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What Came Before, Chapter 2
Hearing about my parents divorce was an excruciatingly boring experience, somewhere between light dental work and a long stint in church on my personal conception of such things. My friends had finally begun drinking that summer, and I had an appropriately wicked sixteen-year-old hangover. My father, having trapped me in a boiling hot parked car in a Safeway lot, was droning on about how complicated his life had become. I was silently praying for a nearby car accident to provide some entertainment.
It didn’t help that I’d known about his affair for months, mind you. I’d accidentally read a love letter e-mailed to him from his mistress in the late winter of that year, and had been quietly avoiding what I knew was the coming disintegration of the family I was only tenuously a part of anyway. The less involved I was, the better, so the theory went.
“So... when we move out of our house in the fall, I’ll be getting a new place,” he finished hesitantly. I must admit, if one thing interested me, it was how timid my father sounded. They say one of the key moments in a man’s life is when he sees his father is weak, vulnerable, and thoroughly human; better this than bonding over testicular cancer or something similarly sappy, I decided.
“Huh,” was my reply. It summed up my opinions on the matter nicely.
The drive home was pleasantly quiet.
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