Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78990 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78990 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
“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?