That was his cliché pattern—when he came into town, it was time to have fun. He wanted to leave me with memories. But what he didn’t know was that when he left forever, those memories, no matter how golden, turned to ash. Dad had weaponized fun against me for the first ten years of my life. I always let him back in, always lowered my walls, got swept up in his energy, in the whirlwind he’d create when he deemed me important enough to return to for a weekend. He thought if he distracted me, plied me with sugar, and gave me anything I could ever want for those few days, all sins would be
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