Her Name Was Annie

and Dad together last night.” Her tone instantly became more serious. “I mean, it’s not often that I can get you guys together in the same room for more than five minutes.”
I shrugged. “Well, it’s been a long time since our divorce, and we’re both kind of accepting that we have our own lives now.” I forced a smile that I was hoping would be reassuring to her even if it wasn’t to myself.
“He’s not a bad person, Mom.”
My eyes widened. Was that how she thought I viewed her father? Did my behavior all these years lead her to believe such a thing? I had always made a point of never allowing Kara to know how I was feeling about Jack. Not even when I was in total shock after learning about his affair did I ever bad-mouth him in front of her. I was always able to put on a happy face, allowing her to think her dad was the greatest guy ever. I’d reserve my little breakdowns for when I was all alone.
I was so angry at Jack for being unfaithful, but the truth was, I was angry with him a long time before that. His little slipup was just the icing on the cake. There were a lot of other things in our marriage that contributed to its demise, things I would never allow Kara to know about, not even now as an adult, because I didn’t want her to have a slanted view on either of us. She was our daughter, and she loved us both equally, and that was the way it should be. “I never said he was a bad person, Kara. Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. It’s just sometimes, you can come off as a little cold toward him when he’s trying to make an effort.”
She was right, and I couldn’t deny that. “Sometimes when people are together for so long and then break up, it’s hard to pretend like you never once had feelings for them. So it’s easier to try and turn them off completely. It’s different when you’re younger and not married because then you never have to see that person again, so you’re not constantly reminded of the memories of them. But when you have a child together, and you’re still seeing them all the time, it’s a little harder to suppress. So I guess maybe I was a little cold toward him because I’d always think of how our life could’ve been if we were still together.”
“Then why didn’t you ever give him a second chance?” I was unsure how to answer that, especially to her. “I know he didn’t want a divorce, Mom. I remember a week before my thirteenth birthday. Dad came back to drop off my backpack that I had left at his house after spending the weekend there. You guys both thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I was standing at the top of the steps, and Dad was begging you to give him another chance. His voice cracked so many times, like he wanted to cry. My big, strong father, who I believed would protect me from anyone, sounded so sad and weak. I cried myself to sleep that night, and every time I thought about it for months after, I’d break down in tears. I was angry at you for a long time after that.”
I remembered a phase in Kara’s life around that time when she was just plain old nasty, but I had chalked it up to hormones and a rite of passage every mother faces with a teenage girl. I sighed heavily, placed my hands on each side of her face and stared into her tear-filled eyes. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. I never ever wanted to involve you in any of the problems Dad and I were facing in our marriage. You were a child, and I wanted to keep everything as normal as possible for you so you could have a happy childhood. That’s all we both wanted for you.”
“And you did, Mom. I just never understood why you couldn’t forgive him.” Kara’s phone began to ring from the other side of the kitchen, but she ignored it, waiting for my reply.
I blinked hard, trying to come up with the right words as to how I was feeling at that time. Words that wouldn’t implicate Jack as the bad guy or myself either. “At the time, I just couldn’t. There were a lot of things that factored into that decision. Things I’d rather have kept only between your father and me.”
She nodded and forced a smile. As much as I didn’t like it, she was all grown up and was able to see things from an adult perspective. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tightly. My little baby was now a woman. Soon she’d be facing all the triumphs and tribulations that came with that title. Like my mother who was always there for me, I was planning to always be there for Kara whenever she needed me.
“Who the heck keeps trying to call me?” Kara asked, dabbing her tear-filled eyes with a napkin. She got up and grabbed her ringing phone, flashing the screen in front of me that displayed Dad. “Does he have this place bugged? Maybe he knows we were talking about him.” I was happy to see a genuine smile flash across her face.
“Hey, Dad,” she answered. “Yeah, she’s right here.”
I swallowed down the bite of French toast I had taken before she handed off the phone to me. “Hi, Jack,” I greeted.
“Steph, how fast can you meet me at the police station by the beach house?”
“What?”
“They found some things involving the man in the ocean you need to see. Can you meet me there in an hour?”
I still needed to shower and that particular police station was about a forty-five-minute drive away. “Can you give me two?”
“Yeah. That’s fine.” There was an urgency to Jack’s