I got up and started clearing his dinner dishes.

“I can do that,” he snapped.

He couldn’t.

He could barely walk.

Mismanaged diabetes.

The mismanaged part being, when I was fed up with his abuse, I’d quit coming to give him his insulin, take his blood sugar, make sure he ate, and doctor his booze by watering it down so his drinking didn’t put his body out of whack.

None of which he did for himself.

Three trips to the hospital, and the subsequent medical bills, which meant selling his old house (something I saw to), downsizing (something I also saw to), and putting up with his complaints he had about having to move (something I listened to, though the move part, I saw to), meant I kept coming back.

Mom didn’t get it.

She’d washed her hands of him years ago. Even before she did it legally with the divorce.

But I simply could not do nothing and let my father die.

And I knew this would happen if I did not manage his health and his life.

I took his dishes to the kitchen, rinsed them, put them in the dishwasher, tidied and headed back to the living room to remove the TV tray from in front of Dad.

Then I was going to get my purse and go.

“Hattie, it’s just—” he started in a much less ugly tone as I was folding up the tray.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

All these years, he thought he could dig in and dig in and dig in because…whatever.

He didn’t like his job?

He didn’t like his marriage?

He didn’t like his health?

He didn’t like his life?

So he took that out on his daughter?

And then he has a think about what he’d said, or what he’d done, and realizes he’d been a jerk, so he decides he can say he’s sorry and that will wipe away all that came before, like it didn’t happen.

It didn’t wipe it away.

It never got wiped away.

A person was born clean.

But I believed they died with the stains their parents gave them.

Even if they lived to be a hundred and two.

I mean, seriously?

He’d called me a whore.

“I just wanted more for you, sweetheart,” he said gently.

I looked him right in the eye.

“I started with a tour jeté down the center stage. It was massive. I was the first solo to go out. Ian wanted their attention. And I got it. He wanted to make a statement right off the bat this was a change for Smithie’s. And I made that for him, and for Smithie, flying through the air in a titty bar.”

“I wish I’d seen it,” he lied.