“My room?”
Connie blinks at me like I’m very clueless. “You keep avoiding me when I try to talk to you about it, so I followed my instincts mostly, but there’s plenty of time to change things.”
It dawns on me that I’m very clueless. “That’s what we’re turning the garage into. A room for me.” Because my room is becoming Connie’s studio. This makes a lot of sense actually.
Connie raises her eyebrows but politely doesn’t ask how I got through the whole summer without realizing this. “I have the plans whenever you want to look at them.”
“Thanks,” I say.
She shrugs. “It will be a bit more independent,” she says. “And we can rent it out short-term when you’re not here, to earn back some of the expense.”
“Right, of course.” I knew that part.
Connie stares down at the pile of dust and leaves she’s gathered. She sucks her breath in, and I think she’s going to launch back into some kind of argument, but she doesn’t. “This floor is filthy, and I’m exhausted.” She walks out of the garage without looking back.
I stand up and walk to the broom she left, thinking I’ll sweep. Not to prove anything, just because it needs to be done. I can’t figure out whether Connie’s more mad at me now or less, whether I’m surprised by her kindness or annoyed at her stubbornness. But the garage is going to be my space sometime in the near future. That’s cool to know.
I’ve barely gotten Connie’s pile into the dustpan when the door opens again and Dad knocks on the garage wall.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
I shrug, nod at the broom.
“Did you have a good talk with Connie?” he asks. His voice stays light and even, but his smile stretches too tightly across his face.
“I guess.” I shrug again. “She sort of apologized? It was weird.” Dad laughs softly. “Am I still in trouble?” I feel like I should be in trouble.
Dad leaves the doorway, takes the broom out of my hand, glances around the empty room. I gesture to the boxes, and he follows, sitting gingerly next to me. “The apology was overdue,” he says. “And I’m here to offer one, too. We haven’t . . . we’ve let our own problems take over.”
“You and Connie?” I ask.
Dad sighs, a big long one that makes the lid of the box creak and dip lower. “Since I started the new job,” he says, and I nod.
“You disappeared.”
“It seemed like a smart move,” Dad says, “with college tuition looming. But . . . well, your stepmom and I haven’t been seeing eye-to-eye, and I know a lot of that has been coming down on you. You became—we made you the . . .”
“Battleground.”
“It wasn’t fair,” Dad says. “I thought if we could work it out without showing . . . I thought it was important to present a united front.”
I snort. “The United Front sucks.”
“Well.” Dad hides a smile. “Maybe.”
He clears his throat, and I watch his hands twist around each other. I can tell our talk isn’t finished, but this whole day has been so strange that I can’t even guess where Dad’s going next.
“I’ve left Connie to play Bad Cop too often this year. It’s hard on her and on you, and it’s part of the reason Christmas got so out of hand. It’s something I want to correct.”
I shift on my box seat. I didn’t think Connie was playing Bad Cop. I thought she just was one.
“But I’ve also noticed,” Dad continues, “that you’re more willing to fight with Connie and not with me. Why is that?”
My throat tightens. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dad raises an eyebrow. My mind flashes through moments: Dad laughing about feminism, Dad scolding me or lecturing me, Dad making fun of quidditch. I yell at Connie for doing the same things, but when it’s Dad, I always end up letting it slide.
“I don’t know,” I repeat. “Everything just turns into a fight with her. She hates me.”
“Hmm,” Dad rumbles. He rubs his palms on the knees of his jeans, and the silence grows heavy.
“She already hates me,” I amend, the words squeaking out of me, even though I’m starting to realize they’re not true. “She already hates me, and I don’t want you to hate me, too.”
“Hey,” Dad says, and even though his tone suggests that he probably already noticed the batch of tears welling up in my eyes, I still refuse to look up, because then he’ll know for sure. “Ellen, you know that’s not . . .”
“I didn’t mean to make her leave,” I say, the words rushing out of me. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I’m trying to fix it.”
“That’s absolutely not what I meant!” Dad says. “That’s not on you.”
“No, but I was fighting with her all the time—I’m trying not to anymore, it just—”
“Stop.” Dad puts a hand on my shoulder. “You didn’t make Connie do anything.”
I gulp the words that try to spill out, burning and guilty and sorry.
“Ellen?” Dad asks. “Do you hear me?”
I can’t find my voice.
We sit in silence.
“You caught me by surprise,” Dad says, “becoming a teenager. A teenage girl, no less. I’m not . . .”
He struggles for words, but the worst is already out, and it’s surprising how much it hurts to hear “girl” in that tone, directed at me like a weapon. I don’t even know if I’m hurt because of the careless misogyny or because it doesn’t fit me or both. I can’t tell which way Dad’s letting me down, and I don’t know what I could have done to avoid letting him down.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words barely reaching my own ears. I don’t feel like a teenager at all. I feel like I’m nine years old, crying because Yasmín is so little and cute and Aunt Mal pays more attention to her than me.
“Don’t be!” Dad says, putting one hand on my shoulder and looking alarmed. “Ellen, I didn’t mean for you to take that as something you did wrong. That’s . . . that’s me failing my job.”
I sniff, shrug Dad’s hand off to wipe my nose on my sleeve, and I might as well be throwing a six-year-old tantrum as I whine, “You don’t want me here. Everything will be better when I leave.”
“Ellen . . .”