Abigail Johnson - If I Fix You

I just liked to extend the practice beyond the garage when I could.

It was why I’d thrown the pop can. And why I’d left the coupon.

But that answer was way more than I was willing to give someone I just met, no matter how nice he smelled.

“It’s the mechanic in me. I might have exaggerated with the streetlight comment, but that grinding noise your Jeep makes when you stop? That’s not a happy sound. You really shouldn’t be driving it. You’ll end up having to get the brake rotors machined or even replaced. That’s a lot more expensive than new pads. And I’d have to break more than your window to give out coupons for that.”

He might have smiled. Maybe. His mouth definitely twitched.

“I don’t have time to replace them before we close today, but unless we’re crazy busy...” I glanced down the street at the three grinning idiots on the Pep Boys sign. “I can get to you tomorrow before lunch.”

“Tomorrow’s fine.” Daniel fished his keys out of his jeans, pulled one off and gave it to me.

“Hey, if you don’t mind hanging out for a bit, I can give you a ride home.”

Daniel turned back to me just as his hand touched the door. “I’m good, but thanks. And for the Jeep.”

With a last nod, he was out the door and gone.

CHAPTER 8

I expected to find Dad scrounging for dinner when I got home, but the kitchen was empty. I was starting to wonder if he was sick and had gone to bed early when I heard his voice.

Dad was a big guy and he had the voice to match. I could hear him clear across the shop even when all the machinery was running. But at home he’d learned to tone it down. Not quiet, exactly—I don’t think he knew how to be quiet—but not his normal thundering volume either.

But this, this went beyond loud, beyond booming. I remembered this voice like it had been carved into my bones. I knew who he was talking to before I heard him say her name.

“What do you want, Katheryn?”

I backed up until I hit a wall, not that Dad could see me through his bedroom door, but it was an instinct I couldn’t control. It was only a small comfort to realize she was on the phone and not actually in the house.

It was like being doused with ice water, knowing she was talking to him. He was so big and strong, whereas Mom was such a small thing, and yet she destroyed him, destroyed us, as if she were a giant.

After months of nothing, what could she possibly want? She was never what I’d consider maternal, so I doubted custody was an issue at this point. I’d be eighteen in just over a year, and it wasn’t like she’d tried to take me with her before.

And yet, what else could it be? What else could she want? The house? The shop? She’d hated both of them. Whatever it was, Dad was more upset than I’d heard him since the day she left.

“You are unbelievable,” Dad said. “No, you don’t. You haven’t been here, watching her walk through the house like a ghost, and that’s when she can stand to be in it!”

I backed down the hall into the kitchen as Dad’s half of the conversation still thundered through the house. The words I couldn’t hear were chipping away at my bones like an ice pick. I lifted the kitchen phone from its base and pressed it to my ear.

Dial tone. He was on his cell phone, then.

Something about this one-sided conversation was so much worse than the months of fighting before she left, and it took me only seconds to figure out why.

They didn’t know I was there.

Dad didn’t know.

As horrible as their fights had been, there must have been some part in each of them, whether by unspoken agreement or not, that they’d held back for my sake.

They weren’t holding back now. Not Dad, and certainly not Mom.

It had always been me and Dad. From the very beginning. But the last few months of fighting would have made me choose Dad even if the lifetime before hadn’t.

Mom was petty. Calculating. Cruel to the point that shredded any love I held for her.

But not Dad. Oh, he got mad. He yelled. But he never sought to inflict the same kind of personal damage that she did. No matter what she said to him, no matter how vile her insults, he never spoke to her the way she deserved, the way I would have. The way I wanted to so badly in that moment that I was striding down the hall before I could stop myself.

“Kate,” Dad said, and I hated his calling her that. She didn’t deserve it anymore. “Don’t do this. Please.” And then I jumped and froze outside his door when I heard him slam something—his hand probably—against the wall. “You selfish— Don’t tell me you’re sorry. You haven’t been sorry for anything your entire life.” More silence followed by a harsh laugh. “Right, except that.”

There was a lot of yelling after that. It was all things I’d heard before, except reenergized somehow. It was as if all the fights they would have had if she’d stayed were all converging and breaking through at once.

“Please, Kate. Just wait a second. Think. You haven’t been here, you haven’t seen her.”

My stomach soured the way it always did when they started talking about me. Dad’s voice lowered after that. He was speaking so softly that I missed most of the next few things he said until:

“Don’t you ever say that to me again.”

I shrank into myself at the unspoken threat in his voice. I wasn’t used to being scared of him. I’d made him mad plenty of times, but even at his angriest, I’d never been afraid of him.

I was afraid now, and I wasn’t even the one he was threatening.

“Kate—Kate—Kate!” He threw the phone so hard, I heard it break.

My hands fisted at my sides. Things had just started to get better. Dad and I were figuring out life again—just the two of us. I was beginning to remember what being happy felt like.

With one phone call, she took it all away.

Dad would come out of his room any second. If I didn’t want to have a conversation, I needed to hurry back outside and pretend that I was only just getting home.

Avoiding had kind of been the default all summer when Dad and I came even remotely close to talking about Mom. And maybe it would have worked. Maybe we could have kept dodging the subject, pretending that we weren’t a family with an amputated member, ignore the phantom pains that we both still felt.

Maybe Dad and I could have.

But Mom wasn’t going to let us.

Instead of backing away, instead of hiding, I stood directly outside his door so there’d be no way for him to wonder if I’d overheard him. I wanted him to know.

I met his eyes dead-on when he opened the door. “What did Mom want?”

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