Free Only One (Reed Brothers) by Tammy Falkner

Just in time for dinner.”
    “How are you feeling?” I ask.
    “Much better. I’m sorry I scared you last night.”
    I nod and steal a piece of the zucchini Dad’s chopping. He swats my hand with a roll of aluminum foil.
    “You look much better than you did last night,” I say to her.
    “They gave me some blood. Plasma. Something. It feels better just having stopped the chemo, honestly.”
    Dad passes her the knife. “Feel good enough to chop?” he asks.
    “John,” she warns. “Don’t.”
    I look from him to her. “Don’t what?”
    She shakes her head and starts to chop.
    “Let’s take a walk,” Dad says. He jerks his head toward the sliding glass door that leads to the beach.
    Mom bites her lips together like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t. She just chops.
    Dad and I step out onto the sand and he’s quiet as we walk down to the water. “What did you want to talk about?” I ask as we turn toward the lighthouse.
    He doesn’t say anything. He just looks toward the horizon and gnaws the inside of his cheek. I wait him out. Finally he looks at me.
    “It takes two people to make a marriage,” he says.
    I wait, because I don’t think he’s done.
    “And two people to break a marriage,” he goes on to say.
    “O-kay,” I say slowly, dragging out the word as a prompt.
    “Your mom and I had settled into a rhythm. One I’d got used to. So had she. But she was struggling more than I realized.”
    We walk in silence.
    “I should have known,” he says. “I should have paid more attention, but I was busy with work, and we were both busy with you.”
    Walk. Silence.
    “Your mom was really depressed, and I didn’t realize it. She came to me and told me how unhappy she was, and I blew it off because we had the perfect life. We had a wonderful daughter and great jobs and a big old house. We had the American dream. But her dream was a nightmare and I didn’t realize it.”
    More walk. More silence.
    “I thought she would come around. But she didn’t. Then one day, she left. I know now that it was her way of isolating herself, fueled by her depression. But at the time, I blamed it on a man that didn’t even exist. Your mom never cheated. She did leave. But she did it because she felt alone even in a house full of people. Even in a crowded room, she felt like no one was there with her.”
    “There was no man?”
    He shakes his head. “I swore there had to be, because what other reason would she have to leave, you know?” He throws up his hands. “I believed with all my heart that there was someone else.”
    “She still left, Dad.”
    “She left because she had to, not because she wanted to, Carrie. That’s what you need to know.”
    “She never even came to see me, Dad,” I protest. “Not once.”
    He stops walking and turns me to face him, holding my shoulders. He looks into my eyes. “I wouldn’t let her. She tried. But I was bitter and jealous and angry and I wouldn’t let her back in our lives. Not even yours.”
    I gasp. There’s no way he did that. “She tried? ”
    “Yes, she tried. She tried really hard. She started seeing a doctor for her headaches. You remember how bad they used to be?”
    I nod.
    “They put her on a low-dose antidepressant for her pain, and she immediately started feeling better, like she could cope. So she started in therapy, and got the right dosage of antidepressants, and started to exercise, and she started to live again.”
    “But she still didn’t come back.”
    “She was about to. Then she got sick the first time. She decided that she hadn’t seen you in a while and she didn’t want you to see her sick, when it had been so long. So she went through treatment and the mastectomy all alone.” He bites his jaw together and tears fill his eyes. “I’ll never forgive myself for not being there for her through that.”
    “But even then…”
    He holds up a hand. “The cancer never went away. She kept getting treatment, even after her