Keller and Callahan

Chapter 6

She was dreading the conversation she had to have with her father. In all her life, she had never once been nervous or ashamed to talk to him about anything. He had always been nothing but open and supportive, a pillar of security throughout her adolescent life. She had only grown up with one parent, but he more than made up for her mother’s absence, never making her feel as if she were missing out.

He was the kind of father that had sat on the floor and played tea party with her all hours of the day when she was a child, the kind of father that had learned how to french braid her hair, and the kind of father that had dropped everything and ran to the drug store on the horrifying morning she started her period. He had never once given her reason to doubt him, but finding that note stashed in the cookie jar had destroyed all those years of trust in the matter of time it took for the clay to scatter all over the kitchen floor.

Dreading the conversation she needed to have with her dad was uncharted territory that she was unsure how to navigate, consuming her with apprehension and nerves. But it had to be done. She had never backed down from a challenge in her life, and this was no different. Choosing to face this head on, she was determined to hear her father out, despite the outrage that was bubbling in her gut. She couldn’t let this fester or the anger was going to eat her alive. And to be honest, the fact that there was a chance that her father wasn’t who she thought he was would absolutely crush her.

She still sat on the couch where Sam had left her an hour earlier, the package of empty Oreo’s tossed haphazardly on the table. She was afraid that if she left her post on the couch, she would have escaped to the safety of her bedroom and may never work up the courage to have this conversation. Hearing her father’s footsteps on the front porch, echoed by the creak of the screen on their front door, she took a deep breath and began to steady herself.

“Hey Livvy Girl! I was thinking we could order a pizza tonight, what do you think?” He said cheerily as he walked into the room.

He stopped in his tracks when he saw his daughter sitting cross legged on the couch, her face red and swollen from weeping. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Concern laced his voice as he took a step towards her. When her eyes swiftly moved towards the kitchen, his darted over his shoulder and zeroed in on the shattered clay that had been swept neatly into the center of the floor. At the sight on the floor, his heart immediately plummeted to his feet and the air was sucked from his lungs, forcing him to reach out for the back of the armchair for balance. Olivia gave him a few seconds to catch his breath before gently laying the crumpled letter that she had read over forty times in the last hour on the coffee table in between them.

The silence and tension hung in between them like an overbearing weight that threatened to crush them both underneath its heaviness. Without saying a word, Ray scooted around the arm chair, unable to loosen his grip and slipped into its seat which sat across the room from his distraught daughter. His hands balled into fists in his lap and he had to take a few steadying breaths to work up the courage to lift his face and look his daughter in the eyes. When he had garnered enough strength to meet her gaze, he lost count of how many emotions he could see swirling inside them.

“Livvy, I don’t know where to start,” Ray said resignedly.

“You could start by explaining why you’ve lied to me my entire life. That might be a good place to start,” Olivia fired back at her father, with heat in her eyes. Though her anger made him inwardly wince, there was no part of him that could blame her reaction or the fury that was being aimed in his direction. He deserved every last bit of it.

“Ever since the day you were born, all I have wanted was to protect you, Livvy Girl. It’s a father’s most important job. Every single decision I have made since that day, whether it be a small one, or one that could change the course of our lives, your safety, security, and happiness came before anything else.”

Eyeing him suspiciously, she crossed her arms defiantly across her chest. “And you think leading me to believe that my own mother was dead for my entire life, and that I was the cause of it, was keeping me safe, secure, and happy?”

Blowing out a deep breath, Ray leaned forward resting his elbows onto his knees. “Your mother has been dead to this family for years. I knew she would never be coming back, so I wanted to spare you the pain of all the questions that inevitably come with her vanishing.”

“You’re right. I do have questions. A lot of them. And I expect full and transparent honesty from you. No bullshit.”

Ray had admired that Olivia had always been a strong and capable little girl. But the little girl who sat before him wasn’t so little anymore, she was growing into a strong and confident young woman. There was nothing on this planet that he wouldn’t do for her.

“No bullshit,” he agreed.

