Chapter X, Part One:

               My father was a rock. An unshaking being, strong and brave. In the doe eyes of a small child, he could do no wrong. Day by day, he would lay with me, singing lullabies in broken Italian, letting me stay up until morning, much to my mother’s discontent. To love my father was to love someone who wasn’t as solid as one would think. To love was father was living on a fault line.

               I was about nine years old when that fault line began to tremble. Daddy needs a girlfriend, lets go meet all the lovely women! But there were so many of them. Coming home from school was unpredictable. I began to recognize the face of one woman. A woman who could smile all she wanted, but would exude nothing but pure malice, even through my childish veil. She would take him away during our dinners out, leaving me at the table alone, to the poor waitress. At that age, I didn’t understand drugs or sex. My father was still an angel, albeit his mistakes.

               More people began to visit us, some men too now. There was always a strange, stinky smell in the house, which I hated. It was absorbed into the couch and all surfaces. It made me sick. Maybe one of Daddy’s friends smelled bad.

               Daddy began to lose money. He said he was letting his friends borrow it because they needed it more than us, that it was kind. I was never fond of any of his companions, so I thought maybe he did this to get rid of them, so I was content. But they kept coming. One day, one of the men who frequented our home didn’t show up anymore. He went by “Teddy.” He was the only one I liked. I would ask my father where the man went, and he told me he had gone to a better place. I was old enough by now to know what that meant.

               To my father, I was still a little toddler, one who didn’t understand material things and politics. But without knowing, he had forced me to grow up very quickly.

               Mommy told me I wouldn’t be going to Daddy’s anymore. I told her it was okay. I thought it was okay. Whenever I saw Daddy again when we went out for sushi, he always talked slow, and smelled like his friends. The next few years of my life were a blur.

               In sixth grade, during the month of my birthday, I laid with my mother. I never enjoyed sleeping alone. She got a call early in the morning, and although random, I knew what it was.

               I never saw my father again after that. He came home in a small wooden box, that was placed on a shelf and often forgotten about.

Daddy fell in the fault line.

Thank you so much for reading! Anon hasn't read this one, lets hope its written okay ;_;