Chapter 8 - The Wall of Distrust
"You're lying," June said.
The two words were flat, hard, and colder than the glass behind her.
Nathan remained on his knees, his hands resting on his thighs.
"I know it's hard to believe, June."
"You're lying," she repeated, her voice rising, shaking with a sudden, violent panic that she hadn't shown since Nathan first met her.
"My daddy died."
"Mommy said he was an angel in the sky."
"She said he was an angel because if he was on the ground, he would have found us."
"She said he was looking down from the clouds because nothing on the ground could ever keep him away from his baby girl."
"If you were my daddy, you wouldn't have let us live behind the laundromat in Erie."
"You wouldn't have let the landlord throw Mommy's medicines into the snow."
"You wouldn't have let her cough until there was blood on the towels!"
Her chest heaved with ragged breaths.
Her small fists were clenched so tightly her knuckles were white.
All the rehearsed manners, all the polite "yes sir" and "no ma'am" responses, all the careful folding of napkins and tight bed-making shattered into pieces.
For nine years, June had guarded one sacred belief: her father was dead, because only death could explain his absence.
To tell her he was alive was not a comfort.
It was an accusation that she had been abandoned by design.
It meant her father was a man who owned entire city blocks while she wore coats with uneven sleeves and ate subsidized cheese from cardboard boxes.
Laura appeared at the corner of the hallway, her face pale, holding a plate of buttered toast.
Nathan held up a single hand, signaling Laura to stay back.
"You're right," Nathan said.
June stared at him, caught off guard by his lack of resistance.
"What?" she choked out.
"You're right," Nathan repeated, never breaking eye contact.
"If I had known you existed, and if I had stayed in this tower while you were living behind that laundromat, I would be a monster."
"I would be a coward who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as you."
"Then why weren't you there?" she screamed, tears finally spilling over her cheeks in burning rivers.
"Why did you leave us?"
"Because your grandfather told me your mother died in a car accident before you were even born," Nathan said.
He did not sugarcoat it.
He spoke to her not as a child to be coddled with fairy tales, but as a person who deserved the raw, unvarnished truth.
"My father hated your mother's family."
"He thought our family was better than hers because we had money and they worked for wages."
"He threatened her."
"He told her he would destroy her father and put her in jail if she didn't run away."
"And then he staged a fake car crash."
"He showed me a burned-out car and dental charts."
"He held a funeral."
"He put an empty casket in the ground with your mother’s name on it."
"And for ten years, June... for ten years, I believed him."
June stood frozen against the window.
"You believed him?"
"I did," Nathan said, his head bowing slightly with the weight of his own enduring shame.
"Because I was a coward who didn't fight hard enough."
"Because I trusted a man who wore expensive suits instead of listening to my own heart."
"I let them steal ten years of my life."
"And worse than that... I let them leave my daughter alone in the dark."
Nathan reached into his coat pocket.
He pulled out a thick envelope containing the official state documents, the birth certificate bearing his signature, and the DNA analysis report from the clinic.
He laid them on the floor between them.
He did not push them toward her.
He simply left them there.
"I don't expect you to call me your father, June."
"I don't expect you to like me."
"I don't expect you to ever forgive me for being ten years late."
"You can hate me for the rest of your life if you want to."
"You can tell everyone in this city that Nathan Cole is the worst man alive."
"But you will never sleep on a floor again."
"You will never eat bad food again."
"And nobody will ever tell you that you have to offer coupons for hugs just so someone will let you stay in their house."
June looked at the papers on the floor.
She looked at the small silver bracelet lying beside them.
Then she looked at Nathan.
She didn't pick up the papers.
She didn't pick up the bracelet.
She slowly slid down the glass window until she was sitting on the floor again, pulling her knees back to her chest.
"I want to go to the cemetery," she said, her voice dropping back into a whisper.
Nathan looked up.
"To Clara's cemetery?"
"No," June said, her gray eyes staring through him with an ancient, unbearable sorrow.
May you like
"To the fake one."
"I want to see the empty grave you spent ten years crying over while we were starving."
