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I shrugged. “Okay, no flying off the handle, no cursing, and no loud voice, but I’m giving him no wiggle room, and I don’t want anyone butting in on my dialogue. He answers for himself, so don’t you dare go helping him out if you start feeling sorry for him, Marnie,” I warned.
Pushing open the door, Marnie led the way to where our dad was reading the local newspaper on a chair in the kitchen.
“Hey, Tricia, how’s my baby girl?” my dad asked, immediately folding up the paper and setting it down on the table.
“I need to talk to you,” I snapped. Immediately realizing something was wrong, he sat up straight at my lack of usual affection and gave me his full attention.
“Sure, what’s wrong?” he asked, sounding anxious as his eyes ticked over me because of my stilted conversation and clipped tone.
Reaching into my purse, I pulled out a print of the image Erin had shown me and placed it in front of him. Dad leaned forward and scrutinized the picture. Glancing up at me he looked confused, his brow furrowed in a deep crease.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, his voice carrying the same puzzled look as his face implied.
“Where indeed? Did that other couple in the picture give it to me, or your granddaughter, perhaps?” I suggested, trying to keep a lid on my brewing temper when I was faced by his expressionless blinking denial. When he continued to say nothing and looked dumbfounded, I pushed him again. “Nothing to say? That’s not like you, Dad, but you know, I never realized you had such a game face. All these years and I hadn’t the slightest inkling you knew.”
My chest heaved from the adrenaline coursing through my body, making my extremities shake and my voice tremble with emotion.
My dad sat back in his chair, his spine straight, the frown between his eyes deepening. “What the hell are you talking about, Tricia? Granddaughter? Are you implying the woman in the picture is a sibling of yours? This is your mother’s cousin, her husband, and their daughter with us. Your mom insisted we visit them before you left college and started work. I think it was her way of showing you to work first and wait to have kids of your own. It backfired, because that little angel was so well behaved, she came out of there regretting that call. She even said she couldn’t wait for Marnie to start a family. If you remember, Marnie was getting married that year.”
Sibling? Was this the cover story my mom and dad had made up if ever they were called out on this?
“You expect me to believe Mom took you all the way to Ohio to meet a cousin of hers you’d never met before?”
“That wasn’t the only reason we went. You remember my farmhand, Jim Hepskin? He was retiring and we were invited to his retirement party. Jim was a great support to me. It broke my heart when we left Ohio and he had to find work somewhere else. Anyway, he couldn’t get on in his new job and retired. I felt the least we could do was to show our faces, given all the years he’d been loyal to me.”
I ran my hand through my hair, because my body buzzed in frustration when I thought back again to how I’d been unwittingly paraded in front of my birthchild because they’d gone out of their way to show their consideration for an old farmhand.
“What was the order of things? Did you arrange to go see the Foleys before you decided to attend Jim’s party or what?”
“No … no, I don’t know what you mean. Jim sent us an invite and your mom chewed it over for a couple of days. Then she told me a cousin of hers she had never met had recently moved to Ohio. She said it was ironic since we’d left, and it would be the courteous thing to visit while we were there.”
“Whoa. So, there was every courtesy shown for a man who worked your land, but none for your daughter?”
My dad rose to his feet. He’d clearly grown frustrated and angry by my line of questioning.
“I’ll ask you again. What the hell is going on here, Tricia? I have no idea why you’re getting your panties in a twist about going to see a relative who we’ve met once, and who we’ve never seen again.”
“Are you really going to stand there and deny knowing that the child in that picture was my daughter?”
From the ashen look on my father’s face it was immediately clear he was stunned by my outburst. Reaching out for the chair, he sat dazed, staring up at me for a good long minute before he found his tongue.
“Your daughter? I … don’t … I don’t understand.” The look of disbelief on his face was priceless and I knew instantly that he’d either had no idea about her or he didn’t only have a great game face, he was an exceptional actor. The shock when I realized he really hadn’t known struck me like a punch in my heart. Guilt overwhelmed me and I stared blindly, focusing on nothing as my throat closed in another swell of emotion.
“Lester, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding, but there is something you need to know,” I heard James say. It had sounded ridiculous since I’d already blurted the whole thing out.
For the following ten minutes, I listened while James explained the whole situation to my elderly father, as Marnie held his hand. Tears streamed down his face and mine as he stared at me, heartbroken. I felt as if my heart was being slowly but systematically peeled layer by layer, ripped apart by the words I heard James utter that added to my father’s despair.
“How did I not know? How could I not know this? How could she have excluded me from such a monumental decision. If you had wanted to keep your baby, I’d have supported you to do that, Tricia. And that’s not just me saying those words in the aftermath of all of this.” I believed him.
“Can I ask … who is the father?”
“That doesn’t matter now, Dad, besides he’s dead.”
“Donovan Clark? It was him?” My dad was far more astute.
How could he know that?
“How do you know?”
