Dad?” Her voice wavered, barely audible over the rain outside and choked on emotion.

The man behind the counter looked up, his smile strained as he gave a short nod. She froze, her breath caught in her throat, unable to process the impossible sight before her.

Tears welled in Lila’s eyes, her heart racing with a whirlwind of emotions, confusion, disbelief and even relief. The long separation lay collapsing into a singular moment, and the turbulent chaos of emotion led into an embrace as Lila made her way around the counter. The years of unanswered questions, loneliness and pain forgotten in that pure moment.

Then reality came in with crackling thunder as the anger and indignation built against the flow of emotion. Cold anger built into rage, and indignation into disgust. This was the man that abandoned her, and left her mother to die.

She pulled back, breaking out of the warm embrace. A part of her truly did want to just let go in that situation, but the emotions brought up by the past just couldn’t be stopped. She blanked her expression, though tears still fell from her eyes. She built her control and said a final word;

“No.”

Her Father who had lost the embrace, though showed far less emotion and merely frowned.

“What do you mean, no?”

“No.”

Disappointment spread across the man's face, though not the disappointment in rejection but instead the disappointment one might have in an unruly child. Though Lila tried her best to blank her expression, she couldn’t prevent a frown and squinted eyes coming through. Righteous anger built inside of her into a crescendo before releasing into a tirade;

“You don’t just get to walk back into my life right now after everything. What, did you think I would just let everything go? How you abandoned me and mom? How you left us with nothing, and left me stumbling through school taking multiple jobs?”

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The man attempted to speak though she saw this and cut him off, voice cracking;

“I don’t know what you’re here for, but this is the most stable my life has been in years. You do not just get to come back into my life now after everything and decide you… What?”

She paused, anger flaring but also leaving her at a loss of words;

“Want to come back into my life after all this… No.”

After the last sentence her voice broke entirely, leaving her momentarily unable to speak. She simply pointed to the door, staring at her father… This man's eyes.

The man spoke gravely “I suppose I deserve that”

He paused momentarily, reaching into his jacket and withdrawing what looked like a hockey puck. He placed it onto the counter and looked at it momentarily, before turning to leave.

“If you ever need anything, just press the centre of that disk”

He continued to walk out of the store, each step seeming to echo like an eternity. The bitter liberation joined with the raw pain of severing ties. Lila knew in rejecting him here she felt like she would never see this man again, but what had been said couldn’t be taken back. She also felt pain at how little the man had even fought to stay in her life after that, as if she didn’t matter. A momentary regret fell, and she dropped to her knees losing strength in her legs.

She didn’t know how long she sat there staring at the floor, perhaps minutes or an hour. The rain had stopped, but seeing the state this left her in she decided to close the shop for the day and returned home. Absent-mindedly she picked up the hockey puck he’d left behind, dropping it unceremoniously into the glove box of her car as she drove home.

The drive wasn’t very long and just felt longer with all the topics buzzing through her mind. She hopped out of her car, locking it, and taking the puck out from the glove compartment before heading indoors. She didn’t have much thought about the puck, but shoved it into the closest drawer she saw before going straight to the freezer and grabbing some ice cream.

She sat and stress ate for a while, before getting lost in a film. She did message some friends, but they were at work and did not reply. Lila wrapped up in a blanket infront of the tv, and slept for an early night.