Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Sofia
I held up my glass, mirroring my father’s pose. I was here at lunch with my father in body, if not mind. My mind was all Andrew Blake’s. I tried to distract myself and keep busy, but I kept replaying every moment we were together in my mind.
“Congratulations on your brilliant promotion,” he said, beaming at me. “So much good news this week. Did I tell you Bella got accepted at the school Evan and I really wanted her to go to?”
“Oh no, I didn’t know about that.” I needed to focus on the moment right here or I could blow things with my father.
“Yes, it’s been a challenge. We want to give her the very best start in life and it starts young, you know?”
My mom had wanted to give me the very best start in life, too. That’s why she’d worked as hard as she had.
“The people she goes to school with now will be the people she does business with in the future. It’s such a responsibility.”
I stayed silent. If I uttered a word, I feared that my fury and frustration would spill out. How could he be so insensitive, talking to me about the responsibilities of raising a child? To me, the child he abandoned and never made any effort to be responsible for.
“Evan’s delighted. We both are.”
“Does Bella like the school?” I wanted to steer the conversation onto more neutral territory. Bella was adorable and absolutely not responsible for anything I didn’t have growing up.
“Yes, but only because two of her friends are also going to the same school. Anyway, enough me talking about Bella’s school. Sometimes I feel that’s all I ever talk about. Tell me what you were like at her age.”
I shrugged. “Nothing to say, really. The people I went to school with are the drug dealers and gangbangers of today. But my mom was strict and I worked hard so . . . here we are.”
Silence pulled between us. “You’ve done amazingly,” he said. “You didn’t have anything like the resources that my . . . that Bella has had.”
“Nope,” I said. “Just a bunch of student loans.” And a mother with a knee that needed replacing because she’d scrubbed so many floors.
My feet started to tap against the plush carpet of the restaurant we were in.
I wanted to go. Leave. Every time I was with this man, all I could feel was what I’d been missing in my life.
What I’d gone without. He’d never taken responsibility—not when he’d grown out of his father’s control, not when he got married.
He’d had so many opportunities to right his wrong, but he’d never taken a single one of them.
If I’d never called, he would have gone the rest of his life without ever setting eyes on his first daughter.
“I hear college in the US is very expensive,” he said.
I nodded. “It is. I’m going to be paying my loans off for decades.
” It felt good to tell him even a little bit of the impact his lack of support had had, even if it would take days to articulate the full scope.
It was too soon to ask him to pay off my debt—and use that money to pay for my mother’s surgery—but not soon enough to get him thinking about what he owed me.
Yes, I had my salary increase, but it wasn’t going to give me the money overnight like a check from Des would.
I’d do anything to relieve my mother’s pain as soon as possible.
“I suppose you have a great education to show for it,” he said.
At least he had the decency to sound a little awkward.
It had obviously registered at some point that him talking about his daughter getting into some fancy private school was insensitive.
I had to keep my eye on the long game and remember that I didn’t need to like the man in front of me. I just needed him to like me.
“I absolutely do.”
“I have no idea what really brought you to my door, Sofia. I don’t know if it was curiosity or something more. But I’m glad you’re here. I never wanted to lose all connection to you.”
I couldn’t help myself—my eyebrows arched of their own accord. “Really?”
“Really. I understand why your mother cut off contact. What she needed from me was money, but I didn’t have any to give her.”
Had I heard him correctly? “Skip back a beat. My mother cut off contact? With you?”
“Yes. You know that, right? After I came back to England, we kept talking . . . and then one day I tried to call her and the number was dead.”
My mouth went dry and my palms began to sweat. It felt like I was chewing chalk. She’d cut him off?
No. He had to be wrong. He’d abandoned us.
“I thought you knew. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I glanced up at him. “I want to know the truth. I think I deserve that.”
“I can’t blame your mother and neither should you. She was protecting herself. I’d hurt her and she was just trying to stop the pain. I get it. I got it at the time.”
That made sense, but why hadn’t she told me? Not that we spoke about my father very often, but it was a key detail in the story of how we came to be the way we were.
“When I finally hit twenty-five and got access to my trust fund, I tried to contact her again,” he continued.
“I even flew to New York, though I had no idea where to look. We were students when I last saw her. She’d talked about her mother, but I’d never been to the house.
I didn’t know where she lived. I went to that bakery she loved—the one downtown with the great cannoli? ”
My head was spinning. I wanted to stop the ride and get off.
I knew the story. My mother had always been honest with me.
She’d told him she was pregnant and he’d fled New York to go back to London.
They’d spoken a couple of times and he made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with me. That was the truth.
“You’re saying it’s my mother’s fault that you and I don’t know each other and that . . .” What was he saying?
“Absolutely not. She was doing the best she could. From her perspective, she had a boyfriend who abandoned her as soon as she was pregnant and then didn’t help her out. This wasn’t your mother’s fault. The responsibility lies at my door. I want you to know that.”
Sadness welled in my stomach. Sadness for my mother, for the feelings of panic and loneliness she must have experienced as someone she loved slipped away from her.
Sadness for my father, for understanding how weak he was and not finding the strength to change.
Sadness for me and the life I might have had if both my parents had been . . . different. Older. Wiser.
“Not knowing you has been a huge regret in my life,” he said, his voice thick with melancholy. “And now you’re back. I want to try to make things right. You should know that I’ve adjusted my will to reflect the fact that I have three daughters.”
It was as if he’d reached down my throat and pulled out my lungs. I didn’t have air. I didn’t have words. I didn’t know how to respond.
“I’m not looking for credit or thanks. It should never have been any other way. I hope we can continue getting to know each other like this, but even if you decide you don’t want to pursue a relationship with me, nothing will change as far as my will is concerned.”
I have three daughters.
His words rang in my ears. I’d grown up not having a father. I wasn’t the only kid in school in the same boat, but my dad hadn’t run off with another woman. He hadn’t divorced my mom, hadn’t gone to prison, been shot and killed. He had just . . . never existed.
“I never expected anything like that,” I said, my voice coming out quieter than I was used to.
“I’ve never given you any reason to expect anything from me. I hope I can change that. You know you can come to me. For anything. Anytime.”
This would be the perfect moment to tell him about my mother’s knee, but something in me couldn’t. I’d spent these lunches and coffees trying to position myself so I could ask, and now I had the opportunity, it didn’t feel right.
Would it ever? Maybe when I’d settled into my job. Maybe when I’d had a chance to come to terms with what had happened between Andrew and me. Maybe when my focus wasn’t splintered between the present, and every moment I’d ever spent naked in Andrew’s arms.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.