Back in the Burbs by Tracy Wolff
Chapter Fifty-One
I wake up to the sound of a throat being cleared above me, and I freeze before I even regain consciousness, convinced Nick has found me and that I’m going to have to explain everything.
But when the throat clearing comes again, my galloping heart gets a reprieve because I would recognize that exasperated, disappointed sound anywhere.
My dad is here.
I open my eyes slowly, feeling like I passed out a minute ago. A quick glance at my phone proves the feeling isn’t completely inaccurate. It’s barely six o’clock, and I only fell asleep about an hour ago.
My dad is standing over me, arms crossed at his suited chest and a distinct frown of disapproval on his face. I brace myself for the worst when our eyes meet.
But all he says is, “Rough night?”
“You have no idea.” I sit up slowly and try to get my shit together.
Matching wits with my father is always a dangerous affair—he isn’t one of the tristate area’s best litigators for nothing—but doing it when you’re half asleep and groggy as fuck is guaranteed to be a disaster. Then again, so is showing any kind of weakness, so I refuse to shake my head or rub my eyes or do anything that will tip him off as to how tired I actually am.
“What’s up?”
“Obviously not you,” he answers acerbically. “Despite the new job your mother says you started recently.”
“Wait a minute. You talked to Mom?”
“I’ve talked to your mother every single day of our thirty-eight-year marriage. You didn’t think I was actually going to stop just because she moved out, did you?”
“Actually, that’s exactly what I thought,” I tell him. “I mean, isn’t that the point of her moving out?”
He shakes his head as he walks over to the patio table and takes two paper coffee cups out of the cupholder he must have placed there. He holds one out to me, and I nearly cry with relief as I wrap my hands around it and breathe in its heady aroma.
“For a woman who likes to pretend she has everything all worked out, you’ve still got a lot to learn,” my father says after a few seconds.
My laugh is harsh when it comes. Is he really going to lecture me on having my life together? We haven’t spoken since I learned of Sarah, so it doesn’t take long for me to dig back into that raging cesspool of hurt. “I think you’re confused. I’m the first one to admit that I have nothing worked out.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” He takes a sip of his coffee as he sits down on the lounge chair next to mine and kicks up his legs. “You like to say that you don’t know what you’re doing, but the truth is you’ve made very conscious decisions that have gotten you to this point in your life, Mallory. You decided to quit law school to support Karl. You decided to help him build that law firm into what it is today without taking any credit for yourself. You decided to leave your husband without so much as consulting me before you did it—”
“So you could try to sell me on the sanctity of marriage as you see it?” I snipe before I can stop myself.
“No, so I could have helped you protect yourself. Karl is a bastard, no doubt about it, but he’s a damn good lawyer. Instead of remembering that, you went off half-cocked, and look at where that got you.”
“It’s pretty hard not to go off half-cocked,” I tell him, “when you walk in on your husband giving oral sex to another woman. It’s one of those situations designed to make people go off half-cocked.”
“Maybe so. But you should have known better. You’re the daughter of a lawyer, the wife of a lawyer. I could have helped you protect yourself.”
“Maybe I didn’t want or need your protection,” I say. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe I needed to do this on my own.”
“Which is why you’re sleeping with your new boss, right?” my dad asks, brows raised. “Who also happens to be your lawyer? Because you want to do things on your own?”
“First of all, his partner is my lawyer. And second of all, my relationship with Nick is none of your business.”
“Nothing about you is my business,” my father snaps back. “You’ve made sure of that.”
Guilt rears its ugly head, but that’s exactly what he was aiming for, so I tamp it back down. He’s the one who has made so much of this divorce so difficult for me. Is it any wonder I didn’t ask him for advice? Not to mention the fact that he’s made a pretty big mess of his own life—and my mother’s. It isn’t my fault I don’t want to end up like her.
“And you want me to apologize for that?”
“What I want is for you to listen. And to think about what I’m saying,” he says, looking more concerned than I’ve ever seen him. “Because you’re heading down a path that will lead you right back to where you were. You know that, right?”
“That’s not true,” I say. “I’m doing everything differently now.” I think about Nick and my desperate crawl out of his bedroom last night. “Maybe everything I do isn’t great,” I admit after a second. “But I’m trying—”
“Are you or are you not sleeping with your boss?” he demands, his normally steady voice rising in anger or excitement or I don’t know what. “I just don’t want you to end up single in a few years, without a reference again, and without Aunt Maggie to bail you out by giving you a house this time.”
Fury rips through me, digs into me with razor-tipped claws. “You may be my father, but it is absolutely ludicrous for you to sit there and give me life advice,” I tell him. “Considering the absolute disaster you’ve made of your life—and of my mother’s.”
“I just want you to protect yourself, Mallory—”
“The way you’ve protected yourself all these years?” I ask. “By fucking over anyone who didn’t do exactly what you wanted them to do? And even some who did. That’s the real message here, right? Nick can’t be trusted because you can’t be trusted. I can’t be trusted because all men will do what you did—”
“That’s enough, Mallory!” His voice cuts like glass.
“No,” I say, openly defying my father for the first time in a long time. “It’s not enough. You hurt my mother. You hurt Sarah. You probably hurt Sarah’s mother and you definitely hurt me with your behavior. So for you to stand there and tell me that I need to think ahead, that I need to make sure I don’t let some man hurt me again, is insulting. It’s beyond insulting.”
I put the cup of coffee he gave me back down on the table where I got it from. “And if you think I’m so bad at choosing men, if you think I’m destined to let them treat me badly and hurt me over and over again, maybe you should look at my role model,” I say. “Maybe you should ask yourself why it is I chose Karl and who he reminded me of. Believe me, if I’ve done nothing else over the last couple of weeks, I’ve figured that much out.”
By the time I’m done talking, my father looks pale. Gray even. But his eyes are the same as they’ve always been when he looks at me—filled with a cold annoyance that says he’s not really interested in anything I’m saying. More, he isn’t even really interested in me.
So when he turns on his heel and storms out of my backyard, it isn’t even a surprise. What is a surprise is the fact that once I’m alone, I realize that a part of me—though I am loath to admit it—knows there is some truth in what he said. And if I don’t want to make the same mistakes I already have, then I’m going to have to do something to change it.