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“Kelsey, Mom will tell you exactly where to go once you get to the hospital. She knows the drill pretty well by now.” I closed the car door for Mom as I gave Kelsey last-minute instructions. She’d offered to drive Mom to her chemo treatment this morning, so I would have some free time to visit Will.
“We will be just fine, sweetie. Don’t worry. Are you sure you want to do this?” Mom looked at me through her rolled-down window. I’d told her last night that I was going to talk to Will today. She was certain he would hate her once he knew. She confided in me that she’d wanted to tell him a long time ago, but she’d lost her nerve. I knew she was worried about the outcome, but she’d also told me it was my choice.
“It’s time to get it all out in the open. See you guys in a bit.” Kelsey smiled supportively at me as they pulled out of the driveway. She was the one who had encouraged me to do it today, and to not let it go on any longer. I told her I couldn’t because I had to take Mom to treatment. She explained she was driving Mom, leaving me with no more excuses.
I hopped into the green Honda I’d recently purchased for myself and drove toward Maxwell’s. I had a queasy feeling, which had been there since last night when I made the decision to talk to him. I knew that telling him was the right thing to do, but I was terrified. I honestly had no idea how he would react to the news.
Would he be angry with me? Would he hate Mom for deceiving him? I didn’t want either of those things to happen, but I knew I couldn’t control his reaction. The only thing I could do was tell him the truth and see what happened. The worst-case scenario was that he wouldn’t want to be part of my life, and I reasoned that I’d gone this long without a father, so I could handle that.
I pulled into the parking lot, grabbed my purse, and went inside. Will stood next to the cash register, chatting animatedly with one of his employees. I was terrified and wanted to jump back in my car and forget the whole thing. Perhaps I should have taken one of the anxiety pills today, but it was too late for that now.
I would face this hurdle just as I’d done everything else—without medication. Kelsey said that I needed to bolster my courage with positive self-talk, so I’d been telling myself how strong and capable I was. Although I doubted anything could make this moment easier, I took a deep breath and approached my father.
“Hello.” I cleared my throat and he looked up and saw me standing there.
“Hope. It’s great to see you. How’s your mom?” I smiled, thinking of how many times we’d exchanged these exact words over my lifetime. The number was too high to count.
“She’s doing as well as can be expected, I guess. The treatments are hard on her. Dr. Riddles says she’s exactly where she should be at this point, but I won’t lie, it’s been rough.”
“I’m sorry you’re both going through this. It’s hard on your mother, but it has to be hard on you, too.”
“Yes, it has been.” I knew I was stalling, and I decided I should just dive right in with the reason I was there. It was best to do it quickly, before I lost my nerve. “I need to talk to you. Is there somewhere private we can do that?”
“Sure, but you’re making me a little nervous.” He chuckled, but there was no denying the worried expression on his face.
“I don’t mean to. But I do need to talk to you. It’s important.”
“Okay, let’s go back to my office. No one will bother us there.” He led me through the store and into his office, shutting the door behind us.
I glanced around the room, curious about the place where my father spent so much of his time. It was neat, but not compulsively so. Papers were stacked on his glass-topped desk, but there seemed to be some organization to the piles. The screen saver on his computer was a photo of him holding a salmon the length of his arm. I’d forgotten that he was a fisherman. That was something he and Sam had in common.
“So, what did you need to talk to me about?” Will motioned to the leather chair in front of his desk, and he sat down in the swiveling one behind it.
I looked across the desk at my father, and for the life of me, I had no idea how to start the conversation I’d come to have. While I considered my words, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the two of us. We sat in our chairs in identical fashion, with right leg crossed over left, and hands folded neatly in our laps. His hands, although much larger, were shaped exactly like my own, with long, slender fingers. There was no mistaking that our unique golden-blond hair color or our chocolate-brown eyes were mirror images of one another. I wondered why it had taken almost thirty years for me to notice these similarities.
