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Now, I’m forced to chase them away myself. I’ve grown stronger. Indeed, I was stable.
Until Ashley.
Now, the chaos of unchecked emotion lives within me daily, and each day, those feelings are harder and harder to control.
“I’ll grant your request,” Dad finally says. “But only for now. Donny will eventually come to me—or to you—and demand the truth. Frankly, I’m surprised it took you both this long.”
“I’m not,” I say.
“Oh?”
“Donny deals with things in a different way than I do. He keeps busy with work, friends, and women. He doesn’t give himself time to dwell on anything unpleasant.”
“And you?”
“I buried it. Buried it along with my emotions, but…”
“But what?”
I exhale, trying to slow the beat of my tumbling heart. “That’s no longer possible.”
Dad smiles. “From where I’m standing, that’s a good thing. Emotion isn’t something to be feared, son.”
“Isn’t it?”
“The bad may be bad,” he says, “but the good… The good is unlike anything you can imagine.”
“But you can’t have one without the other.”
“No, you can’t,” he agrees. “The universe has a duality to it. You can’t escape it.”
“How well I know.”
Dad cocks his head, lifts one eyebrow slightly. He wants to ask me how I know this. I can almost see the words coming together inside his head. But he won’t. He knows better. Dad will never push me. If I want to tell him anything further, it will be on my own terms.
But then he’ll know…
He’ll know the darkness inside me, the demons that have haunted me and that are now close to my surface.
But maybe…just maybe…he’s the one person who will understand.
“I’m in love.”
The words rush out, devoid of emotion.
He smiles. “That’s wonderful.”
“But it’s not.” I grab a fistful of my hair. “Don’t you see? I never let myself feel those things before. I could get close to you, to Donny, the girls. Even Mom to a certain extent. Aunt Mel. But none of those relationships required the all-consuming passion I’m feeling now. That visceral emotion that I kept buried deep. And now that it’s out…”
“You’re afraid of the other side of the coin.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid,” I say. “That’s what terrifies me.”
“Let’s concentrate on the bright side first,” Dad says. “Ashley is the object of your love, I take it?”
I nod. “Ridiculous, I know. I’ve barely known her for a couple of weeks.”
“Does she know how you feel?”
“No. I’ve been… I haven’t been the nicest to her.”
He laughs. My father fucking laughs! But it’s a different kind of laugh. He’s not making fun of me. He’s… Is he understanding me?
“What the hell is funny about this?” I finally say.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just see so much of myself in you.” He shakes his head. “We may not share blood, but you’re the most like me of all four of my children. Somehow, I’ve always known this. Now do you see why I had to adopt you and your brother? I had to give you what no one else could.”
The love a son can feel only for a father overwhelms me in that moment. I’ll never be able to repay this man. I can’t even try. The beauty is he doesn’t expect it. Doesn’t want it. He only wants my happiness. Mine and my brother’s and sisters’.
Questions for my father are jumbled in my mind. How did you get through this? How did you make a relationship work? How? How? How?
But I don’t ask them. I’m not sure his answer would help anyway. He and I are two different people.
“Something you need to realize,” he continues, “is that your mother made the same commitment to you that I did.”
“I know that.”
“But you’ve never felt close to her.”
I sigh. “It’s not the way I want it. We’re just…different, I guess. Aunt Mel says it’s okay. You’ve told me it’s okay.”
“It is. Even your mother has accepted it now.”
“I’m sorry I was hard on her. You’re right. I owe her as much as I owe you.”
“You owe neither of us anything. I just wanted to make sure you understood that it wasn’t just me. If your mother hadn’t been all in with the idea of adopting you and Donny, I wouldn’t have pushed it.”
My eyes widen.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he goes on. “I wanted you two more than anything. But marriage is a two-way street. I couldn’t have given you what you needed without Jade’s full support.”
“I never doubted her love for me.”
“No, I don’t think you have. She has doubted your love for her, though. She doesn’t anymore. Jade was young, only twenty-five, when we took you boys in. She was still a child herself in some ways. Sure, she was ready to have an infant, but maybe not quite ready to have a troubled ten-year-old.”
I sigh. “I know, Dad. I’ve been over and over this in my own mind. Believe me.”
