Lib Novel Page 7
So, it’s time to try a different approach.
Call me a coward but it took me a few weeks to call my dad. Even now as my finger is hovering over his name a part of me is terrified of letting it slip and hit dial.
It’s not that I think he would yell at me. Not at all. It’s that I don’t want to be a disappointment to him after all he’s done for me. But every day that has gone by without me talking to him, has been killing me.
I take a deep breath and press on his name.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Zoe girl!” He greets me with excitement like he always had. “You need to call your old man way more often than this! I haven’t heard from you in a few weeks, and I was about to send out a search owl.”
I can’t help the chuckle that escapes me. “Dad, since when are there search owls?”
“Since my daughter forgot me and I had to train one.”
“Mhh.” I roll my lips to stop the laugh. “And how is that going for ya?”
“Oh, it’s going great. Beth knows your scent and I had her find that shirt you left the last time you were home and she brought it to me. Well, she pointed her beak that way, so you better watch out.”
Beth is my dad’s twenty-year-old owl who has no interest in flying, let alone chasing his missing daughter across the country, but that is why I love him. Kevin Holsted is ridiculous and hilarious and so loving, this world doesn’t deserve him.
And neither did my mother.
Well, that woman didn’t deserve anyone, if we are honest here, so it’s no wonder both my biological sperm donor left her, and my stepdad—who I consider my father—did too.
No, Kevin is not the man who I share a DNA with, but he is the one who’s always been more of a parent to me than anyone else, and I think him seeing how my mother treated me was what made him snap, pack his and my clothes, and leave her when I was sixteen.
I still remember that day and I can still feel the sting of my cheek where she slapped me.
Life with Kelly Jones-Holstead was hard but not in the physically abusive way. No, up until that day, she never touched me like that. It was always her words that did the trick.
My mother is a demanding, cold, overachieving bitch and she never did anything to hide that fact. And everyone in her life was supposed to live up to her standards; if we didn’t, she made sure we knew how displeased she was with us.
My biological father left when I was a newborn and apparently, it was my fault because based on her words, I cried too much as a baby and he couldn’t listen to it anymore…
Like I said, she wanted everyone to live in her form of perfection and somehow, she was lucky to find Kevin when I was around five years old, and that man took all her shit until that one day.
He helped me with homework so she wouldn’t yell at me if I got a bad grade. He covered for me when I wanted to go hang out with friends instead of studying like she preferred I do twenty-four-seven.
Even when I was six years old.
He was the man who taught me how to ride a bike, swim, cook and drive a car. He was the one who signed me up for dance and showed up for the competitions because mom always thought it was a waste of time and I should just do more Spelling Bees.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed school, and I was good at it, but not to the manic point she wanted me to.
In all honesty, I think Dad stayed with her for as long as he did because of me. Because he knew she would ride me to death if he wasn’t there, but eventually, even his angelic patience ran out and thank God for it. I was legally his daughter by that time, so we finally left and never looked back.
Sucks that same can’t be said about all the trauma she left me to deal with.
“I think you should give her a little break in training and all since here I am, calling you.”
“Fine, fine, we will stop for now. But stay vigilant. Beth will come for ya.” This time I do finally let out a loud laugh and he joins in on the other end.
“Oh God, thank you for this, Dad. I really needed a good laugh right about now,” I admit to him, wiping the tears off my eyes.
And just like that all the humor is gone as if he can sense why I am calling. “Zoe? What’s going on, honey?”
Shit, I had this whole plan of what to say to him—yes, I wrote out another list or ten in the last two weeks—but now my smile is replaced with those tears I promised not to have anymore, and my words get lost.