Perfect Little Lies

1. Moving Day

This can't be the right address.

The taxi rolled to a stop outside of a house. Actually, I wasn't sure I could call it a house. Just one storey, the building was outdated and dirty. The paint was chipped and cracking, now a dull grey colour after years of withstanding the main road right beside it. Weeds and overgrown grass covered the front lawn, which was yellow, clearly in need of watering. One of the front windows was cracked, perhaps from a football or a tree branch in the wind. Rather than repairing it, the occupant had simply used brown box tape.

I must have given him the wrong address.

I was just about to query the address with the taxi driver when the side door to the house opened, and my dad stepped outside onto the driveway. The driveway with no car. I had about five seconds before he would reach the taxi. According to my calculations, that was enough time to request a new address and be back on the road before he could open the door to greet me.

Something stopped me from doing this. Probably money. Part of the deal between my parents was that my dad sorted the money while I was here. My dad was supposed to pay for the taxi, and I only had around fifty cents and half a bottle of soda. That would hardly cover the half an hour journey from the airport.

"Hey, sweetheart," my dad greeted me tentatively as he opened the door, as though he was reasoning with an agitated animal rather than his daughter.

I hadn't seen my dad in three years since he moved states after the divorce. I was a little smug to see that California mustn't have been treating him too well. He had aged more than three years in the time we'd been apart. Now, there were a number of new lines on his face that weren't there before. The sporadic grey hairs had become more plentiful and obvious, so much that now one might say he was 'grey' rather than 'brunette' like me.

Although the past couple of months had been stressful for the whole family, dad hardly had this excuse for his ageing. Even when my older brother, Jasper, had really needed his support recently, dad had stayed here. Not even visited once. Maybe if he was living a life of luxury in sunny San Diego with his new family I would understand, but he was in what seemed to be a miserable town living in what could only be described as a romanticised shack. If this is what had been keeping him from us, I was a little offended.

I didn't return the smile he gave me. "Hi, dad."

After so long, that word felt foreign in my mouth. Long ago, my mom had stopped calling him our dad and started referring to him as 'your father', surely the result of her bitterness. It was always, 'Your father is irresponsible with money' or 'Your father called, and he can't make it here for your birthday.' She grew agitated whenever Jasper or I mentioned him, so after a while we had stopped talking about him altogether.

The only thing we had of him at home was the weekly phone call. A dreaded time of the week, on a Sunday evening we would all be in the house and he would call. It was the same time every week. 7 o'clock sharp. This was never discussed or arranged, but we all came to accept that this was the only contact any of us wanted, then it became routine.

First Jasper would answer, and dad would ask him questions about community college and his job. Then it was my turn, and he would ask me about school and my friends. Lastly, he would speak with my mother. About money or us, usually. This was when Jasper and I never failed to make ourselves scarce, as this almost always ended in tension or an argument. My mother would get angry at dad for not contributing enough money, or for not being interested enough in our lives. It was always the same.

I always felt bad for my mom at times like this. I always blamed him. He chose to leave. He didn't come to see us. He didn't help pay for our clothes or our food. I never thought there would be any other reason. He was the bad guy.