Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry by Susan Vaught Page B

them see.”
    I frowned at him. “I’m not a baby, Dad.” His eyes met mine, and his smile seemed sad.
    â€œMy baby,” he argued. Dad seemed relieved by this. “I still don’t think it’s a great idea to go poking around about the Magnolia Feud or Oxford’s past, but after watching Mama cry—Dani, maybe you’re right and we should try to ease her mind. Maybe your mom is right too. You won’t be finding out anything that didn’t already happen.”
    I laid Dad’s iPad on top of my book, on the bench between us, and I must have bumped the play button because “All My Tears” started back again, with Emmylou Harris singing. I slid the volume down but left it playing. “You and Mom and Grandma taught me a lot. We really have studied the Civil Rights Movement in class, too. I know it was bad, especially in Mississippi. I know it’s happening now, too, with so many people getting shot, and how more people of color go to jail. That’s in the news and books too.”
    Dad kept his hands between his knees, and his jaw looked tight. Finally, he nodded, but he said, “What they write in books can sound clean. Wars should never be sanitized like that.”
    I thought about that for a few song verses, and my brain hooked it up with the hospice pamphlets and other stuff I’d read about Alzheimer’s disease. “So, it’s like what people writeabout dying from what Grandma has? Facts and how-to, but nothing about changing diapers and how stuff stinks—or the drool and how tired everyone gets?”
    â€œExactly.” Dad nodded. “Once the people who yell the loudest and write the most have a chance to clean up history’s rough edges, it can look like revolutions happen without horrible hardships and losses. Then it gets easy to lie to ourselves that the same disasters can’t happen again.”
    At that moment, Dad looked almost as far away as Grandma did. My pulse picked up, and the air seemed too hot to breathe. I eased my hand over to his, worrying he’d jump when I touched him. He did that sometimes, if he was thinking too hard about wars and bombs and people he knew getting killed. When my fingers brushed across his, he didn’t flinch, and all of a sudden, I could breathe again.
    â€œMostly, they leave out how much death hurts,” he said. When he looked at me, his eyes were wet like he might cry. He tried to smile but didn’t make it, then shook his head. “And not just the dying part. Sorry, Dani. It just tears me up to see Mama like she is now.”
    â€œI know.”
    He kissed my forehead, giving me a fresh nose-full of wild onions and garden sweat and spiced oil. For a few seconds, I sat there feeling like I had no ghost stories at all, and like maybe Mom’s proverb was wrong, and everything really was everyone’s circus, and all monkeys belonged to all people.
    â€œYou and Indri don’t give Dr. Harper too much grief, you hear?”Dad interrupted my thoughts. “He’s old to be keeping summer hours on top of working till midnight all the time, and he might wear out pretty easily.”
    â€œWe won’t wear him out.”
    â€œI mean it. Respect his time.”
    â€œI know, Dad.”
    He messed with my hair a little bit, then gave me a push off the bench. “Go on now. Don’t make your mom jumpy this morning.”
    I slid my book from under Dad’s iPad, then picked up the backpack holding Grandma’s papers and the key and walked away from the garden, leaving Dad to his plants. I heard the iPad music switch to “Whatcha Wanna Do” by Mia X, the first song in Grandma’s attitude mix. I had to smile. That was Dad, trying to change his mindset.
    Go, Dad.
    Feeling a little better, I went to Mom’s car and climbed into the passenger seat, leaving the door open for air.
----
    I read my ghost story book for a while, skipping over the