A muscle twitched at his jaw, and he turned his face away, pressing his cheek into the pillow. “I don’t want to talk about Tuscany.”
I sat forward in the chair and took hold of his hand. “I’m sorry. I know those aren’t pleasant memories for you, but we have to talk about it.”
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” he mumbled, “why you’re bringing it up.”
All I could do was try to explain the situation as best as I could, because we needed to be honest with each other for once. I was so tired of lying to him. “I know it’s hard, Dad, but I need to understand what you knew and what you were thinking and feeling all these years.”
“Why should it matter?”
“It matters because I love you,” I said. “And because I’m angry with you for keeping Anton out of my life. If we’re going to move forward, I need to understand what was in your heart . . . and what was in your mind.”
He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut.
I tried again. “I know that it must have been very difficult, because Mom betrayed you and you were raising a daughter who wasn’t really yours—a daughter your wife lied to you about. Don’t you think it’s time we talked about that?”
He remained stoic.
“Please talk to me, Dad, because I went to Italy for another reason, and it’s important that everything is out in the open from now on, because I can’t go on living a lie. Not with you. You’re the only father I have left.” When he continued to look the other way, I told him the truth. “Anton named me as a beneficiary in his will.”
Finally, Dad turned his head on the pillow and looked at me, but still, he didn’t speak.
“That’s why I went there,” I continued. “I stayed at the winery, and I met his family—his two children, who are my half brother and sister. Dad, he left me everything. The whole winery. All his cash. Everything.”
My father’s brow furrowed with a deep frown. “He did what?”
“I know. I was shocked, too, because I never even met him, and he made no effort to contact me. All this time, I thought he was a terrible person. I didn’t want to meet him out of loyalty to you, and I thought maybe he raped Mom or something, but that wasn’t it, and it turns out you knew that.” I watched Dad carefully. “You knew that Anton loved Mom and that he spent the rest of his life missing her and that he kept a promise to her—that he would never reveal to you or me that he was my real father. Not as long as you were alive.”
The lines on Dad’s face deepened into an even darker frown.
“But you always knew,” I said, pressing on. “Mom’s enormous secret wasn’t really a secret at all.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know.”
Disappointed beyond all imagining, I shut my eyes. “Oh, please don’t lie to me, Dad! I know that you knew, because I read the letter you wrote to Anton after Mom died. You asked him to continue to stay away.”
Dad could do nothing but blink up at me while his cheeks flushed with color.
“Why didn’t you tell Mom that you knew?” I asked. “Mom and I spent our entire lives trying to protect you from the truth, and because of that, I never had the chance to meet my real father, and I thought the worst things about him, which he didn’t deserve. Now that he’s dead, it’s too late for me to meet him, and that’s going to haunt me forever.”
Dad’s eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t say anything because I was afraid I would lose you.”
“Like you were afraid of losing Mom?”
“Yes.”
“Because you needed her? To take care of you? To be your nurse?”
It was cruel and I knew it, but I was glad I had said it. I needed to know the truth.
“No,” he replied. “I loved your mother, and I loved you too. I couldn’t imagine my life without you. I didn’t want to be left behind. I didn’t want you to leave me.”
I rested an elbow on the chair and watched him for a few seconds. Memories flooded my mind—climbing onto his lap when I was very small and turning the pages of a book so that he could read to me. Riding around the house on his motorized chair, laughing. Later, when I was older, I talked to him about my swim classes and the parties I went to. I shared everything with him, and he listened with fascination.
Even then, I had understood that I was his window into a world he could no longer experience. It gave me purpose and filled me with a sense of value that never compared to anything else I ever did in my life. No one loved me like he did. I knew how much I meant to him . . . how important I was to him. I represented the life he couldn’t live for himself. I was his entire world.