AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What?” If I was shocked to learn that my mother had a sister, I was far more surprised to hear that my father had loved her.
He smiled, obviously remembering this strange aunt I’d never heard of before now, but he shook his head sadly. “We were together in high school, boyfriend and girlfriend. God, I loved her…”
“And…?” I prodded him to move on. I needed answers.
“She was in a car accident our junior year. She didn’t survive.”
A hand shot to my mouth. “Oh God. Dad…”
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “And my senior year, your mother and I spent a lot of time together. Consoling one another. Missing her felt less painful together, I guess. And one thing kind of led to another, eventually that morphed into something else.”
I shook my head slowly back and forth. It was amazing that I’d never heard this until now. “Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?”
He gave me a serious look then, and I sensed something shift in the air. “Things changed as your mom and I were together. I stayed in town for college, she finished high school, and it just seemed like we were supposed to stay together. To get married. So we did. Your mother told me she’d always loved me, even when we were little.”
“But you loved her sister.”
“I did. And you mother never forgave me for it. I guess she thought she could overlook it at first. She’d loved me all those years, she’d said, been jealous of her sister, of the fact I loved her instead. But once Allene was gone, she thought it meant we were supposed to be together. I think it was a mistake we made out of circumstance. And things just happened fast. When I got the job up in Kings Grove and we moved, she got pregnant with you. And after you were born, things got worse.”
“What do you mean?” I didn’t like to think that my arrival had made anything worse. I had been an infant—innocent, vulnerable.
“Your mother used you as a weapon. She’d begun to mistrust me, letting her jealousy for what I’d had with Allene make her believe things that weren’t true. She accused me of cheating. Often. I was constantly having to try to prove to her that I was faithful, that I was committed to her and to you.”
“Were you? Even though you’d loved her sister?”
He looked at me and then swung his gaze back to the road, quiet. Finally he said, “I might not have loved your mom the same way, but I did love her. And once you were born… We were a family. I wasn’t going to break that if I could help it. But she made it impossible.”
“What do you mean?”
“I couldn’t live with her suspicion and her anger over something I couldn’t change. I begged her to understand that loving Allene didn’t change what we had—didn’t change our love for you, for each other. But she couldn’t get past it, and the longer we were together, the more she talked about Allene and about how I could never love her—or you—the way she needed me to.”
He took a deep breath, then went on. “I told her I thought we should separate.” He let that sift around us for a minute before continuing. “And even though she was miserable with me, I guess she’d convinced herself that we were supposed to be together, that this was just how things were with married people. She thought what we had was normal, and I couldn’t convince her that we both deserved something more. She told me if I left her that I’d never see you again.”
“So that was it?”
“Well, not really.” He looked at me, smiled faintly. “She was furious with me when I insisted that we weren’t right for each other, and she told me she’d never give me a divorce.”
“But she did, eventually.”
He lifted a shoulder, smiled a sad smile with his eyes still on the road. “She didn’t. She told me I’d come around eventually, and that neither of us could remarry. She wouldn’t divorce me, but she left. She disappeared while I was at work—took you with her. She left me a note saying that if I cared enough to find her, it would be a sign that we were meant to be together. I think she believed that if she was gone, I’d realize how much I really loved her. But all I realized was that I couldn’t live without you, Harper.”
“What did you do?”
“I lost my mind. I went everywhere I could think of, tried to understand where she would go, where she would take you. Called everyone we knew. Finally I hired a private investigator.”
“Oh my gosh.” I hadn’t known any of this.
“It took three years,” he said, his voice breaking. “I missed three years of your life then—because your mother thought it would teach me a lesson. And when I finally found you, finally got to see you again, she was with another man. I told her I’d take her back, that I was wrong.” He looked at me then, his eyes wet. “Harper, I would have done anything to get you back. I would have suffered through the marriage, put up with her accusations. I missed you so much, worried so much.”
He was quiet for a long minute, shaking his head slowly.
“She didn’t want me then. But she wanted you—I honestly think she kept you from me partly to continue hurting me. She never went through with the divorce, you know.”
“You’re still married?”
“Technically, yes.”
“Why didn’t you just take me, Dad?” I tried to imagine what my life would have been like, growing up with my dad instead of my mom.
