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“I still don’t know how that happened.”
“Nobody does. But he paid for it all, Gracie. Every penny. Your mother didn’t have to work or do a thing—he maintained your household as he would have if he were still a part of it.”
“I didn’t know it went that far.”
“It did. And his wife hated it. If your mum needed anything, he would jump into action. He missed Vincent’s second birthday party because you’d broken your wrist at gymnastics and were in hospital. Never mind that your mum was stuck in traffic and one of the teachers had gone with you in an ambulance—they argued for weeks about it because he’d chosen you.”
I swallowed.
“And when Harriet’s cancer came back, he was the first one to be there. Everywhere. He was like a bad damn smell,” Granny continued, wrinkling up her nose. “I walked into him in my kitchen too many times, which was unfortunate because the man can’t cook to save his life.”
That… was pretty fair.
If you wanted my dad to make you a soft-boiled egg, you had to ask for a hard-boiled egg, and vice-versa. God knows how he mixed the timings up every time.
“You were already growing apart from him at that point. You saw him with his new family and saw what the rest of the world did—he’d gotten rid of the pair of you and settled down with his new, younger wife who’d provided him a son and heir. That his new family was better than his older one.”
“It wasn’t exactly wrong,” I mumbled.
“She wanted to tell you,” Granny said. “Harriet knew she was going to die. She told me the day she found out it was back that she would lose that battle. She fought as hard as she could, but she knew somehow that she was only prolonging her life, and she did it for you. She wanted you and him to mend your relationship before she went, and she thought that telling you she was the one who forced your father into doing what he did would change things.”
“I was old enough to understand. I wasn’t a kid. Why didn’t they tell me?”
“Your father refused. It was temporarily shelved until she went on hospice.” Granny’s eyes watered, and she sniffed, blinking the tears back. “Then it came back. Your father was there all day, every day. I would take you to school and he would pick you up, then take you to see your mum. He told Carmen that you needed him. I don’t know how much you remember of those last few weeks.”
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “It’s a blur. I remember hating him for pretending he cared. I was horrible to him sometimes.”
“You knew she was dying, Gracie. We all knew that meant you’d end up with your father, even though he wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if you’d insisted on living with me if it was what made you happy. You were a teenager. You had a lot going on in your life without the storm of your family changing again. He never judged you for it.”
“No. He was always nice. He never shouted at me, even when I said horrid things. He took it all,” I said quietly. “Oh, Granny. I even blamed him once for her getting cancer.”
“I know. It’s why your mum wanted you to know the truth, but he refused. The week before she died, they had the mother of all arguments about it, and they didn’t speak to one another for five days. I’d walk into her room, and they’d be sitting there, together, not saying a word.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. He was there for twelve hours, only leaving to get you from school to visit her. They’d speak to me, but not to each other. They even spokethroughme sometimes. Both of them were stubborn sods, steadfast in their belief that what they wanted was the right thing for you. In the end, they were both right, of course.”
“How could they both be right?”
“Your father wasn’t against you knowing but didn’t believe it was the right time. You were away at some dance show when your mother took a turn for the worse. We knew she was nearing the end, and he refused to have your last memories of her be tainted with the truth.”
I looked down at the table.
“He drove all night to bring you back to make sure you could say goodbye. We had two days with her before she went, and it was only after he promised to tell you the truth one day.”
“He never did.”
“No. He loved her too much to have her take any blame for their marriage ending. He was happy to be the villain of the story. As he told me once, you didn’t have as many memories with your mum as you should have—there was no need to taint the ones you did have.” She smiled sadly. “I didn’t argue. You can’t with the truth, after all.”
“So why are you telling me now?”
“Because you’re letting their relationship dictate your own life, when you don’t know the half of it. From your side, your father left you both to have a happier family with a son, someone he could pass the title down to. I know you don’t want that life, Gracie, but it’s not as cut and dry as you thought it was. He never would have left her if he could, and I wholeheartedly believe that if Harriet had survived the cancer a second time, he’d have divorced Carmen and remarried your mother.”
“What on Earth makes you think that?”
“He told me.” Her smile was mischievous. “He told Carmen once, too. He only married her because the baby was a boy. Had it been a girl, he never would have left your mother. Even then, he only did it because Harri made him.”
“No wonder Carmen hates me so much. Does Dad even like her?”
