mom. “What did they do?”
“Her dad had a temper, and he was quick with his hands. As for her mother, well, her affection wasn’t freely given. It had to be won. She would play off your mom against her sister. It was a competition to see who could do better that week and win their mom’s love. Sometimes your mom won, and sometimes her sister won. It bred ugly competitiveness in your mom and jealousy like I’ve never experienced. That jealousy destroyed her relationship with her sister. I knew all about it, and I loved her so much I tried to understand when she acted a little nutty. She was always possessive and resentful whenever someone she cared about showed someone other than her more affection. It wrecked a lot of her friendships, and I had to be very careful about how I acted around other women.”
“But you stayed with her.”
“I loved her. When we were younger, your mom was hilarious and fuckin’ cute. I loved making her laugh.” He smiled tenderly at the memories. “No one needed laughter and unconditional love more than your mother. And we managed through it. The more she trusted me, the less jealous she seemed to get. Then we started to have kids, and our relationship got stronger. Until you.”
My breath caught in my throat, my heart pounding. Had Mom lied? Was I not hers after all? “Dad?”
Seeing my fear, he understood and shook his head. “It’s nothing that dramatic. No matter how bad things got, I never cheated on your mother. But when you were born, you and I formed this automatic bond that was a little different from the one I had with your brothers and sister. Don’t get me wrong, I love all my kids, but from the moment you were born, you were definitely more mine than your mother’s. It became more apparent why as you got older. You were my little mini-me, a McGuire, through and through.”
He grinned down at me with so much love, it almost obliterated all the pain. Then his smile fell. “Your mom hated it. When you were little, you would come to me when you were hurt or cry for me when you’d had a nightmare. When you were sick, you didn’t want anyone else. Only me. Your mom and I used to fight about it all the time. She said I was taking you away from her. And then when you got a little older, even though you were still just a kid who didn’t know what she was doing, the hurt festered in your mom. I knew because she was harder on you about everything. She’d started to resent you because she thought she was losing out on the affection game.”
Shocked, I stared at Dad with a feeling akin to horror. “But I didn’t mean it.”
“I know that.” He tightened his hold on me. “And your mom should have known that, but what her mother did to her and her sister screwed her up in ways I couldn’t fix. It concerned me so much over the years, I even asked her to go to therapy to talk to someone about it, see if it would help, but she refused. I hated the way she treated you, and I should have done something about it a long time ago. For that, I am to blame. No one else.”
“Dad—”
“No, it’s true. I’m your father, and it’s my job to protect you. Even if that meant protecting you from your own mother. The friction between you two was a sore spot in our marriage for years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Your mother is a piece of work.” He exhaled heavily. “She set out to make Dillon hers when she was born. She wanted that bond with Dillon that I had with you. She blames you for Dillon’s death, and that’s not because it is true, and God, dahlin’, you need to get that out of your head. Your little sister loved you. I know she was angry in the end but that little girl hero-worshipped you. If she’s watching over us, her fuckin’ heart is breaking knowing what this is doing to you. What your mother is doing to you.
“I love your mom. But she wouldn’t talk to someone about what happened to her as a kid, how it affected her as an adult, as a parent, and now everything is so twisted up inside her she can’t see straight. Losing Dillon broke something inside of