“When is the last time you’ve spoken to her?” She leaned back further into the couch, as if she were settling into a duel.

“In the letter that is sitting on the coffee table,” he gestured to the crumpled paper sitting between them. “She kept to her word. I haven’t seen or heard from her since the day she left that note on the front porch.”

Examining his face and body posture, she inspected every inch of him for any tell tale sign that he might be lying. But the way that his body hung low in resignation and the way his hands were still as stone, she knew that he was telling her the truth.

“Did you love each other like you had told me? That I was conceived between two people who were in love?” Olivia had always found the story beautiful despite its devastation. That two people who were madly in love had created a life between them to raise together, before the devoted wife and mother was tragically ripped away from the world while she was giving new life to their child.

Shaking his head in shame, Ray rubbed his sweaty palms alongside the tops of his jean clad thighs. “I wouldn’t call it love, honey. She was passing through and grabbed one of the cabins last minute on her way north. She was absolutely beautiful, took my breath away in more ways than one. One drunken night under the stars two people came together in lust and unbeknownst to me, we created you.”

He let out a deep breath, while Olivia held hers unable to let it free. “I had no idea you even existed until the day she dropped you and the letter off on the porch. It was the most shocking day of my life. But it was also the best day of my life too.”

Olivia could barely breathe. Her mind was running a million miles a minute as she began to process the words her dad was saying to her. A knot of tension coiled tighter in her belly as she finally released a breath and asked her next question.

“Am I yours?” She whispered.

Startled, Ray looked up at her in confusion. “What do you mean? Of course you’re mine.”

“How do you know? She could have been with a ton of different men and just dropped me here. There’s a possibility you’re not even my real father,” her eyes dropped when the words escaped her mouth, and Ray instantly rose from his position in the armchair and moved to sit next to her on the couch. Enveloping her in his arms, she stiffened, but she didn’t resist.

“You are all mine, Livvy Girl. When Renee left you on the porch, the first place I went was to the hospital. They ran all sorts of tests on you to make sure you were healthy, and one of those tests was a paternity screening,” he pulled back gently as he brushed a stray hair away from her face as he forced her to look him in the eyes. “Olivia Mae. You are my daughter, through blood, which has been officially confirmed. But even if you weren’t, these past seventeen years that I have spent raising you and being your father have been by far the greatest adventure of my life. You are my biggest surprise and my biggest joy, and I never want you for one single second to think otherwise. Do you hear me?”

The conviction in his voice caused her body to soften and lean in against him. She hugged him tightly and even though she was almost an adult, let herself be held by her dad as if she were a little girl again.

“She didn’t want me,” she whispered against her father’s chest. And for the first time since she had sat down with him, her anger had been replaced with devastation. The pain in her voice led Ray to hug her tighter as he rested his chin atop her head.

“Oh baby. It had nothing to do with you. She didn’t know what she wanted other than to be a gypsy who roamed the world with no responsibilities or destinations. And even though I have no idea where she is or what kind of person she grew to be, I will never stop being thankful for her and the choice she made. Because it gave me you. And there is nothing and no one on this Earth more important to me than you, Livvy Girl. And I never want you to question your worth because of one young woman’s selfishness. Do you hear me?” He grabbed her cheeks within his hands and gently shook her, as if hoping the conviction of his words would travel through his hands to her mind, eliminating her feelings of inadequacy.

“Ok Dad,” she said as she tucked herself against his chest for one last hug. “I believe you.”

Ray released a breath as she sagged against him, beginning to rub large circles around her back like he did when she was a child. He didn’t think of Renee much over the past few years, raising Olivia and running the campground solo had taken up all of his time and energy. But now that the truth had finally been brought to light, he couldn’t help the rage that bubbled beneath his surface. Rage for a woman who had now led his precious little girl to feel as if she wasn’t good enough, when in reality, she was the single greatest person he had ever known in his life.

So as he sat on the well-loved sofa, rocking his daughter in his arms, he held her just a little bit tighter, hoping that she could physically feel the amount of love that was bursting inside his heart for her, praying that she would never feel anything less from any person that she loved in her life.