4 BACK THEN – August

Caribou, Maine

WILLOW MOORE

Age 17

“We’re not having this conversation! It’s Ellie’s birthday!” my mom shouts, the familiar octave present only when she’s around my dad.

“Her birthday ended twenty minutes ago!” my dad yells. I haven’t seen them endure each other’s presence since the divorce. I invited him to my 17^th birthday dinner back in March and he said he wouldn’t come. His exact words: not if your mom is there. Now August, he’s willing to stomach my mom for Ellie—his little bundle of princess joy.

I don’t think I ever fit into what he wanted me to be. His words over the years have been etched into my head.

If you liked more girl things, you’d have more friends, Willow.

If you actually went to a party like a normal girl, you’d have more friends, Willow.

If you wore more makeup and made an effort, you’d have a boyfriend, Willow.

If you stopped watching superhero cartoons, you’d have a boyfriend, Willow.

Every girl your age has one.

But mostly I hate that he left in the first place. I hate that he just walked out on my mom and broke my little sister’s heart and tore through their lives, even if he’d already been tearing through mine.

He just said, “I can’t live with your mother.” And as a teenager, I’m not privy to the details I guess, but the lack of them has only made hate fester more for him than it has for her.

I hate that his leaving caused my mom to cry every night for three months. I hate that Ellie asked repeatedly, “When’s daddy coming home?” I hate that I was the one who had to say the truth over and over, and I had to watch tears roll down her cheeks every single time. I hate that he wasn’t here to stomach their hurt—that he never woke up to it, never went to sleep to it, the way that I did. When I look at my dad, I only see the man who has hurt me by hurting the two people I love most.

“Willow?” Ellie whispers again, tugging on my wrist. I look down at my six-year-old sister, her eyes wide like saucers. And she mutters, “Can you tell them to stop?”

I fix her plastic crown that droops to the left. “Only if you wait here.”

“I will. I promise.” Then Ellie jumps onto my bed and plops down beside my laptop. I notice a Barbie doll in her hand. It must be new.

I leave her quickly, my bare feet on the old carpet, and I squeeze down the narrow stairs towards the kitchen.

“We’re not talking about this here, Rob!”

His tone lowers to a heated growl. “Yes we are.”

I stop short of the kitchen, able to peek beside the doorframe. The yellow linoleum floors are half littered with wrapping paper and pink balloons, the trashcan stacked with dirty paper plates. My mom hangs onto the kitchen sink, her knuckles whitening.