She paused in the darkness of the shadows thrown by the doorway. He couldn’t see her, and she’d completely melted out of existence.
She hadn’t meant to sound so hateful and spiteful when apologizing, but she had. She regretted it, but there was nothing she could do. Sighing again, she knelt and pulled on her socks, trying not to notice the lines of dried blood on her hands and fingers, trying not to feel the lines that she knew were on her arms. She wouldn’t bother with her shoes, her father would only hear her if she tried to sneak across the hardwood floor in thick-soled sneakers.
Absently running a hand through her hair, she eased the door open, her shoulders stiff, anticipating a creak. She glanced to the clock on the wall and quietly sucked in a breath between her teeth as it revealed to her that she was half an hour past curfew. Holding her breath, she slipped inside, closing the door behind her, wincing sharply as it squeaked in protest, ratting her out.
Her head whipped around to look at her father, but he was still asleep, the paper across his chest, hands relaxed, his eyes closed and fluttering gently. His glasses sat on the table next to his chair, glinting in the quiet.
She set her shoes next to the door and started up the stairs, but paused as she looked back at her father.
He really was the best father she ever could have asked for. He’d never asked her to change, or expected too much of her. He always knew what she was capable of, and managed to push her just beyond. He’d always been there for her, no matter what.
But not this time, she wouldn’t allow him to help her with this.
Smiling to herself, though still troubled, she tiptoed into the living room, to where his chair sat in the glow of the table lamp that made him seem a regular father, rather then the terrific and selfless father he really was. Most fathers would give anything for their children. He wouldn’t…he had already done so.
She turned out the light, and his eyelids fluttered dangerously on the verge of waking up, but then relaxed back into dreamland. Her half-hearted smile grew warmer, more meaningful. It didn’t fill her face like it once had, but it still brought the twinkle back to her eyes, even if the twinkle was a little sad.
Setting a hand on the arm of the chair and the other on the back, she leaned over and kissed her father’s forehead. “I love you Daddy, you’re the greatest,” she whispered, pulling back and looking down at him with all the love that a daughter can possess for her father.
Silently, she slipped past him and continued to her room. She shrugged off her jacket, hanging it up on the back of her desk chair. Quietly, she slipped into her closet, slipping out of the clothes she wore, and into a more comfortable pair of drawstring pants and an oversized long-sleeved tee-shirt. Too late she remembered why the shirt was too big, too late she remembered who she had stolen it from.
The tears threatened to come then, but she wouldn’t let them. Instead, she backed out of the closet and went to her window, opening it, and climbing out onto the roof. She walked along until she reached the edge, then jumped silently and precisely to the dome of silky white that was the roof to her grandmother’s house.
She sat down, hugging her knees to her chest, letting the starlight fall down on her, letting it soak into her, take her pride and her pain away.
She ran a hand back through her hair, and paused, her fingers lost in the black midnight strands. It wasn’t there.
She knew she hadn’t left it at the beach, and she’d definitely had it after they’d left dinner…which meant that...that it was in his car.
Sighing, she leaned back onto her knees.
As great a kid you are...
She broke down then, and let everything go.
Everything.