“Why, my angel? It’s not enough to reflect on our actions—be it our sins or our virtues. You must examine why you’ve done the things you’ve done.”
I wish I knew the answer.
Was it guilt?
Pity?
Or was it just so no one else was forced to deal with her problems?
I didn’t like the question, and I hated more my answers. “What do you want to know? Why did I wait until after she was clean before coming home…or why did I abandon her after Dad died?”
“Who said you abandoned her?” How did his voice stay so kind?
“I did.”
“Do you believe that?”
This was getting too heavy. I think I accidentally lied to him. I asked for a priest, and I got one. Now I wished for my flirty, sexy, dangerous Daddy El…not the man who knew exactly what to say to cut through me.
“I bet other people believe I abandoned her,” I said.
“I asked about you.”
“It’s hard to abandon someone you never had.”
“What makes you say that?”
He wouldn’t understand. “The woman here today is not my mother. The woman drunk in the middle of the afternoon or passed out in the tub, burning a hole in the shower curtain with her cigarette, that’s the mother I knew. I won’t say she raised me because she couldn’t. But she was there. She’s the one I remember.”
“That wasn’t your fault, Honor. Those were her addictions.”
“But I knew those addictions. The woman here, now, is a stranger to me. Someone I’m supposed to love and trust.”
“And you don’t?”
“I do…but I’m waiting for my heart to break.”
“You don’t think she’ll stay sober.”
“I don’t have much faith in her.”
“I understand.”
I closed my eyes. “Is it a sin, Father?”
“To feel hurt? Betrayed? Absolutely not.”
“But…what about honoring thy mother and everything?”
“The only sin here is that you would lie to yourself and her about your feelings.” He lowered his voice. His words were meant to guide me. They only coiled me tighter. “Have you forgiven her?”
“Forgiven her?”
“For her past?”
I leaned back on my knees. “Like it’s that easy.”
“Some would say it is.”
They would be wrong.
“Do you know how my dad died?” I asked.
I knew he did. As the parish priest, he would have known the history of the area. But he respected me too much to say it, even in a confessional where only God could hear.
“Tell me,” he said.
“He was killed in a drunk driving accident.” I swallowed bile, the remnants of bitter mourning. “At least, that’s what we tell people. It’s true, but it’s a lie by omission. It’s misleading. It sounds like another car was at fault, that it was an accident.” I couldn’t look at the screen. “There was only one car that day.”
Father Raphael spoke when I could no longer. “Your mother was the driver.”
I remembered the day, but I could only imagine the accident. I had to read the police reports to get the details. The first responders couldn’t understand why it happened—how people could be so reckless.
I did.
It wasn’t recklessness.
It was foolish, undying, enabling love that killed him.
“Mom wanted to drive, but she hadn’t told Dad about the pills she popped before she got into the car. Probably didn’t tell him about the drinks either. But she liked to drive, and Dad always wanted her to feel…” I shrugged. “Special? Normal? Like she didn’t need the alcohol and pills. He treated it like she lacked confidence, not like an addiction. And that killed him. He wanted her to feel in control, like she didn’t need the crutch. He always helped her, but in the wrong way.”
“What happened?”
The obvious. “She lost control of the car, and he lost his life.”
“Where were you?”
“College. I got the call during a lecture, but I usually ignored her when she tried to get ahold of me.” I explained before he wondered how a daughter could be so heartless. “The last time I had talked to her was when I sent her a thousand dollars of my own money to help with the bills. Dad never saw the check, and Mom had nearly killed herself on the drugs she bought.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was the one who told me to focus on school, not to look back. So…I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not if I wanted a life free of that misery.”
I still didn’t know if it was the right choice or not, but as hard as it was to watch Mom destroy herself, I couldn’t stand how Dad enabled every bad decision she made. He loved her, and he was just as responsible for the damage it caused.