But I Love Him by Amanda Grace

Author:Amanda Grace
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2011-05-01T05:00:00+00:00

February 13

Five months, Fourteen days

Today is the anniversary of my dad’s death.

For the last eight years, I have baked a cake. I’m sure to someone on the outside, it seems stupid. Like I’m baking a cake to celebrate it or something. But it’s not like that.

When I was little, my dad loved cakes. Absolutely loved them. He would eat one for dinner every night if my mom let him.

I was nine the day he died. It had been coming for so long. It was like watching a freight train barrel down at you, getting closer with every second, totally unstoppable. And while my mom broke down that day and sobbed, I went a little numb. I was in denial. And so in my nine-year-old brain, I came up with the idea to just make him a cake. It made no sense then and it still doesn’t now, but I like the idea of making a cake anyway.

So now it’s a tradition. Each year it’s gotten a little better, starting with the crappy concave disaster when I was nine to the multi-layered German chocolate I’m assembling now. I know if my dad were here, he’d cut out the biggest piece imaginable and sit down with a glass of milk and devour the whole thing.

Somehow, for this one moment, it’s like he’s here, and the cake is just waiting for him to walk down the stairs.

I’m not sure if I should be doing this. My mom and I don’t really get along anymore, and she used to eat it with me. We never said much while we ate, but somehow there was a moment when we were both thinking about him, and it was almost as good as talking about him.

But today, it feels … like a cop-out, doing this. Like I’m going to hand her this cake and she’s going to smile and we’re going to have some Leave It to Beaver moment, and I can pretend when I leave for Connor’s house that everything is perfect.

But I know it’s never going to be that, because even if things go great with Connor and she miraculously starts accepting him, I remember the things she’s said. They’re like a wedge between us, and the words can’t be taken back.

But I’m making this cake anyway, because if I don’t, it’s like ignoring my dad. It’s like pretending he never existed. And my mom does that enough for both of us.

My mom gets home from work at six, and she walks past the kitchen and then does a double take when she sees me sitting on a stool, the cake towering in front of me.

“Hi,” I say. “It’s German chocolate this year.”

She just stares at it for a long, silent moment, and I’m not sure what she’s thinking, if she’s happy or touched or just angry that I would even try to do something like this after the fights we’ve been having.

Sometimes I think I might just march right up to her and say I love you, right to her face, just to see if she says it back.

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