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“You created a new family.” I gestured at the framed pictures on the wall of his other kids. My half sister and brother. He’d replaced me.
“She said you didn’t want me. You were angry.”
“I was angry. I had every right to be. But I’m not a child anymore. You could have reached out to me anytime. When I was younger, you could have gone to court and fought for me.”
“I didn’t want to take you from your mother. That would have killed her. I just wanted to see you. Be a part of your life.”
“Instead, you left me with a depressed mother, one who could barely care for me after you left.” There was a slight roar in my head that was making it difficult to process his words. I was hanging on to what my mother had told me over the years, but had she filtered what I knew?
“I didn’t know.” His voice sounded defeated.
My shoulders lowered. Coming here was a mistake. “You should have known. I don’t even know why I came.”
“You came for answers.”
“For that, and I don’t know what else. I don’t want to be you. I don’t want to be known as someone who can’t connect with people. I don’t want to hurt like this.” It hurt so much. Harrison’s words, my father’s abandonment, and the fresh pain of my mother’s betrayal.
My father wanted to see me, but she didn’t let him. It seemed far-fetched. Yet it held a tinge of truth to it. My mother had altered my view of the world. Why wouldn’t she have done the same with my memories of my father? Why wouldn’t she let him see me?
He stood and hesitated. “Let me show you something. Then I think you’ll understand.”
I nodded as he moved slowly out of the room. He’d seemingly aged years since he first saw me on the porch.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to feel any sympathy for him.
When he returned, he said, “You need to understand. When you were older, she told me you hated me. That you didn’t want to see me.”
“You never tried.” I burst to my feet, my voice breaking on the last word. I blinked away the tears that stung my eyes.
He clutched a shoebox in his hands. “I did. That’s what I wanted to show you. Please sit.” He gestured at the couch, and I reluctantly complied, every muscle braced to spring into action at any second.
He sat next to me, the box on the cushion between us. “I wrote you letters. Sent you a birthday card every year. I know it wasn’t nearly enough.”
He opened the lid to reveal sealed envelopes, markedreturn to sender. “She sent them back.”
“You could have done so many things. You could have gone to an attorney and fought for me.”
“I thought I was doing what was best at the time. I listened to your mother, and I shouldn’t have. I regret that now. I missed out on you growing up, and I know now that living with your mother wasn’t great for you.”
“Ya think?” I’d reverted to a teenager in my father’s presence.
“I’m so sorry. And it’s probably too soon to even ask, but I’d like to make up for the lost time. I’m just so happy you’re here.”
Was he? I was trying to reconcile the absent man who I thought hadn’t reached out to me with the one who was pleading with me in his living room, his wife hovering in the next room. “I thought you abandoned me. That you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“I should have known she wouldn’t be truthful with you. What you need to understand is that I wanted you, and I never stopped loving you.”
I lost the battle with my tears. “I thought you replaced me with a new family.”
“Is that really what you believed, or what your mother told you?”
I shrugged, feeling hopeless. Mom created my reality back then. “Didn’t you?”
“I wanted to be happy. I wanted you here. But I’m also a recovering alcoholic, and your mother said no judge would let me have you.”
“You believed her.”
“You did too.”
