fighting not to be torn in half.
One night, I sat beside him.
“Tommy, you don’t have to hate your dad to prove that you love me.”
“Right now I do hate him,” he muttered.
“It’s okay to feel that.”
“What if someday I don’t?”
“That’s okay too.”
He looked surprised.
“You won’t be mad?”
“No. What he did to me as a husband is separate from what you feel about him as your father. I will never use your pain as a weapon.”
After a moment, Tommy remembered Joe
