He’s waiting for her mother to return.

It doesn’t matter how many times Alana’s told him that she’s dead.

Alana knows because Alana killed her.

She’s told him this, repeatedly. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t disagree. He doesn’t do a gods-damned thing.

He simply doesn’t believe her.

Alana gives him one more hug before she leaves. “Be safe,” she tells him again.

He’s not worried. “They won’t care about me. They never did.”

The sad part is he’s right.

There’s always a cost in those old stories, Alana knows — not the Disneyfied versions that are made into cartoons, but the original tales of faes and sprites and piskies who come to the village and grant wishes. Nobody gets touched by magic without paying a price. The man who visits Fairyland for a night gets to dance with the queen and see the most beautiful things. Then he wakes up the next morning and realizes his whole life has passed him by.

That’s her dad. He’s the guy at the end of the story. How in the Seven Hells is he supposed to go to a speed-dating mixer at the Middleton Community Center after living in a storybook brought to life? He has been ruined for anything less than true love and real magic.

Most of him is already someplace else, waiting to be reunited with her. He doesn’t care what happens to him here.

And to be completely honest, neither does she.

Whoever is out there, they will not come for Alana’s dad, because they can see it in the crappy trailer, the lack of visits, her quick exit. On some basic level, she does not care about him. Alana is ashamed of it, but she can’t change it. She cannot help despising him for his weakness, for his inability to let go of the past and move on.

He is waiting for a dead woman who left him decades ago, once she was done with him, and he knows it. If someone killed him, it would be a mercy. He’s empty.

She doesn’t like thinking this way. She remembers the times he would mend her wounds and hold ice to the bruises on her face when her mother punched her. It’s not enough.

He is just so pathetically human.

Alana is her mother’s daughter. She can’t forgive that, no matter how hard she tries.

She watches her father wave goodbye in the rearview mirror, standing by his trailer. She checks her phone, and wonders if she will be able to get hold of Grace. She feels the need to talk to her daughter.

18

Even Good Kids Have Their Limits