“First of all, Mom knows I’m here.” I cleared my throat, which felt like it was coated in cotton balls, and began. “This is not easy to say. In fact, I’ve rehearsed the whole thing in my mind over and over, and I still don’t know the right words. I guess I’ll just say it—I know that you were in love with my mother.”
“Yes, I was. Maggie meant the world to me. The day I lost her was the worst day of my life.” His gaze didn’t waver from my own. He didn’t flinch or deny it. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but blatant honesty wasn’t it.
“I want to understand. If you loved her so much, why didn’t you keep trying to win her back?”
“Loving someone means respecting them, and Maggie made it very clear that her feelings for me had changed. I respected her enough to keep my distance, even though it wasn’t what I wanted.” Will uncrossed his legs and wiped his hands across his pants. I wondered if his palms were sweating as much as mine.
“Can you tell me your side of what happened after the breakup?”
“There’s not much to tell. I had a scholarship, so I went away to college. I would have given it up in a second to stay here with Maggie if she’d given me any indication that’s what she wanted. But she didn’t. She wouldn’t even speak to me. Just a month before we graduated, she broke things off with no explanation. I was a football player, and I had big dreams of being drafted into the NFL. Part of me thought that was the way to win back Maggie’s heart. If I really made something of myself, maybe she’d want me again.”
“Do you honestly believe that?”
“I don’t know what I believe. What I know to be true is that Maggie moved on.” Will shifted in his chair and averted his eyes from mine for the first time since the conversation started. “I didn’t get drafted. It almost happened, but I injured my knee and that was the end of my football dreams. So I decided to come home. I thought that maybe Maggie and I could start over again. I hoped that some time apart had made her realize she loved me as much as I loved her.”
Will stood and began pacing. There were a million questions I wanted to ask, but I just let him talk instead.
“When I came back, the first thing on my mind was contacting Maggie. It had been five years since I’d heard anything about her, and I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t even know for sure if she was still in Woodridge.” He stopped pacing and turned to look at me. “The first day I was back in town, I ran into her at the gas station, of all places. She had changed, that much was obvious. There was nothing at all left of the happy, carefree girl I’d left behind.”
I shifted in my chair, knowing that this would be the hardest part for him to tell and for me to hear. I also knew I was about to change his entire life with the revelation that I was his child.
Will continued. “I almost didn’t recognize her. She’d cut off all her lovely auburn hair and was thinner than I’d ever seen her. Her blue eyes were no longer full of laughter. They looked hollow and cold. The change in my Maggie was so drastic that I didn’t even know what to say to her. It was obvious that she wasn’t happy, which made me even more determined to win her back.”
“What happened next?” I was literally on the edge of my seat waiting to hear the rest of my father’s story. There were so many gaps in my past that I wanted desperately to fill.
“We spoke briefly, but she was certainly not happy to see me. I told myself I would somehow make her fall in love with me again. She didn’t even want to talk to me, though. Maggie opened her car door to get inside and I heard something from the backseat. It was the voice of a child. When I looked inside, I saw you. You were just a little thing, but cute as a button.” He smiled at me and my heart constricted thinking of the disappointment he must have felt, thinking Mom had moved on.
“Go on,” I encouraged.
“When I saw you, I knew right away she was with someone else. It was painfully obvious that the only one still carrying a torch was me. ‘You should move on, Will. As you can see, I have,’ was all that Maggie said to me. She got in her car and left, and I didn’t follow her. There was no reason to. If she’d shown any inclination that she still loved me, I would have pursued her until she came back to me. But she didn’t. She told me to move on. I always wondered about the man who took her away.... So, I started the store. I made a life for myself. It’s been good, even if it is a little lonely. There was never any room in my heart for anyone but Maggie. I knew if I couldn’t be with her, I wouldn’t be with anyone.”
“And you never tried talking to her again?” The sadness in his eyes was palpable. I wished with everything in me that my parents’ story had ended differently.
