The wind pushed at my scarf.
“What did you say?”
“I said I spent too long asking the wrong daughter to keep the wrong peace.”
My eyes stung.
He kept looking ahead.
“She threw a vase.”
I turned sharply. “At you?”
“At the wall.” He gave a sad little smile. “Her aim was never good unless she was using words.”
I did not smile back.
“Dad, that’s not okay.”
“No. It’s not.”
For the first time, he sounded like he understood that “not okay” applied to more than broken glass.
Then he said, “I’m not telling you so you’ll feel guilty. I’m telling you because I want one person in this family to know I chose to leave before I had nowhere to go.”
That was the first brave thing my father had done in a long time.
Maybe ever.
On January twenty-second, my mother came to my house.
