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The door opened before I could answer that question. It was a woman dressed in navy slacks and a floral blouse.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked.
I couldn’t seem to form any words. With my heart pounding in my ears, I finally said, “I’m here to see my father.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “Bill. I think you should come here.”
“I’ve driven all this way.” She was the woman I’d seen in my father’s social media pictures. “I just wanted to talk to him. I don’t want to hurt you.” I stepped back, questioning everything. “I’m sorry. I should have called first.”
“Sarah, who’s at the door?” My father’s voice preceded him as he appeared behind her. He looked older, with more lines on his face and gray hair on his head. He was the same yet different. He looked happier than he had while living with us. My heart sank.
“It’s your daughter,” Sarah said, backing away from the door to give us space.
Dad’s eyes widened as he took me in. “Everly? What are you doing here?”
“I deserve some answers, don’t you think?” I didn’t want a relationship with him. It was too late for that. I just wanted to know why. I held on to the anger and everything my mother told me over the years. He’d left and never tried to see me.
“Why don’t you come in?” Dad asked tentatively, as if he were afraid I’d disappear at any second.
I stepped inside, my heart pounding.
He led me into a formal living room, and I sat perched on the edge of a couch. He murmured to his wife, probably apologizing for not telling her about me. I couldn’t even bring myself to care. He’d brought this on himself. He should have known this day would come.
“I’ll get some water,” Sarah said, leaving the room.
“How can I help you?” Dad asked stiffly.
I laughed, feeling a little maniacal. “You walk out and start a new family, and you want to know how you can help me?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that.” My voice sounded bitter, just like my mother’s had for so many years.
His head dropped. “You don’t know the whole story.”
I tried to steel myself from the emotion I sensed bubbling just beneath the surface. This wasn’t easy for him either. “Then enlighten me.”
Sarah walked back in and set two glasses of ice water on the coffee table between us. “I’ll let you two talk.”
Neither one of us acknowledged her. I couldn’t take my gaze from my father’s. I knew this would be the only time I talked to him, and I wanted to commit it to memory. Every ridiculous excuse. “You left us.”
“I left your mother,” he immediately corrected me.
“You leftme.” The pain was just as fresh as it had been when I was a little girl. It was like reopening an old wound.
“Your mother was depressed all the time. I couldn’t handle it anymore.”
“She was only depressed because you left her.” But was I wrong about that?
“You were so young. I wanted to take you with me, but your mother wouldn’t allow it.”
That’s not what my mother had said over the years. She’d said he had no interest in me. “You could have visited.”
“She said if I left, I was never to come back. That was it.”
“No.” I was shaking my head and wrapping my arms around my middle, trying to hold myself together.
“I tried to reach out so many times, but she said you were better off without me.”
