We wait.
My mind doesn’t though. It keeps spinning thoughts around, plucking at my heartstrings. They swirl in a kaleidoscope of what-ifs. So many that I can’t keep them inside, so I ask Declan, “What if he’s married?” My voice trembles in despair. “I mean, this is too big a house for just one person, right?”
Declan looks at me and takes my hand, his face mottled in sorrow, and after a span of silence, he responds, “It’s possible.”
I look at the clock; it’s past eight. We’ve been sitting out here for hours when bright headlights beam our way.
“Elizabeth,” Declan murmurs urgently when the SUV pulls into the driveway.
I hold my breath as my heart pounds rapidly against my chest, the sound filling my ears. Leaning forward, I see the driver’s side door open, and when a man steps out, his back is to me. He reaches into the car and pulls out a briefcase at the same time the front door swings open and a young girl comes running out. And when that man turns around, I choke back an audible gasp, gripping Declan’s hand tightly.
“That’s him,” he voices with a look of pure astonishment, but I’m in a state of shock when I see my daddy pull this child into his arms and hug her.
“Dad, why are you so late?” I hear her muffled voice from outside the car ask him, and tears force their way down my cheeks like knives.
“I’m sorry, princess. I got tied up with a client,” he says, and I remember his voice like it was just this morning when I heard it last.
But it was me that was his princess.
Everything plays in slow motion, and when I look at his face from across the street, there isn’t an ounce of uncertainty he’s my dad. It’s that same face, the same eyes, the same smile that visits me in my dreams. Except now he’s older with a head of silver hair. The last I saw him he was in his thirties, and now he’s nearing sixty.
But that smile . . .
The smile he gives that girl—his daughter—that was mine. It was always mine, and now it’s hers.
I swore to myself that if I ever found him, I’d run to him, grab him, and never let him go. But when I see a woman and a boy walking out of the house, it’s another slap in my face—he’s no longer mine to run to. He’s theirs.
It becomes too much.
I can’t believe life would do this to me.
I want to die.
“Drive,” I cry, my voice shaky and unrecognizable.
But Declan doesn’t start the car.
“Elizabeth . . .”
“Get me out of here,” I plead.
He releases my hand and starts the car, and as soon as he begins driving, I split wide open and sob—loud and ugly.
“Oh, my God, Declan. He has a daughter. He has a whole family!”
He reaches over to me and pulls my hand into his lap as all the years of longing burn up in roaring flames. I was disposed of by my dad; I don’t exist in his life.
How could he do this?
How could he replace me?
Not only did my mother not want me, but I never thought my dad would feel the same way.
“I thought he loved me,” I cry, and the tears feel like hot splashes of acid as they coat my cheeks and drip from my chin. The pain overwhelms like a cleaver to my heart, and everything I thought I knew feels like pure deception. I feel worthless and unloved by the man I’ve killed for.
I never gave up on life because of him.
I kept going because of him.
It was all for naught though. He’s moved on when twenty-three years later I’m still living for him, dreaming of him, longing for him.
To feel like a nobody to the person who’s your everybody is a jagged spike that skewers through the scar tissue of every one of life’s blows that mark a permanent wound on my soul.
Suddenly this car is suffocating.
It’s too small.
My skin is too tight.
The air is too thick.
I can’t breathe.
“Pull over!” I demand, and he does instantly.
Ripping off my seatbelt, I leap out of the car and run.
I don’t know where I’m going.
But I run as fast as I can.
I run hard, feet pounding the grass under my feet as I zip across a random field.
“Elizabeth!” Declan’s voice echoes behind me, but I don’t slow.
My legs begin to burn, my lungs are on fire, but I keep going.
I can hear Declan’s feet racing behind me, and I push harder, screaming out my pain. I force it out of my lungs and into the night. The air whips through my hair, and the tears on my face chill against the wind.
“Elizabeth!” he calls again before his hand clutches my arm, sending me tumbling to the ground.
With my hands pressed against Earth’s foundation, I tilt my head up to the heavens I can no longer believe in and scream. I scream so hard it hurts, ripping through my vocal cords, searing them, slicing them.
Declan wraps his whole body around mine, every one of his muscles flexing, cocooning me in a steel vice grip. And when my screams strain into an unbearable bleeding agony, I melt and crumple into Declan’s warm body.