“The two girls are Barbara's, the boys are our sons. Jeffrey and Winston. They're twelve and nine now.” And then he looked at her, anxious to get it over with, and get to the point of her visit. “Why have you come to see me?”
“I wanted to find you. I never knew you were here in New York.” He had been so close by, with a family, leading his life entirely without her. Without further explanation, that was painful.
“Barbara didn't like Boston,” he said, as though that explained it. But in fact, for Gabbie, it explained nothing.
“If you knew I was there, why didn't you come to see me at the convent?” As she asked him the question, she saw a look that she remembered from her childhood, a helpless, cornered look that said he wasn't equal to the situation. He had worn the same look, watching her being beaten, from the doorway.
“What was the point of seeing you?” he asked painfully. “We all had such terrible memories of my marriage to your mother. I'm sure that you do too. I thought it was better if we all closed the door on it and tried to forget it.” But how could he forget his daughter? “She was a very sick woman.” And then he added something that truly shocked her. “I always thought she would kill you,” he said in a choked voice, and before she could stop herself, Gabbie asked him one of the questions that had waited her entire lifetime for an answer.
“Why didn't you stop her?” She held her breath as she listened. It was important for her to know that.
“I couldn't have stopped her. How could I?” Force, threats, removal, divorce, the police, there had been a lot of options. “What could I do? If I criticized her for what she did to you, she was worse to both of us, to you particularly. All I could do was leave, and start a new life somewhere else. It was the only answer for me.” And what about me, she wanted to scream at him. What new life did I have? “I thought you were better off with the Sisters. And your mother would never have let me take you.”
“Did you ever ask her, after she left me there?” She wanted to know it all. These were the answers she needed from him. They were the key to her life now.
“No, I didn't,” he said honestly. “Barbara would have objected to it. You were part of another life, Gabriella. You didn't belong with us.” And then he delivered the final blow. “You still don't. Our lives have gone separate ways for years, it's too late to recapture it now. And if Barbara knew I was seeing you today, she'd be furious with me. She'd feel it was a betrayal of our children.”
Gabriella was horrified at what he was saying. He didn't want her, never had, and had simply walked away and left her to her own devices.
“But what about her daughters? Didn't they live with you?”
“Of course, but that was different.”
“What was different about it?”
“They're her children. All you were to me then was a bad memory, a relic of a nightmare I wanted to walk away from. I couldn't bring you with me. Just as I can't now. Gabriella, our lives have been separate for years. We no longer belong to each other.” But he had two sons and two stepchildren, and a wife. She had no one.
“How can you say something like that?” There were tears in her eyes, but she refused to allow them to overwhelm her.
“Because it's true. For both of us. Every time you saw me you'd remember the pain we inflicted on you, the times I was unable to help you. In time, you'd hate me for it.” She was already beginning to. He was none of the things she had dreamed about. He had been helpless then, and he still was. He didn't have the courage to be her father.
“How could you not call me for all these years?” she asked now, close to tears, but she no longer cared what he thought about her. He was indifferent and cruel and he had failed her completely. He had no love for her at all, and nothing to give anyone. He was selfish, and weak, and just as he had been ruled by her mother years before, he was now being ruled by a woman named