Page 100 of Finding a Melody

“Sorry, I was just thinking about the nightmare. You already know about the whole car chase part of it.”

“That was what you were dreaming about?” Seth asked.

I nodded. “Partially, but it was mixed in with other stuff. The night my father left to be specific.” I glanced out the window, still able to see it happening all over again. The scene was burned into my brain and it was never going to go away. I clenched my fork hard.

“I’m getting a sense that he didn’t just walk out the door to go buy milk and never came back,” Bryan said.

I snorted at that. “No. He didn’t. It wasn’t that simple.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

I shook my head. “You guys are always going on about talking and communicating and trusting each other. And I do trust you guys. It’s just not something I talked about, and now I’m beginning to think that not talking about it isn’t the answer—not if I’m getting nightmares like that.”

“What happened?” Seth asked, gently placing down his silverware and giving me his full attention, patient and ready to listen. Like he always was.

My lip trembled briefly, and I blinked hard, having trouble focusing on either of them. Whenever I looked at them, I just wanted to cry instead, and if I was going to tell them without breaking down, then I couldn’t cry.

“It’s definitely a day I’d rather forget, and yet it’s the one day that refused to go away. It was pretty simple really, but not really. Lindie had her friend over earlier that day. He had to make sure none of his stuff was left behind. And he was mean to me.” I snorted. “At least as mean as an adult is to a kid without being cruel. He wasn’t a cruel guy. He was fun sometimes too. But it was obviously something he dealt with in order to be with my mom. I was not a priority, which was fine with me. That day I had ice cream. Whenever my dad was away, I never got ice cream, but I think Lindie wanted me in a better mood when Dad came home. So she treated me to ice cream. And when we got home with it, her friend was there waiting. We all went in and he cleared out the little bit he had left around the house. I never really understood.”

I placed my hands in my lap, trying to hide the way they shook as I talked. I was more nervous about this story than when it was time to do a performance.

“He was leaving and thought it’d be funny to swipe my ice cream from me. So he took it with him. I threw a fit. Lindie yelled at me to stop acting like a baby. I went into my room.” I shrugged. “I stayed in there until Dad came back later that evening. Then when I ran to hug him and welcome him home, he asked how it was all going and I told him about Lindie’s friend taking my ice cream away after finally getting some after so long. I babbled some other stuff, I’m not really sure. Probably more about Lindie’s friend. It came out that night that she had been having an affair. For a while really. Dad threw a fit. They argued for hours while I hid in my room. Then he left.”

I took in a shuddering breath.

“But that wasn’t all of it. I knew that I messed up, that I let it slip out when I wasn’t supposed to. Lindie always told me to never tell him, that I was a good girl only if I didn’t tell Daddy. I was always desperate to be a good girl for Lindie, to finally get more of her attention. She wasn’t abusive back then, she just didn’t bother, or only did the minimum. Some days, I was more a nuisance than anything else, but she did her best. I truly believed she was a good mother. But then I was a bad daughter. I told Daddy about her friend. Lindie had been six months pregnant at the time.”

“What?” There was as soft thud as Bryan gaped at me. Even Seth seemed shocked.

This was the biggest secret I carried with me. The abuse was a secret for sure, but it wasn’t the secret. This was.

“She was supposed to have a baby boy. He would have been about Calvin’s age at this point if he ever got a chance to live. But that night, she had a miscarriage. I’m not too sure what happened. I just know Dad believed the kid wasn’t even his anymore, that he wanted a DNA test done once the kid was born. Then he left. Lindie was heartbroken, wailing, screaming for him to come back, but he never looked back. He just left. She went into the bathroom, still screaming. Then it was a different kind of screaming. I really thought she was dying. And she was. I went into the bathroom to find her on the floor, blood all over. I didn’t understand. I was barely even able to call the ambulance. She lost the baby that night. The stress of what was happening had been too much, I think. She was already having a risky pregnancy. Afterward, she was told she wouldn’t be able to have any more children. She was stuck with only me.”

I closed my mouth, trying to calm my heart with how hard it was beating. All of me was shaking as I shared my story. The full, ugly truth.

No one said anything for a long time as they worked through their own thoughts, and I couldn’t look at them, my face hot with shame and fear.

“And you blame yourself for it all. That’s why you stay by her side. That’s why you keep supporting her even now, after everything she did to you,” Seth said in a tight voice.

I shrugged and swallowed hard before saying, “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“You were ten. What ten-year-old should have dealt with that kind of crap? That’s shit. That wasn’t your fault.”

“I could have a cute little brother. Someone like Calvin. A sweet boy. I would have loved him so much. I wanted to be an older sister, to be someone for him.” I stared at my hands. “But I lost that. I ruined it all. For me. For Lindie.”

“Cadence!” Bryan’s harsh voice made me finally look at him through blurry tears. “Ten years old, you don’t know anything. You speak your mind. And you should be able to. As far as you were aware, her friend was mean, and you did what any little girl would do and told a man you saw as your superhero. You did nothing wrong. The rest happened because of adults. Because of tragic circumstances. Not because of anything you did.”

“I only ever wanted a little brother,” I whispered, the tears finally falling. “I wanted to hold him. To help him walk. To tickle him and chase him around the house. To sleep with him. I only ever wanted to do that. When I knew I was going to be a big sister, it was like something in me changed in that moment. I knew I had to take care of him, to give him so much love that he didn’t feel it missing from Lindie, to notice it gone when Dad had to go on work trips. I wouldn’t have been so alone anymore. But then suddenly, I was no longer going to have a little brother to love. He was gone before he even had a chance to take his first breath. I failed him.”

“Shit.” Seth jumped to his feet and came around the bar table and then pulled me into a hug so tight that I couldn’t breathe right away. It hurt, but it was also so welcoming. The physical pain helped to counterattack the mental pain that seemed to tear into my soul whenever I even thought about it.

“I wish I had pretty words for you,” he said, his own words sounding thick. “I wish I could say exactly what you need to make you feel okay.”

“But there is nothing that can be said,” I said softly.

“You can only just keep breathing,” Bryan said, standing at my back. He rested my hand on my shoulder to let me know he was there too. “And to remind yourself that you were ten. That you were just a kid being a kid. None of this is your fault. None of it. But it doesn’t change what your brain keeps telling you, what keeps floating through your thoughts like a bad haunting. It’s still there no matter what others say.”

“Ever since I did that, I’d been trying to make it up to Lindie. Be the good daughter. Keep my mouth shut. Take care of her because there was no one else. It was just us two, no matter how messed up our relationship was. Whenever she hit me, it felt like my punishment. I deserve it.”