I missed most of the next few things he said until:

      “Don’t you ever say that to me again.”

      I shrank into myself at the unspoken threat in his voice. I wasn’t used to being scared of him. I’d made him mad plenty of times, but even at his angriest, I’d never been afraid of him.

      I was afraid now, and I wasn’t even the one he was threatening.

      “Kate—Kate—Kate!” He threw the phone so hard, I heard it break.

      My hands fisted at my sides. Things had just started to get better. Dad and I were figuring out life again—just the two of us. I was beginning to remember what being happy felt like.

      With one phone call, she took it all away.

      Dad would come out of his room any second. If I didn’t want to have a conversation, I needed to hurry back outside and pretend that I was only just getting home.

      Avoiding had kind of been the default all summer when Dad and I came even remotely close to talking about Mom. And maybe it would have worked. Maybe we could have kept dodging the subject, pretending that we weren’t a family with an amputated member, ignore the phantom pains that we both still felt.

      Maybe Dad and I could have.

      But Mom wasn’t going to let us.

      Instead of backing away, instead of hiding, I stood directly outside his door so there’d be no way for him to wonder if I’d overheard him. I wanted him to know.

      I met his eyes dead-on when he opened the door. “What did Mom want?”

       CHAPTER 9

      Dad’s face was flushed red, the anger his conversation with Mom had stirred up still visible under his skin. But the moment he saw me, the moment I asked that one question, all the blood drained from his face.

      I shouldn’t do this to him. I shouldn’t make things harder. Dad looked ill, and he hadn’t even said her name to me yet. I didn’t want him to have to relive the conversation. And yet, I asked him again. “Dad.” I’m sorry. “What did Mom want?”

      His eyes were wide as he stared at me—frightened, I would almost say, except nothing frightened Dad. And that seemed to be all he could do. Just stare.

      But I couldn’t let it go.

      “She wants to know you’re okay—”

      I had never in my life sworn in front of Dad, but I did then. He didn’t even look that shocked.

      “She doesn’t get to pretend she cares. Not anymore. She left us—”

      “No!”

      I shrank back at Dad’s sudden outburst.

      “Me. Not you.” He rested his hand on my head. “She didn’t leave you.”

      The weight of Dad’s hand was familiar and comforting in a way that always made me feel safe and loved. But his words simmered under my skin so I shook him off. “Then where is she? Where has she been all these months? Why isn’t she here yelling at you? Why did she try to—” I bit my tongue.

      In a vertigo-inducing rush, I was back in my living room watching silhouettes moving along the wall in patterns that made no sense to me. And hearing her laughter, her murmuring.

      The morning after she left, I’d carried my Post-it note into the hallway. My legs had moved without any direction from my brain. I had stopped when I saw Dad hunched over in one of the beautiful but uncomfortable dining room chairs that Mom had picked out.

      He’d had his own note, a scrap of paper even smaller than mine. I had watched him stand, crush it into a tiny ball, and hurl it against the wall. It had bounced off and rolled under the china cabinet. Then his bones had seemed to dissolve before he fell to his knees, hung his head in his hands and wept.

      I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t done much of anything besides back up and slip quietly into the bathroom. I’d flattened her note on the counter, but the sticky part was covered with lint from my pillow and refused to stick. I’d held it down and stared at her words until