Read Suffer Love for Free Online Page B

little puzzle pieces had snapped together. All the late nights. All the Saturdays spent in his office.
    I plucked one of the papers from the red painted wood. A piece of clear tape came with it and stuck to my finger. I could still smell the strong, pungent scent of permanent marker.
    I read the messy scrawl.
    JASON ST. CLAIR IS FUCKING MY MOTHER
    That’s all it said. Every single piece of paper said the same thing, though some were barely legible. No signature. No
Hi there, just thought you should know
on the back. Nothing but my father’s name and an ugly verb and the whole heavy reality when you put all the words together.
    Mom came home first. I was sitting on the porch steps, my bag in the grass, my hair still wet and laced with chlorine. A few neighbors had passed by, curious about the weird door decorations, but I didn’t acknowledge them. I had thought about taking all the notes down. Going to my dad privately and asking him what was going on. But I didn’t do that. And honestly, I have yet to regret that little act of revenge.
    Mom usually entered the house through the garage, but she saw me and called out with her usual broad, straight-toothed smile, arms full of contracts that needed revising. When she approached the door, her face went so white, it was nearly translucent. After she read every little note, barely blinking, she went inside without a word.
    Dad came home soon after that and stared at the door with shaking hands, shaking mouth, shaking head. Even his tie was shaking. We locked eyes and that’s when I knew for sure it wasn’t a joke or a mistake. His eyes said everything. They always did.
    He went to work on the door. It was clear in under a minute, a pile of accusations on the porch. I followed him inside and everything got really weird. I expected yelling, crying, gnashing of teeth, and the mournful tearing of clothing. My mother was famous for her frankness. Underneath her cool exterior lurked a fireball who never had any problem calling you on your crap. She didn’t do soft or subtle.
    I hovered in the doorway of the kitchen while my parents faced each other. I braced myself for the rumblings, the eruptions, and the groveling. Or the leaving.
    But she didn’t say a word.
    Not one damn word.
    She just stood in the kitchen and stared at my dad over the island.
    â€œAnnie, let me explain.”
    She put up a hand.
    â€œI’m sorry. I don’t know what to . . . I’m sorry.”
    She closed her eyes.
    â€œI’ll end it. It’s over. Right now, I’ll end it.”
    She left the room. I watched her go, my jaw on the ground.
    â€œHadley,” Dad said. “Honey, I don’t . . . I’m so sorry.” He reached out, trying to soothe me with a hand down my hair the way he always did when I was upset or sick. Part of me wanted him to because I suddenly felt unmoored, like a kite with severed strings, and I needed something—anything—to hold me down.
    But his touch only rolled my simmering anger into a boil. I yanked away from him, disgusted at everything he had done, everything the verb on those notes implied. “Don’t ever touch me again,” I said through my sudden sobs.
    That’s at least one request he’s honored for the past six months.
    He heaved a trembling breath and raked both hands through his hair. A silent minute passed, but my heart’s hammering didn’t soften as he dug his phone out of his pocket. After he scrolled through it, supposedly landing on
her
number, he went out onto the back porch and closed the door behind him.
    We never found out her name. He said she was a graduate student and he had been seeing her for a year.
    An. Entire. Year.
    365 days. 8,760 hours. 525,600 minutes.
    All lies.
    Mom said she didn’t want to know any other details. She asked Dad to delete all emails and texts and the woman’s contact information from his phone and computers. She asked