Betting on You

43

f o r t y t h r e e

"Madeline?"

Three soft knocks followed the sound of my name and I looked up from my laptop at my desk, spinning around in my chair to my already open room door.

It was my dad. "Hey, dad." I gave him a small smile.

Though he returned the gesture, he was rubbing his right palm over the back of his left hand, almost as if he were nervous. Maybe he was. No one seemed to know how to act.

"Hey, sweetheart," he shuffled through the threshold, taking a glance around my room before looking back at me. "What are you up to?"

I turned back towards my desk at that, gesturing to my open laptop. "There's this paper for my English class due at the end of the week. It's kind of like a final project type of thing before Christmas break."

"Oh," he nodded, shifting his weight from either foot as he remained near my bedroom door. "What's the paper about?"

I shrugged. "Nothing too exciting. We have to talk about which form of poetry we believe is the best and why we think that," I explained. "But there are two ways we can present the essay. We can either write it out as a formal paper or briefly explain the superiority of our chosen form and then write a poem in that form to go along with it."

"That's interesting," he hummed in acknowledgment. "Have you decided the option you're going to go with?"

"The poem, I think," I shrugged my shoulders again. "Although Mrs. Geller said that I'm excused from any sort of assignments so that I can get some... rest."

Dad hummed again, still looking like he was a little out of focus of the moment, but I didn't bother pointing it out. His gaze traveling around the room was enough to tell me that he was looking for traces of that night that could still be lingering in the atmosphere. For signs to tell him how close he needed to be watching me.

When I couldn't take the silence anymore, I sighed. "Did you need something?"

He blinked at my voice and his eyes finally found me again. He looked as though he finally remembered his reason for coming in here, and he nodded sheepishly. "Sorry, uh, yes." He cleared his throat. "The Hemmings' have invited us over for dinner tonight."

I felt any ounce of ease within me completely melt away. "W-what?"

Not noticing the stammer in my single response, he continued. "Well, Andy was kind enough to drive us to the hospital that night," he cleared his throat, "And Liz and Luke had come outside and saw. Your mother and I were thinking of ways to smooth things over, as we don't want to tell your story, or for you to tell your story if you don't feel you want to. And they've actually invited us to dinner tonight, so-"

"They're just now inviting us?" I cut him off, taking a breath. "Isn't that... a little bit of short notice?"

Dad rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "Liz had actually called yesterday afternoon to ask and your mother was meant to let you know."

But she was still not really talking to me.

Mother has seemed to have thrown herself into her work, which was completely fine. While it did hurt a bit that she was distancing herself from me in a time where I really needed her, she had witnessed something truly horrific. And everyone deals with trauma differently, I suppose...