I was, it turns out, trained for it for twelve years without knowing.
On the morning my office opened, my father sat in the little waiting room for four hours reading a dog-eared magazine and drinking the terrible coffee from the lobby machine, and when I told him he didn’t have to stay, he said a new office looks lonely if nobody’s waiting in it, and that I ought to have somebody in my corner.
That was the whole of my father, in one sentence.
He never once made a speech about love.
He just showed up, every time, so I would never have to stand in an empty room alone.
That night I asked him the last question.
“Dad — why did you really put me under the table?
The truth.”
He looked at me with those steady eyes.
“Because I know you, Nadine.
If I’d only told you what he was, that good heart of yours would’ve gone hunting for a reason to forgive him.
But hearing him say it himself — no one could ever fool you again.” And I understood, finally, that he hadn’t hidden me under that table to keep me safe from Damian.
He’d hidden me there to give me back my own eyes.
The table is still in his kitchen.