Chapter Seventeen #2
“My decision is final. We will reconvene at a later date. Mr. Reilly will be granted his temporary visitations, but until he has a residency of his own, those children will stay where they are. Court adjourned.”
I lost my breath. My mind scrambled as I thought of what else I could’ve done. A different method. A more impassioned argument. I should’ve played dirtier. Found more against Mrs. Reilly.
But I hadn’t. I had wanted to keep it civil, and some foolish part of me believed that people would see the sense in letting a father be present in his kids’ lives.
Mr. Reilly dropped to the bench, head in hands as he cried. Mrs. Reilly left, a smug look on her lawyer’s face as he led them out of the room.
I didn’t know how I looked exactly, but I knew how I felt.
Like a failure.
Because I had failed.
Failed. Failed. Failed.
Because of me, Mr. Reilly’s children would be wondering why they only saw their father on weekends. Because of me, two children wouldn’t be getting tucked into bed by their daddy. Because of me, a little girl would grow up and not know how to trust in love.
Because of me.
I didn’t know what to do. I felt unraveled. Desperate.
I had failed. I had failed miserably at something I’d let myself want. It was enough to set me over the precarious edge I’d been balancing on.
I needed something real to hold onto. To stabilize me back to reality. I needed answers.
I drove to my father’s house, feeling ashamed even as I sped all the way there.
He had never told me where he lived, and I had never felt comfortable enough to ask, but I’d looked it up in the public records, just to have an idea in my head of the type of place he called home.
I pulled up to the address, not knowing if it was still accurate, or if it ever had been in the first place. But I had to try.
I needed to see him. To ask him the questions that were bubbling over inside of me. The ones I’d kept at bay for so long for the sake of not wanting to disrupt the carefully constructed peace we’d managed to build over the last few years.
I’d been too scared of making a wrong move and losing him again. Afraid that any pushback might result in losing him for good.
But tonight, it didn’t matter.
Tonight, I was ready to know.
“Dad,” I banged my fist against the door, hearing a trace of mania slip into my voice.
I let out a shaky breath, knowing I had to collect myself before he answered. I had to stay calm. He didn’t like emotional women. It was why he and my mother never stood a chance.
“Dad,” I repeated, banging again, this time more collected.
It took a minute, but I heard the footsteps. Heard the sound of the deadbolt unscrewing and then the creak of the door.
“Margaret,” he opened the door just a crack, peering out with suspicious eyes. My eyes. “What are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?”
“Can I come in?”
Why did I have to ask? Why did I have to be afraid of showing up uninvited? It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair that some girls had fathers who changed their oil and taught them how to drive and intimidated their boyfriends into treating their daughters nicely and I had a father who was peering at me through a crack in his door asking why I dared show up on his doorstep.
“Dad, please,” I begged, hating myself for it.
I looked a wreck. My hair was plastered down against my head from the downpour and I was sure my makeup was probably running down my face in ugly streaks.
He sighed, opening the door a few inches to let me inside. I breathed in relief, walking into his condo before he had the chance to change his mind.
It was spacious. Open. Filled with the types of flashy things I figured he might have. State-of-the-art television. Pristine marble-top counters. An enviable record collection that part of me longed to sit and sort through with him.
But there wasn’t a trace of me anywhere. No pictures. No framed articles of my magazine features. Not even a childhood drawing or card—the kind I imagined he’d always been secretly hiding away somewhere, a trinket he might pine over when he revisited his regrets about leaving us.
Guess it was nothing but a pipe dream, after all.
“Care to tell me what you’re doing here, Margaret?” he asked, narrowing his eyes on me in suspicion.
As if I were here to raid his house or ask for money—or worse, emotional support.
“It’s Maggie,” I said, for the first time in years. “I don’t go by Margaret.”
He scrunched his face as if he’d smelled something sour.
“Margaret sounds much more professional. You want to be taken seriously, don’t you?”
“Is this a business meeting?” I asked, eyes widening in what I tried not to be accusation. “Why do I have to be professional?”
“It was just a bit of friendly advice, Margaret. What’s going on?”
“I was just—” I looked around, trying to gather my thoughts. “I wanted to know—” I paused again. How could I phrase it without sounding pathetic? “I—”
“What is it, Margaret?” he asked, and the irritation in his words was enough of a trigger to let it explode out of me.
“Why didn’t you fight for us?”
His eyes widened, as if it were the last thing in the world he’d been expecting.
Maybe it was. Maybe he thought he’d trained me well enough not to ask those types of questions. After all, he’d successfully dodged any real discussions about the past in all our meetups over the years.
And I’d let him.
I let us both avoid it. Pretend it never happened.
But I couldn’t anymore.
“I just need to know,” I sighed. “I need to know why you didn’t come back for us. Not once.”
“It’s complicated,” he said, averting his gaze. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try,” I begged. “Help me understand.”
It wasn’t sarcasm. I wanted nothing more than for him to take the unrelenting weight off my chest. To give me a feasible reason why he couldn’t come back for me. I was ready to listen. To understand what could make a father turn away from his family like that and not think twice about it.
“We’ve talked about this before.” He shook his head, squeezing his brow as he stared down at the floor. “Your mother can be difficult. It would’ve been too much—”
“So, you were fine with never seeing your kids again because it would’ve been too hard?”
“I see you now!” he retorted, irritated at me for neglecting that piece of information. “Quite regularly, might I add.”
“You were gone for fifteen years,” I emphasized, fighting the tears that were threatening to drown me.
“I wasn’t meant to be a father to young children. Not every man is. Children aren’t for everyone. I couldn’t handle it all. The two of you. Your mother. The perfect family life she wanted.”
“Then you shouldn’t have had them!” I yelled. “But you did, so you’re supposed to learn how to handle it. You just figure it out. Even if it’s hard. Even if it takes a little bit of work. You figure it out!”
“Margaret,” he scolded as loud as he dared. “Be sensible.”
“It’s Maggie!” I yelled, infuriated at his pretense of calm while I was boiling over with years of half-buried emotion.
“Lower your voice!” he ordered. “I have neighbors.”
“I’m your daughter,” I said even louder. “Do you know that? Do you understand?”
“What is your point?” he asked, and the way he refused to confirm it was almost too much to bear.
“Don’t you love me?” I asked, feeling my heart break in my chest as the words escaped in a pitiful whisper.
He stared down at me, shaking his head in disgust.
“You’re just like your mother. I thought you were smarter than that, but clearly you’re every bit as emotional. It’s a shame. You might’ve done great things otherwise.”
I felt the breath leave my lungs, along with every bit of fight left in me.
I didn’t want to tell him I had already done great things. I wanted him to already have known. I wanted him to be proud of me.
I didn’t want a father, I wanted a Dad. And it took every ounce of courage in me to admit to myself what I hadn’t dared even think.
He wasn’t ever going to be who I wanted.
And I couldn’t change the past.
And, maybe worst of all, my brother had been right.
“I have to go,” I said in a whisper, still only steps away from the door I came through.
When I reached for the knob, he didn’t try to stop me. For some reason, I didn’t even care.