Page 93 of Chasing Home
I spin to face her, my hands shaking as I grip my hips and gulp down breaths. “It’s what? Proof that you’ve been lying to me my entire life?”
“It’s not that simple.” She lifts a letter into her hands and stares down at it with a pain so sharp it makes me feel sick. “These letters are not important anymore. Either is the man they were addressed to.”
My laugh is vile to my own ears. “That’s not for you to decide. I deserved to know who my father was. I asked you! Over and over, I asked you, and you told me you didn’t know. You lied to my face for thirty years!”
She looks up at me, devastation dimming the usual glow in her eyes. “You were better off without him.”
“That wasn’t for you to decide.”
“Wasn’t it? You’re my daughter, and I’ve been the one here raising you. Lee Rose is nothing to you or me.”
“It still wasn’t right to keep this from me. Just because I was happy with you as my mom doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have been given a choice in the matter. It’s different thinking you have no idea who he was. But now? You lied to my face.”
She shoots to her feet, anger mixing with the sadness. “You had a good childhood, didn’t you? I gave you everything I could. Was it not enough? Do you think it wouldn’t have been easier to try to find him again once you grew old enough to understand?”
“Don’t try to gaslight me right now, Mom. Of course I had a good childhood! This has nothing to do with that and all to do with the fact I could have had more. I could have—I could have experienced the same childhood as all of my friends,” I admit, feeling that realization like a knife to my gut.
All of the afternoons I spent at my friends’ houses, watching them joke around with their dads, or when I grew older and watched those same friends be walked down the aisle by them, knowing I’d never experience that. My stepdad is incredible, but it will never be the same. That soul-deep bond you’re supposed to share with your father is missing. I’ve never felt it, and now that I know that chance was ripped from me, the hole where it should be is gaping and bleeding, and I have no idea how to fill it again.
“I’m sorry for lying to you, Aurora. But I won’t apologize for keeping him a secret from you. Your father isn’t the man you want him to be, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise. From the letters you read, you know that I tried to get in contact with him. I wasn’t going to keep you apart. He forced my hand by ignoring my every attempt at contact, and as I’ve grown older and smarter and have lived a good life, I know that him not replying to my letters was the best thing that could have happened to the both of us.”
I shake my head, hurt creating a fog over my mind. “I want to know that for myself. I’m going to make that call on my own.”
Her eyes widen, glossing over. “Please don’t, Aura. You’re going to get hurt. He’s going to hurt you.”
“Then he hurts me! You’ve done the same thing.”
“I may have hurt you, but I also hurt myself.”
I sniff, avoiding looking at her any longer. I’m hurt and pissed and sad. I’ve never liked secrets, and I’ve always hated lies. I’d rather the truth kill me than a lie give me false comfort.
Coughing to clear my throat, I ask, “Have you spoken to him since those letters?”
“No.”
“I’ve never heard of Cherry Peak.”
She nods, and I can see her pushing her hair back from the corner of my eye. “It’s south of Calgary. A town nestled in the Rocky Mountains.”
“I’ll leave as soon as I can.”
“Be sure you really want this before you ruin the life you’ve made here, Aurora. There’s no going back after this.”
“If I go to this town, is there anyone who I should know about? Any more surprises you’ve been keeping?”
The obvious shudder in her expression tells me her answer before she can speak. “Wanda Rose.”
“His . . . wife?”
“No. His daughter.”
“How do you know he has another daughter?” My words are wheezed, the air knocked clean from my lungs.
“He’s a public figure. His life has been shoved down my throat for decades.”
“She’s publicly known as his daughter, then?”
“Yes.”