“What was there to say to you, Gabriella?” He looked across his desk at her with exasperation. And it was clear to her that he didn't want her to be here. “I didn't want to see you.” It was that simple. He had had nothing in his heart to give her, or possibly anyone, not even the pretty children in the pictures. She pitied all of them, and most of all him, for everything he wasn't. He wasn't even a person. He was a cardboard figure.
“Did you ever love me? Either of you?” she asked, choking on a sob now, and he found her demonstration of emotions distasteful. He looked agonized by it, and Gabriella knew he wished she would disappear. But she didn't care. This was for her, not for him. This was everything she needed to take with her to her future. He didn't answer her, and she looked at him with eyes that would not release him. “I asked you a question.”
“I don't know what I felt then. Of course I must have loved you. You were a child.”
“But not enough to take me into the rest of your life. All I got was nine years. Why?”
“Because it was a failure. It was more than that, it was a disaster. And you were a symbol of that disaster.”
“I was a casualty of it.”
“That's unfortunate,” he said sadly, acknowledging it tacitly. “We all were.”
“But you never wound up in the hospital. I did.” She was relentless now, in her pursuit of the truth, but painful as it was, she was glad she had come here.
“I knew you'd hate us for that. I told her so. She had no control over herself whatsoever.”
“Why did she hate me so much?” And why did you love me so little, was the question she didn't ask him. But she knew now that he wasn't capable of it, and probably never had been.
He sighed and sank back into his leather chair, looking exhausted. “She was jealous of you. She always was. Right from the moment you were born. I don't think she had it in her to be a mother. I never realized that when I married her. I suppose I should have.” And he didn't have it in him to be a father, no matter how many pictures he had on his desk now. And then he looked at her, anxious to end the meeting. “Is that it, Gabriella? Have I answered all your questions?”
“Most of them,” she said sadly, although she realized now that some of them would never be answered. He just didn't have what it took to be a father. He was less of a person than she had ever imagined. But maybe, in some secret part of her, she had always known that, and never wanted to face it. Maybe, as Peter said, the answers were within her.
Her father stood up then, and looked at her. He did not come around the desk as she had thought he would. He did hot reach out and hug her, or try to touch her. He stayed as far away from her as possible, and even armed with what she knew now, it still hurt her.
“Thank you for your visit,” he said, indicating that the meeting was over. He pressed a button on his desk, and the secretary reappeared and stood holding the door open for Gabbie.
“Thank you,” Gabriella said. She did not call him “Daddy” this time, or try to kiss him. There was no point. The man she remembered had been bad enough, this one was worse. And whatever he was, whoever he had been to her once, he was no longer her father. He had given up the job fourteen years before, and abdicated completely. That was entirely clear now. The father she had known, such as he was, had died the day he left them.
She stood in the doorway for one last minute and looked at him, wanting to remember him, and then she turned around and walked away without saying another word to him. There was nothing left to say now. It was truly over.
And as soon as the secretary closed the door again, he came around his desk, looking pained. It was like looking through a window into the past for him, and remembering all that sorrow. She was a pretty girl, but he felt nothing for her. He had closed that door a long time before, and there was no opening it again. He