Hopeless

swear I’ll walk away and you’ll never hear from me again.”
    He continues to shake his head, disbelieving the fact that his daughter is standing right in front of him. I’m sure he’s also trying to process the fact that his whole life is now in jeopardy. His career, his reputation, his freedom. If it were possible, his face grows even paler when he realizes that he can’t deny it any longer. He knows I know.
    “What is it you want?”
    I look toward the house, then back to him again. “Answers,” I say. “And I want anything you have that belonged to my mother.”
    Holder has a death grip on my waist again. I reach down and grip his hand with mine, just needing the reassurance that I’m not alone right now. My confidence is quickly fading with each moment being spent in my father’s presence. Everything about him, from his voice to his facial expressions to his movements, makes my stomach ache.
    My father glances at Holder briefly, then turns to look at me again. “We can talk inside,” he says quietly, his eyes darting around to the houses surrounding us. The fact that he appears nervous now only proves that he’s weighed his options and he doesn’t have very many to choose from. He nudges his head toward the front door and begins making his way up the steps.
    “Leave your gun,” Holder says.
    My father pauses, but doesn’t turn around. He slowly reaches to his side and removes his gun. He places it gently on the steps of the porch, then begins to ascend the stairs.
    “Both of them,” Holder says.
    My father pauses again before reaching the door. He bends down to his ankle and lifts his pant leg, then removes that gun as well. Once both guns are out of his reach, he walks inside, leaving the door open for us. Before I step inside, Holder spins me around to face him.
    “I’m staying right here with the door open. I don’t trust him. Don’t go any further than the living room.”
    I nod and he kisses me quick and hard, then releases me. I step into the living room and my father is sitting on his couch, his hands clasped in front of him. He’s staring down at the floor. I walk to the seat nearest me and sit on the edge of it, refusing to relax into it. Being in this house and in his presence is causing my mind to clutter and my chest to tighten. I take several slow breaths, attempting to calm my fear.
    I use the moment of silence between us to find something in his features that resemble mine. The color of his hair, maybe? He’s much taller than me and his eyes, when he’s able to look at me, are dark green, unlike mine. Other than the caramel color of his hair, I look nothing like him. I smile at the fact that I look nothing like him.
    My father lifts his eyes to mine and he sighs, shifting uncomfortably. “Before you say anything,” he says. “You need to know that I loved you and I’ve regretted what I did every second of my life.”
    I don’t verbally respond to that statement, but I have to physically refrain myself from reacting to his bullshit. He could spend the rest of his life apologizing and it would never be enough to erase even one of the nights my doorknob turned.
    “I want to know why you did it,” I say with a shaky voice. I hate that I sound so pathetically weak right now. I sound like the little girl that used to beg him to stop. I’m not that little girl anymore and I sure as hell don’t want to appear weak in front of him.
    He leans back in his seat and rubs his hands over his eyes. “I don’t know,” he says, exasperated. “After your mother died, I started drinking heavily again. It wasn’t until a year later that I got so drunk one night that I woke up the next morning and knew I had done something terrible. I was hoping it was just a horrible dream, but when I went to wake you up that morning you were...different. You weren’t the same happy little girl you used to be. Overnight, you somehow became someone who was terrified of me. I hated myself. I’m not even sure what I did to you because I was too drunk to remember. But I knew it was something awful and I am so, so sorry. It never happened again and I did everything I could to make it up to you. I bought you presents all the time and gave you whatever you wanted. I didn’t want you to remember that night.”
    I grip my knees in an attempt not to leap across the living room and strangle him. The fact that he’s trying to play it off as happening one time makes me hate him even more than before,