Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 84000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
He shakes his head, sighing, like I’m exasperating. Me. When all I’ve done is worship the man in front of me. And all along, patterns have been set in my head, pushing me toward men just like him—men who didn’t live in the same city as me. Men who weren’t as into me as I was into them. Men who wanted the best of both worlds—being single and being in a relationship.
“It wasn’t planned, Sophia. Rita was never supposed to get pregnant.” He pushes a hand through his thinning hair as my blood turns ever icier at the mention of her name.
I know it wasn’t just her—my dad was the cheater. He had the family and children. But did she know he was married when they started their affair? Did she not care?
“That’s what happens when you fuck women who aren’t your wife.”
“Oh god, Sophia. I hope one day someone can sit in judgement of the life you’ve lived. This wasn’t some plan to annoy you. Life happens.”
“Annoy me? Is that what you think I am? Annoyed?”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“It’s not the adjective I would have started with. I probably would have started with heartbroken. Then I might have moved on to devastated. Cheated that my father wasn’t actually the wonderful, loving father I thought he was—the hardworking man who sacrificed time with the family he loved in order to provide us with a better life. That was the way you and Mom always framed it. You traveled because you loved us so much. But the opposite was actually true, wasn’t it? You traveled so much, because you didn’t love us enough to stay faithful to your wife and family.”
The betrayal hits me again, like a knife to the chest. It’s so hard and sharp that my breath catches, and I cough into the frigid air.
“It’s worse that you don’t see it,” I say in a whisper. “That you’re trying to justify what you did.” I sigh as I talk into the silence. “But then, why wouldn’t you? If you had to confront the man you truly are, you’d be as horrified as I am.”
I’ve never spoken so directly to my father. It never occurred to me that I ever would. This isn’t the man I kept on a pedestal my whole life. This man is weak. Pathetic. Someone who tricked me into loving him.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” he says. “I just want you to see my side.”
“What side is that, Dad?”
Silence tightens between us and I’ve never felt so… untethered as I do right now. He was always my port in the storm. Even though I was closer to Mom in lots of ways, Dad was the one who’d come back and blanket us in a feeling that everything was always going to be okay, so long as he was there.
He was never the man I thought he was.
“I was young,” he says.
I can’t decide if he’s trying a different tack, now that he knows I’m not going to be brought down by the “you were fine” argument, or the “you don’t know what you’re talking about” strategy.
“I found out about this less than a month ago. You haven’t been young for a while.”
I think back to Worth at fourteen, making dinner for his sisters, doing the laundry, signing permission slips. Worth was more of a man at fourteen than my dad is at sixty.
“The die has been cast for a long time,” he says. “I was doing the best I could with the cards I was dealt.”
“Was dealt?” I say, frustrated that he’s not taking any responsibility whatsoever. “I think you dealt those cards to yourself.”
“You’re trying to trip me up with semantics.”
It’s my turn to be exasperated. “It’s my fault, all this, is it?”
“I’m saying I was young when things happened and Rita got pregnant. I’ve been dealing with the consequences the best way I can. None of you have ever wanted for anything.”
“Don’t say that,” I say through gritted teeth. “You have no idea how much I’ve lost. Noah and Oliver too. Finding out this kind of thing about our father? Do you have any idea how this rocks all our foundations? And your other kids—our half-siblings. You’ve taken something from all of us.”
He puts his gloved hands up in surrender. “Look, I’m not saying I got everything right. I didn’t. But don’t make me out to be a monster. I didn’t do a bad job, considering the circumstances.”
I feel like I’m talking to the sidewalk. He doesn’t seem to be seeing this from our perspective at all. He just has his guard up, trying to defend himself—like anything he’s done is defensible.
“I think Mom did the best she could, considering the circumstances,” I say, but not to him. I’m rehashing things in my mind.