You and Everything After

Usually, Heather is a liar, because I normally feel the pinch and the burn for much longer than a second. But today, I don’t feel a thing. Too much love in the way to let the pain through.

Ty

I don’t really like hospitals. They remind me of physical therapy, of waking up in a hazy fog to a beeping sound in the ICU. They remind me of my mom’s face when I finally opened my eyes long enough to recognize her. My mom’s tears. Nate’s crying. My…crying.

I’m happier here in the hall. But I’ll go back in when I need to. When Cass’s father enters through the sliding doors, I hold a hand up to get his attention before he veers off to the nurse’s station. He came home late last night, and I snuck back to my own room early this morning before anyone was awake. He and I haven’t been alone once yet, and I haven’t really been looking forward to it. I was braver over the phone with him. Too brave, I fear. But I wouldn’t take any of it back.

“She’s just getting set up,” I say.

“Good, good,” he nods, looking through the small window-slot in the door, and then running his hand through his graying hair. He’s worried.

“She kept this to herself. Otherwise…I would have made her talk to someone. I promise you,” I say, because I still feel like maybe Cass’s parents hold me responsible for this. Maybe I am.

“You can’t make her do anything, Tyson,” he says, looking at his daughter through the door window and pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Yeah,” I laugh once. “You’re probably right.”

“You…you want a coffee or anything from the nurse’s station?” he asks me. “This usually takes about an hour.”

“No thanks. I’m good. But go ahead,” I respond.

He just shakes his head, letting his gaze drift off. “I’m good too,” he says. I move toward the door, but before I get too close, he halts me. “It’s nice to finally meet you…in person, by the way,” he says, extending his hand. His grip is firm, and maybe a little threatening—as a father’s should be.

“Thank you for letting me stay with you all. It was really nice to be able to come here from my brother’s tournament. I know it was sort of a last-minute thing, so…anyhow,” I say, suddenly aware that I’m sweating. And rambling. Yeah, I’m definitely braver over the phone. I haven’t had to talk to many fathers. Just Kelly’s. And he was my Little League coach, so…

“I wanted to tell you,” he says, his eyes on me at first, but then at his feet. He sucks in his lips to think, and his posture grows stronger. He’s a prosecutor, and from what Cass says, he’s damn good. I have the distinct feeling he’s about to deliver a closing argument meant just for me.

“I appreciate what you said the other day…that you stood by Cass like that. It was…maybe a little surprising,” he says, his head cocked to the side as he looks at me with a knowing smile, one eyebrow raised.

“Thank you…sir?” I’m a dead man. I feel like a dead man.

“But I just wanted you to understand something, and please…don’t take this in a bad way, like I’m attacking. I…I just get the feeling that you and my daughter might be a whole hell of a lot more serious than her mother and I thought you were, so I thought this was important for me to say,” he says, and I can feel the sweat run down my back.

“The choices I made for my daughter, with this Paul Cotterman guy…they aren’t the easy route. You insinuated I was taking the easy route, but let me be clear—nothing about what I’ve done concerning that man, my daughter, and this case has been easy. Every fiber in my being wants to drag that asshole through court—to spread his story through every front page I can get to print it, to have him become viral on social media and the punch line for late night television shows. I want to spend months digging through his list of old girlfriends, hiring private investigators to uncover dirt, to make a case so strong that there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that my daughter is right. I know she is. God, Tyson—I’ve known it all along. But what would that do to her life? Dragging this story out, making it bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until it followed her forever? She’d have to live this. So as much as it kills me to let that asshole off the hook, as much as it killed me last year to appease the talking heads at her high school district, I struck a deal, and paid them all to keep their mouths shut. Forever. Because my daughter doesn’t deserve a media circus, and I have the means to make her nightmares go away.”