“Not really. I saw her around town, but we’ve never said more than a few words to each other since that day. There were all sorts of rumors about who your father was, but I never asked her. All I knew was that he wasn’t in the picture, and I couldn’t understand that. The man had you and Maggie, everything I longed for, and he walked away. I often wished I was your father. There was a time when I thought I might be, but that was obviously ridiculous. If that were true, she wouldn’t have had any reason to keep it from me.” Will shrugged his shoulders.
“What if there’s another explanation for everything? Have you ever thought that there might be more to the story?”
“No, I can’t say that I have. Honestly, I’ve done my very best not to think about it at all. I have to say that I’ve been pretty unsuccessful at that, though.” Will smiled sadly and returned to his chair behind the desk.
“But there is more. There’s so much more that you don’t know.” My voice quivered with emotion, and I prayed that I would be able to say what I’d come to.
“What do you mean? What more could there possibly be?”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why Mom made such a dramatic change for seemingly no good reason? Didn’t you question why she broke up with you when you hadn’t done anything wrong?”
“Of course I did! I’ve questioned it every day since, but the answer is that she didn’t love me as much as I loved her.”
“You’re wrong. Mom loved you more than you could ever imagine.”
“She had a funny way of showing it.”
“Mom did what she thought she had to for you, for your future.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“She didn’t want you to be tied down to Woodridge. She wanted you to be able to live your dreams. So she set you free.”
“Maggie was the only dream I ever cared about. I loved football, but I loved her more. If she’d asked me to choose between the two, I would have chosen her without a second thought.”
“Exactly. That’s why she didn’t give you the choice.”
“What do you mean? We could have gone together. Nothing was holding us back.”
“That’s not true. She was pregnant.”
“Pregnant?” Will’s eyes flared with hurt and anger. “You mean she was cheating on me while we were together? She was with your father while she was with me?”
“Yes, she was with my father when she was with you, because you’re my father.” I watched the expression on Will’s face change from disbelief, to shock, to pain.
“I’m your father? That can’t be true. You must be mistaken.”
“No, it’s very much the truth. Mom found out she was pregnant, and she knew you would give up your future for her. She knew you would stay in Woodridge and take care of us. She didn’t want to tie you down, so she didn’t tell you. She didn’t even tell me. I just found out myself a few days ago, when I found the letters you wrote her in high school.” I stood up, not sure what else to do. I’d said it, and there was no taking it back. The truth was out, and now I just waited for the repercussions.
“I’m your father?” Will stood up from his chair and walked slowly around the desk until he was next to me. He looked at me closely, perhaps seeing for the first time how much we resembled one another.
My heart hammered inside my chest. This was the moment of truth; he would either deny it or accept it. I had no control over either outcome. “Yes, you’re my father. Mom told me the truth, and now I’m telling you.”
Will looked at me for another minute, and then suddenly he pulled me to him and wrapped his strong arms around me, crushing me in his embrace. His body shook uncontrollably with sobs, and he kept whispering “my daughter” over and over again. I was crying, too, feeling for the first time what a father’s embrace was like. He finally pulled away and placed his hands on my shoulders, looking me right in the eyes.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I missed your life. If only I’d tried a little harder to get Maggie to talk to me, this might all have come out years ago. Instead, you grew up thinking your father didn’t want you, when nothing was further from the truth.”
“I know. I’ve been angry at my father for years, but knowing it’s you, there’s not anything to be angry about. Of all the men in the entire world, if I could choose a father, I’d choose you.” Tears streamed freely down my face, and I didn’t even try to hold them back.
“I’ve always been proud to know you, but to know that you’re my daughter, well, that’s just more than I could have ever hoped for.”
We wiped our faces and tried to gain some composure. The relief I felt at telling him the truth was overwhelming. I finally felt free, knowing all the secrets were unleashed.
“You’re not angry?” I asked tentatively.
“Angry? Maybe I should be, but I’m so happy right now there’s no room for anything else.”
I hugged him again. Now that I had him, I never wanted to let go. “When I think of all the changes in my life over the last few months, it’s kind of mind-boggling. I went twenty-eight years without having a relationship with either of my parents, and now I have you both.”
