Dad watched me with concern. “Please, pumpkin, don’t cry. I can’t bear to see you cry.”
I looked up and wiped away my tears. “Then why did you do what you did?”
A part of me hated him for what he had kept from me. I wanted to lash out at him.
Another part of me pitied him for the love he had not let into his life because he feared its destructiveness. He had been possessive, distrustful, and jealous.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I knew it was wrong, but I was afraid of what would happen if you knew. And now I’m afraid I’m going to lose you anyway.”
Seeing the total unqualified despair in his eyes, I forced myself to reach out and take hold of his hand, because I didn’t want to become like him—a person with a soul that couldn’t forgive. A person with a heart that couldn’t trust in love or have faith in a loved one’s loyalty. I wanted to see the best in him. I needed to believe that he cared for me and that he could put my happiness, for once, above his own.
“I never expected to live this long,” he continued to explain, his voice breaking into a sob. “I hated being a burden to you, but I thought you and your mother would be free of me eventually. I always expected that you would meet Anton one day, after I was gone. I expected it from the beginning, so every new day with you was a blessing. I stole what happiness I could because I thought it would be brief. That was my mistake. I waited too long. If only I had known how long it would take for me to die, I might have acted differently.”
“Please don’t say that, Dad. I never wanted you to die.” I stared down at our joined hands and tried to see through my anger to what he had just confessed. I thought about his fears and insecurities and began to feel the first small traces of forgiveness, like one or two isolated raindrops that made you look to the sky before a downpour.
“I was selfish,” he admitted. “I know it, and I wish now that I could go back. If I could, I would tell you to go to Italy and learn where you came from. I would tell you to follow your heart. I swear, that’s all I want for you. I want you to be happy, even apart from me, because I couldn’t bear it if you stopped loving me.”
I bent forward and kissed the back of his hand. “I’ll never stop loving you, Dad. You were a good father to me.”
“Except for this.”
I nodded. “Except for this.”
Total forgiveness was not going to be easy. This much I knew. It was going to take some effort, but it was better than the alternative, which would leave me hating my father and resenting him. I couldn’t live like that. I didn’t want to feel anger in my thoughts for the rest of my life. I wanted to wake up in the morning and feel blissful at the sight of the sunrise. I wanted to feel grateful for the kind father who raised me, who had made me feel loved.
We sat in silence for a moment. After a while, I sat back and pondered everything I now knew about both of my fathers.
“I have a question,” I said, wiping away the last of my tears. “How did you know about the promise Anton made to Mom? How did you know that he would keep the secret, even from me? Did she tell you that?”
“No,” he replied, “we never spoke about Anton after the accident. It was as if it never happened. She never mentioned him or talked about Tuscany again.”
“Then I don’t get it. How did you know?”
He paused, as if considering whether he should answer the question. “Years ago, when you were still a baby, I asked one of the night nurses to go through your mother’s desk and see if there were any letters from Tuscany. She found a half-written letter to Anton, and she showed it to me.”
I wanted desperately to understand. “You didn’t try to talk to Mom about it?”
“No,” he replied. “I was afraid that if she opened up to me, it would be like opening a floodgate. She would tell me the truth—that she loved him and wanted to be with him—and I would have no choice but to let her go.”
All at once, I realized the consequences of the secrets we had kept from each other. My parents had never really known each other on a soul-deep level, not since my father’s accident. They had lived in a constant state of denial and had hidden everything from each other.
Where did that leave me now that everything was out in the open?
I stood up and paced around the room.
“What will you do?” Dad asked, watching me intently, nervously. He pressed the button on the bed to raise himself to a more upright sitting position.