“Stephen?” Joy called, coming down the hallway. It looked like she was still wearing her work outfit—a suit with a skirt, all in black. Though she had, I noticed, swapped out her work shoes for a pair of fuzzy slippers, also black. As ever, she looked almost preternaturally composed—her sharp silver bob didn’t have a hair out of place. Her eyebrows raised when she saw me. “Stevie, hi,” she said, giving me a nod and coming to stand next to my father. “Is everything… all right?”
It was like they were both willing me to tell them that things were fine. That this was just an unexpected social visit, but nothing was really wrong. Nothing that anyone had to have their night wrecked over. And the part of me that was used to being obliging wanted to go along with it. But I made myself push back. “No,” I said, swallowing hard and looking right at my dad. “I need to talk to you.”
“I’m going to make some tea,” Joy said, demonstrating an excellent grasp of reading the room. She rested her hand on my dad’s back for a moment, then beat a hasty retreat into the kitchen.
“Stevie, what is going on?” my dad asked, closing the door and locking it automatically. He never used to do that in Connecticut—you didn’t need to lock your doors in Stanwich. I wondered how long it had taken him to get in the habit of doing this in Manhattan. “Where is your mother?”
“She didn’t come in,” I said, walking down the hallway into the apartment. I had a feeling that if I stayed too near the door, I’d be tempted to just flee when things got hard, and I wanted to take away that possibility.
“You… came in by yourself?”
“I came in with Kat.”
My dad looked around, as though maybe she was about to materialize. “Then where is Kat?”
“I don’t know, actually. We got separated. I haven’t seen her for hours.”
“Honey,” my dad said, walking into the small living room and sitting down on the couch. He shook his head and I noticed in that moment just how tired he looked, his face more lined than I remembered it. Seeing how it was after ten, was probably about to get ready for bed, and having his teenage daughter show up and not be forthcoming probably hadn’t been on his agenda tonight. He ran his hand over his face, and his new wedding ring—platinum, not gold—flashed in the lamplight at me for just a moment. “I don’t understand.”
“Me neither.” I took my coat off and set the bag with my heels down at my feet. Not only was I getting hot, but I wanted to let him know I wasn’t planning on going anytime soon. I was going to stay here and say what I’d come to say. I sat on the chair across from him and dug my nails into my palms.
I could hear my cue, even though it was a script I’d never seen before. But I could feel that it was coming, knew that at any moment the real scene would begin. And you weren’t allowed to avoid a fight scene in a play; I wasn’t going to let myself do it here, in this living room, where even though the audience was smaller, the stakes were so much higher. I took a breath—it was already coming out shaky and I hadn’t even started yet. This did not seem like a great beginning.
“Mom had plans with Aunt Eliza tonight, so she couldn’t come with me when you cancelled dinner.” I had to pause for just a second after saying it, before I could make myself go on. I looked at his face, trying to see if he would flinch or give anything away, but I couldn’t see anything. “So Kat and I thought we’d come in and take the reservation.”
“Uh-huh.” My dad gave me a knowing look. “And did your mother know that you were coming into the city?”
“No,” I said, feeling like this was the least of what I was concerned with right now.
“Stephanie Sinclair,” my dad said, his voice getting louder and lower, always the first sign I was In Trouble. Normally, this would have scared me, but right now it just made me angrier. He thought that he could still play the father in charge after everything? After what he’d done? “Are you saying—”
“Dad!” I snapped, “let me fucking talk!” I could practically feel him drawing back in surprise. I never raised my voice, especially not to him, and I never swore. I was very aware that I was about to wade into uncharted waters and drag him in with me. I closed my eyes for just a second, trying to get my courage up.
Why was this so scary?
I opened my eyes and made myself keep going. “So. Matty and I had to go to the office to get the keys to Mallory’s apartment because I got locked out—”
“Wait,” my dad said, holding up a hand, sounding baffled. “What do Mateo and Mallory have to do with this?”
“And then,” I said, talking over him, knowing that if I stopped for even a second, I’d lose my nerve entirely, “I thought while I was at the law firm I’d go up to your office and say hi. Because you told me you’d be working late.” I made myself look right at him. My lower lip started to quiver as I thought about how excited I’d been to see him, how sure that I knew what I would see, because there was no way my father would have lied to me, not about something that important. “But Carla told me the truth—that you weren’t working late. You’d left hours ago. So you could have dinner with Joy.” I was speaking faster now, my voice rising. “And that’s how I found out that you lied to me, and that you cancelled my birthday dinner—” My voice broke and I stopped and took a deep breath, trying to get myself together.
My dad shook his head. “Stevie, wait a second. I know you’re upset,” he said, jumping in when I started to say something. “But listen to me. Around seven tonight, after I spoke to you, we received orders from the judge to remand all the files. There had been an issue with the chain of evidence. So I had been working late—until I was legally compelled to stop.”
“You—were?”
“And since I assumed you would be coming in with your mother, I didn’t think it would be a good idea—or fair to her—to tell you that since I was now free, we would go to dinner instead. So Joy and I went out to eat, because I didn’t think that I could have dinner with you any longer.”
“Oh.”
“I wouldn’t have lied to you,” my dad said, a half laugh in his voice somewhere, and I could tell how much he wanted to get this conversation back on ground we were both more comfortable with. “But I can understand why you would have been upset by that, honey. Of course I do.” He smiled at me, and it was like I could see the door that I was supposed to walk through. The one that let this go, that let us go back to who we’d always been to each other.
But I couldn’t do it. I’d come too far tonight to back down now.
“But I believed it,” I said, my voice shaky. I looked up at him and saw my dad frown. “When Carla told me. I was upset because I believed it. Because I believed that was something you would do. What does that say?” I could feel hot tears building up, but I just had to keep going—I knew that much. “I just feel,” I began, then had to stop and take a breath as the first tears started to hit my cheeks. “That I’m not—that important to you.” My dad was shaking his head, about to jump in, but I held my hand up, just like he’d done. “I never see you anymore, but you see Matty and Margaux all the time, and you never come to see me and I tell you it’s fine but it’s not fine. And you didn’t come to see me in my last—last play. And I miss you.” Tears were pouring out over my cheeks, and I wiped them away and made myself keep going. “And I’m going to go to college next year and I don’t know how often we’ll get to see each other and I…” It was getting hard to speak, but I took a ragged breath and made myself finish this out. “I just feel like I’m always the last thing on your list. And I hate it.”