AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I slipped the card back into its envelope with a frown. If I’d been expecting just a generichappy birthday, have a good day, that was certainly not what I found.
It wasn’t just the kind of card a person sent to their boss because they felt obligated. It was the kind of card a person sent to afriend.
I had such a hard time thinking of my dad and Joanne as friends that my brain simply refused to make the connection. No matter how many times I tried to make sense of it, I just… couldn’t.
But there was the evidence, in writing, staring me in the face.
From: Joanne
To: Henry
Merry Christmas! As I look back at the things that have happened in my life over the past year, there’s been one bright spot among so much darkness. Being able to talk to you—knowing you have my back—has really been the thing that has made me pull through.
You’ve been like a father to me, and—
Nope.
Done.
I tossed the card onto the pile without finishing the rest and stood up, suddenly full of the restless energy I’d spent the past hour getting rid of.
I never should have looked in that drawer, never should have started reading those cards. They weren’t addressed tome, after all. I just hadn’t been thinking, and certainly hadn’t expected to findthat.
Like afather?
Seriously?
“At least he was like a father to one of us,” I muttered, closing my eyes for a minute and taking a deep breath to try and get myself together.
It just didn’t make sense. But there had to be some reason Joanne felt that way. The girl wasn’t crazy, or stupid. She was perfectly likable. Lovable, even. So, what in the hell had made Henry treat Joanne so differently than he’d treated me?
How could Dad have acted like a father to a stranger, but not known how to treat his own son?
My head and stomach hurt just thinking about it. For years, I’d given up on ever having a real relationship with my dad, and I’d assumed the feeling was mutual. And for all those years, Henry had been here in Castle Falls, leading some kind of double life, some kind of bizarre parallel reality where he wasnice, andthoughtful, and…fatherly.
What. The. Fuck?
I needed to get out of the apartment, needed some time to think, tobreathe.
Ever since I had returned to Castle Falls—through Joanne’s actions, the things she’d said, those cards—I had been discovering a side of my father that I couldn’t have imagined.
It was sort of nice to know that the old man had been like a father tosomeone—even if it couldn’t have been me—but it only left me with more unanswered questions.
Sure, Joanne was a nice woman, a special girl. I had been able to see that from the moment we’d met. Anyone could see it. But had I really been that bad? Had I been that difficult to love?
I walked out the door and locked it behind me, wanting nothing more than to drive right back to Joanne’s house and ask her for something—anything—that might give some insight, any little clue that might tell me more about why my dad had done the things he’d done.
But what would Joanne think? What would she say? How would I even bring it up?
Sorry about earlier. Oh, and by the way, could you please tell me about my dad? He seems to have loved you more than me.
Yeah, no.
Not only would that be the most awkward conversation I could even imagine, but there was also no way to even bring it up without sounding like an ass.
It wasn’t like Joanne and I were in the best place at the moment, and even though a part of me wanted to go to Joanneanyway, in spite of everything else that had happened between us, just for the remote chance to get one of those bright smiles, some of that sunshine back into my life, I knew deep down that it wouldn’t work out that way.
That was just a fantasy, all the things I had never realized I’d wanted until the moment I’d met Joanne. It wasn’t realistic, though.
