My mother was kneeling in the grass, crying, but even then her eyes kept darting to the car, to the suit, to the life she had misjudged and lost access to. Tyler was already on his phone, no doubt building a version of events in which he remained misunderstood and important. My father, unconscious, looked suddenly what he had always been underneath the performance—small, aging, ordinary.
I got in.
The doors closed.
The engine deepened.
And I drove away.
I took the Pacific Coast Highway north. The city fell behind me. The neighborhood vanished. The house, the basement, the role they had written for me—all of it shrank in the mirrors.
At an overlook above the ocean, I pulled over and stood at the railing watching waves slam against the rocks below.
My phone buzzed.
A text from Holloway.
Your father is stable. He received the paperwork. He says he’s sorry and that he loves you.
I read it twice.
Then I deleted it.
Maybe he did love me in whatever stunted, conditional way he was capable of. Maybe they all did.
But love without respect isn’t love that can sustain anything.