“I know you loved me, Dad,” I softly said. “And I loved that you needed me. You made me feel so important. But didn’t you ever once want to give something back to me? To put my happiness before your own? I was only eighteen when Mom died, and I had to take her place, keeping your spirits up, becoming your sole reason to live. It was a tremendous responsibility for me then, and I can’t lie—it still is. I’m thirty years old, and I’ve never been able to maintain a long-term relationship with anyone because my whole existence revolves around making sure that you’re okay, that you’re not going to give up and let yourself die. Mom worked so hard at that, trying to make you feel happy every day, and now I understand where her fears were coming from.” I hated saying these things to him, and my voice shook as I spoke. “Because you told her that you would die if she left you.”
His voice went quiet with defeat. “Where did you hear that?”
It all came tumbling out. “I met a man in Italy named Francesco. He was Anton’s driver and closest friend. He was Mom’s friend, too, and he drove her to the hospital in Montepulciano after you were taken away in the ambulance.” I paused. “Please tell me the truth, Dad. Would you really have given up? Or were you just trying to guilt Mom into staying with you?”
He swallowed hard and offered no reply.
“Mom thought you didn’t want to have children, and then you ended up with a kid who wasn’t even yours. Talk to me, Dad. Tell me that you didn’t just want us to take care of you. Or that you weren’t trying to punish Mom or punish Anton by keeping me away from him.”
“I did love her,” Dad said again. “But she didn’t love me, not the way she loved him. She never loved me like that. And there were days I hated her for it, and I blamed her for what happened to me. It was her idea to go to Tuscany in the first place, and if she hadn’t had the affair . . . if she hadn’t sneaked out and gone to the villa that night . . .” He paused and squeezed his eyes shut. “What happened to me was her fault. There were days I wished I’d never met her.”
Recognizing the anger that still burned in him, I sat back and waited for him to collect himself and continue.
“And I hated Anton more than I ever hated anyone. No one believed me when I said he ran me down on purpose. Not even your mother. Especially her, which only twisted the knife. They said it was an accident . . . maybe it was . . . either way, I still blame him. And yes, I did want to keep you away from him to get back at him. There’s a part of me that’s glad he’s dead. There. You wanted me to be honest, so I’ve said it. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.”
“Dad . . .”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I loved you more than anything, and I couldn’t live without you, because when you came along, you brought joy with you, and joy was something I never expected to feel, ever again. It didn’t matter that you weren’t mine, and I knew that if your mother went to Italy to be with Anton, she would take you with her, and I couldn’t let that happen. And that day in the hospital, I did want to die. I wasn’t trying to manipulate her. I swear it. Later, when I couldn’t forgive her, I told myself that she deserved to pay a price for what she did. She was unfaithful and she’d had an affair, and because of that, I ended up like this.” He looked away and grew quiet. “I lost everything. I became a burden to everyone.”
“You weren’t a burden.”
“Yes, I was. And I tried to forgive her. Honest, I did. Year after year. But I just couldn’t, so I did whatever I had to do to make sure I didn’t lose you. Especially not to Anton.”
“But I wouldn’t have left you,” I assured him, feeling my anger rise up again and fly into the open. It had found a path through the dense forest of my love and compassion. “Even if I had met Anton, you would have always been my dad. I just wish you had been honest with me. I wish you had helped me to meet him. He was my biological father, and he wanted to meet me, but you wouldn’t allow it, and now I’ll never get that chance. And I never got to know my half brother and sister either. If Anton hadn’t died, I still wouldn’t know about them. How can I ever forgive you for that, Dad?”
I began to weep with the agony of learning that the man I believed would do anything for me had denied me the greatest gift of all—the gift of his trust in my love for him. And the gift of my biological father’s love. For the first time I saw, with perfect clarity, the full extent of my father’s wounds beyond the physical—the deeper ones that had weakened his soul at a very young age when his own mother had deserted him. Then his wife had intended the same thing. I saw the world through his eyes, as a place where love was a destructive force, where it left behind a twisted, mangled wreckage, which was how he viewed his life.