“We have a lot of years to make up for. I know we can’t get that time back, but we can start right now and not waste any more.”
“You’re right. It’s time for a new start.” I smiled up at my father.
“I need to see Maggie. I need to talk to her, to let her know I understand and that I’m not angry with her. I need her to know that I still love her.”
“After all these years? I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me so much, but it does. I think it’s beautiful. And I think she still loves you.”
“That would be too much to wish for. Do you really think it’s possible?”
“I do. I think it’s more than possible. But be careful with her right now. She’s so weak from her treatments, and she’s still getting used to the idea of having a relationship with me. What if it’s too much for her?” I was very worried about Mom’s health and state of mind. I felt extremely protective of her, and while I knew my father’s intentions were good, I didn’t want to see her upset and overwhelmed.
“If she loves me even half as much as I love her, hearing it will be the very best medicine she could get. I promise I won’t hurt her. All I’ve ever wanted to do is take care of her.”
“I’ll stay out of it then. This is between the two of you. I should go now. Mom and Kelsey will be home from the hospital soon and I want to be there. I’m sure she’s anxious to know how our talk went.”
“Thank you, Hope. Thank you for trusting me with the truth. I know this wasn’t easy for you. You may not realize it, but you’ve given me everything I ever wanted, and I’m so proud to be your father.” Will hugged me tightly again and said good-bye as I left.
Driving home, I couldn’t believe how light I felt. They said the truth could set you free, and I had to agree. Slowly but surely, I was discovering that emotions weren’t meant to be boxed away. They were meant to be felt, even the painful ones.
I did some laundry and housework while I waited for Mom and Kelsey to return. When I heard the car pull into the driveway, I realized I wasn’t afraid to tell Mom about my talk with Will. I was happy to finally have it all out in the open.
Kelsey and I settled Mom on the couch, and I brought her a glass of iced water. She was always so thirsty after she got home. Kelsey seemed to know that I needed a few minutes alone with Mom, so she said she was going upstairs to pack. Her stay with me was over, and she had to go home later that afternoon. When we were alone, I turned to Mom and grasped her hand.
“How are you doing?” I wanted to be sure she was up for a conversation before I dove in.
“As well as I can be right now, I suppose. I’m tired, but the nausea hasn’t started yet.”
“Mom, you know that I talked to Will today.” Her eyes widened and I knew she was afraid of what I was about to say. “I told him everything.”
“Oh, Hope.” Mom sighed deeply. “Even though I knew this day would come, I can’t help but be afraid of the repercussions. I’m proud of you for being so brave. I certainly didn’t give you an easy situation to deal with, did I?”
“None of that matters anymore. Will... Dad... he was happy. He was glad when I told him he’s my father.”
“I’m sure he was. Any man would be proud to have you for a daughter. I imagine he was not too happy with me, though, was he? I’m sure he hates me even more than he did before.”
“Not even close. He’s not angry with you. He might not be happy with the decision you made, but he understands why.”
“That can’t be true. He must hate me.” Mom shook her head in disbelief.
“It’s actually quite the opposite. He still loves you. He never stopped.”
“He loves me? That’s impossible. You must have misunderstood. Or he’s simply being kind. He can’t still love me after what I’ve done.”
“But he does. He loves you very much. And I know you still love him.”
“Of course I do. I always have.” Mom smiled and I caught a glimpse of the happy young girl she must have been all those years ago.
“Maybe it’s not too late for you. Wouldn’t it be something if you ended up together after all these years?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m sick. I’m weak. For heaven’s sake, Hope, I’m bald!”
“Somehow I don’t think any of that is going to matter in the least.” I squeezed Mom’s hand and stood to go help Kelsey pack.
“I love you. I’m so grateful to be your mother.”
“Love you too, Mom.” I grabbed a pillow and blanket and helped her make a bed on the couch where I knew she would sleep away the rest of the afternoon. “You can rest now.”
