The long road home - By Danielle Steel Page 0,164

had always known that. And trying not to think of her, and the look in her eyes that bore into him like hot coals, he opened a cabinet, mixed himself a stiff martini, and stood staring out the window as he drank it.

Chapter 25

WHEN GABRIELLA LEFT her father that afternoon, she went straight to the ticket office on Fifth Avenue and bought a ticket to San Francisco. And as she purchased it, she was still thinking of the meeting with her father. Nothing about it had gone as she had expected. She felt sad in a way, and relieved too. She realized now that what had happened wasn't because of her, because in fact she had been so terrible, but because they were flawed. It was not because of who she was at the time, but who they weren't. And she had only just begun to understand that.

He was such an empty man, so cold, so frightened, so unable to cope with reality or honest emotions. It still stunned her that during the entire time in his office, he had never touched her, and would have shrunk from it if she tried to. He didn't want her in his life, and hadn't for years. In his mind, she was still too closely linked with her mother. But at least she understood something about him now. It was not that he had withheld something from her at the time, he had never had it to give her, or maybe even to give her mother. And he was right about one thing. It was too late now. As much as she had longed for him for all those years, and dreamed of him, and told herself that he would he there for her, if only he knew where she was, she now knew that he had known where she was all along, and didn't even care enough to see her. He didn't love or want her, there was no hiding from that fact now. It hurt to know that, but in its own way, it freed her. It was almost as though he had died fourteen years before, and she could lay the body to rest now. All these years, he had only been missing in action, and now she had a body to bury. She could still see him watching her as she left his office.

And when she got back to the boardinghouse, she found that Peter had called her from the hospital. She called and had him paged, and told him about the meeting.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked, sounding worried.

“Sort of,” she said honestly. It still hurt her that her father hadn't even wanted to hold her, or kiss her. But that was who he had always been. He had never held her then either, she now remembered. Seeing him had brought back a lot of memories, none of which were pleasant. The only time she remembered him being tender with her, or even something close to it, was the night before he left them. And knowing what he was about to do, he probably felt guilty. “You were right about one thing,” she told Peter, “I think some of the answers are within me. I just didn't know it.” He was relieved to hear it. He was nervous about this odyssey of the past she had embarked on. He suspected that it was going to be very painful for her, and not the homecoming she wanted.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked. They had just paged him again, and he knew he couldn't talk much longer.

“I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow.” He didn't know why, but he felt as though he should go with her. But he knew she'd never let him. She was determined to slay her dragons single-handed, no matter how dangerous, or how painful. And he admired her for it.

“Will you be all right out there all alone?”

“I think so,” she said honestly. It still frightened her to think of seeing her mother. But she knew she had to. She was the one with the real answers. And especially the one to the final question: Why didn't you ever love me? She felt like a child in a fairy tale, looking for answers under mushrooms. Alice in Wonderland, or Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and she said as much to Peter.

“If you wait a few days, I'll go out there with you. I've got some time off later this week, and

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