Chapter Twenty-Two
Delilah
“Hey, Dee,” my father said, using a nickname only he ever used with me.
When I was little, I hated it because it represented a laziness to me, like everything he did. Just as he couldn’t be bothered to keep a job, not to drink, and just generally do life, he also couldn’t manage to say my full name. Not that anything was wrong with that particular nickname. It’s just no one else used it with me.
Right now, though, my stomach felt funny. It had that hollow feeling you get when an elevator moves suddenly, or when you’re riding a roller coaster and descending abruptly. Because he was the only one who ever called me by that nickname, there would only be a limited number of times I would hear myself addressed that way again.
Sadness swamped me, and I actually had
