“Sure am,” Dad answered with a straight face.
“Maybe you can draw us a picture,” Dad suggested to the Attorney General. “Something to commemorate the evening. She used to draw pictures for me all the time when she was a kid.”
“That’s not really how animators work—” I started to answer.
“I’ve got to wait until my wife gets here to go inside, but no need for you to wait in this line,” the Attorney General boomed again, cutting me off. He led us straight toward a guy with a clipboard. “You’re the guest of honor.”
“Thanks, man,” Dad says, like he and the Attorney General are best buds, even though I was pretty sure he hated the current administration.
“Darrell Kingston,” he said to the guy with the clipboard. “And this is my daughter, Dawn. Not sure if she’s on your list of RSVPs, though, since she just showed up as a surprise.”
“We’ve got her on the list,” the guy assured him. “And your plus one is already inside.”
My stomach turned to concrete at his announcement. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh no.
“You brought a date?” Dad asked, his genial smile turning into a full-on beam.
No. I didn’t bring a date! I wanted to scream. But I didn’t know how to extract us from the situation without embarrassing my father on his big night.
“Must be serious if you invited him to meet your brother and me,” Dad said, throwing me a significant look as we walked into the ballroom’s front lobby. “What’s his name?”
Instead of answering, I came to a complete stop.
Victor…
Victor was waiting inside for us. The devil, in a tailored suit.
33
DAWN
I stopped when I saw Victor standing in the museum’s lobby. My father did too. Behind Victor, there were several closed double doors that I could only presume led to the museum’s main event space.
“Is that…?” Dad started to say beside me.
I rushed to Victor before he could finish the question. Not because I was happy to see him. I rushed to my monster of a husband to plead, “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.”
Had I thought his eyes cold before?
The memories of his other gazes seemed warm in comparison to the way he looked down at me now. And his eyes were circles of black ice above his hands as he signed, “I promised you an 8 o’clock date.”
Then, before I could answer, he took my hand in his.
Not out of affection. No, not at all.
He raised our arms together in the air to meet my incoming father wedding ring first.
My dad stopped short. Then he reeled back as if someone had shot him when he saw the black onyx and steel band wrapped around my most significant finger. It didn’t look like a traditional American wedding ring. But Dad immediately recognized it for what it was.
I could tell because storm clouds moved in over his formerly sunny expression.
He stepped closer to us and took my hand in his.
To everyone else looking on, it probably appeared as if he was admiring my ring. Only Victor and I could hear him whisper, “What the fuck is this?”
“Dad…” I whispered back, my voice pitiful and apologetic. But I didn’t finish that sentence. How could I? How could I explain Victor’s presence or any of this?
The sets of doors I’d noticed earlier were suddenly thrown open, and an overhead voice announced that we could all go into the ballroom now.
“You don’t want to make a scene, do you?” Victor signed as people started filing past us into the event space.
I wasn’t sure if he was addressing my dad or me. Either way, the result was the same. Dad and I somehow ended up following Victor into a room filled with round tables covered in white linens and surrounded by Chiavari chairs. We were stiff actors in Victor’s kabuki play.
Victor was wearing a suit, but like the last time we came to D.C., he decided not to pair it with a tie. So his dragon chest tattoo peeked out, along with a new skull tattoo on the back of his left hand. It glared below his matching wedding ring.
He did not look at all like someone who would be invited to a ceremony honoring international law enforcement. Quite the opposite. He belonged in the collection of mugshots that would surely run before the Attorney General gave my dad his award.
Victor went out of his way not to let anyone take his picture. But he didn’t have to be a known criminal element for people to sense his danger.
No one else came up to congratulate my dad. In fact, everyone stared and gave us a wide berth as we made our way across the room, which made the journey feel excruciating and long.
Yet, it was even worse when we reached a table near the stage with a placard bearing my father’s name in neat cursive letters.
Dad didn’t say one word to us, but he didn’t have to. His disappointment and anger were written out in clear language across his face.
Those silly dreams I’d woven in the back of Wayne’s car about possibly taking our relationship beyond May 25th….it had included figuring out how to broker a peace between Dad and Victor. But now, as we took our seats, I sizzled alive in a frying pan of embarrassment and regret.
I said nothing, but of course, Victor had the nerve to try to make conversation.
“Where’s your lovely wife?” he asked Dad, his expression coldly pleasant. “She should be recovered from her surgery by now.”
Dad visibly gritted his jaw.
“She’s still in Texas,” he answered in sign language. His choice of communication appeared to be a decision. “She had some unfinished business before she could move up here.”
“I see. She is still in rehab then,” Victor signed. That malicious smile of his returned as he dropped that bomb. And he spelled out R-E-H-A-B as if he didn’t want to leave it to chance that we wouldn’t understand exactly what he was saying.
Mom was in a rehab facility? My heart jerked at this new piece of information. But I didn’t want to give Victor the satisfaction of my shock. He was already winning this last anniversary battle on every front.
“Where’s Byron?” I asked dad out loud, changing the subject.
Dad stared Victor down for a long, hard beat before he answered me, also out loud, “Your brother’s not here yet. I’ll shoot him a text message to see if he’s on his way.”
With that, Dad brought out his phone, saving us from any further conversation.
And a new idea occurred to me.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I told them both, hitching my tote upon my arm. “I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t bother to wait for an answer before making my way back to the restrooms near the venue’s front door.
I’d been holding on. I’d been holding on to hope for so long. I didn’t realize how long until all hope completely disappeared.
But Victor had taken everything. The last ten years of my life. The MFA I’d worked so hard for. My father’s big night. My chance to start over again in Pittsburgh.
It was painful to walk, painful to breathe. Everything inside of me felt shattered and broken.
I crashed into the women’s bathroom and found the perfect hiding place. Plenty of stalls and no line since the event had just started.