“Unraveling the Threads of Destiny: What Happens When the Past Repeats It’s Darkest Secrets in Hayley Notter’s ‘Again’?”
I imagined bursting into the room and screaming at my mother that maybe Sandra was right. Maybe the key to keeping my father was in Sandra’s plum lipstick and low-cut dress and not in tears or appeals of logic. Maybe if my mom got out of her yellowed bathrobe and put on some heels, maybe if she talked in a low voice and buried how she really felt with an enticing smile, maybe my father would come back to us. Maybe he’d leave Sandra.
I unzipped Robert’s pants, and I took him in my mouth.
The truth was I’d left my mother to cry alone while I covered for my father. I didn’t tell her about his drunken confessions. I buried his trail of clues whenever I could. When he called, I made sure to pick up first, quietly demanding he leave his hotel room and only passing the phone to my mother or brother when I was positive there were no sounds of another woman in the background. When he tearily asked if I loved him, if he was a good father, I assured him he was, and that I did. Because of course I did, even if he wasn’t. I was sixteen and trying to figure out what it meant to be a woman, trying to figure out how to earn a man’s love, unsure if love was even something that could be kept at all.
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