“Let me grab a sweater, and I’ll go with you.”
I walked to my bedroom and went into the closet. Before I could pull a sweater from the pile on the top shelf, Dex was shutting the bedroom door behind him.
“Your dad’s a really nice guy.”
I wished I didn’t feel the need to constantly put him down. Why did a compliment to him always feel like it was an insult to my mother? “He can be at times, yes.”
Dex came up behind me as I was putting on the sweater and squeezed my shoulders. “I’d like to walk your father out alone, if you don’t mind.”
I turned around. “Oh. Okay. I guess?”
He kissed the top of my head. “Thank you. Perhaps you can just mention you just remembered a work call you needed to make or something?”
“Okay. But you’re coming back after you walk Bandit, right?”
Dex pulled his head back, the relaxed face he’d been wearing the last two hours was suddenly gone again. “Yes. We need to talk.”
Just like Dex had requested, I feigned an important work call and excused myself from taking the dog for a walk. After saying goodbye to my dad, the two men left together. The last thing Dex said was. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
I waited the ten minutes. But ten turned into twenty, and twenty turned into forty. Before I knew it, Dex had been gone more than an hour. Finally, feeling anxious, I sent him a text.
Bianca: Are you coming back?
“What’s on your mind, son?”
I’d been lost in my head the last ten minutes, not knowing how to start the conversation I wanted to have. I had asked Bianca’s dad to join me for Bandit’s walk, then was nearly silent the entire five-block walk to the park. “Sorry. There is something that’s bothering me.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“I don’t know where to begin.”
“How about at the beginning? I’m in no rush. The pharmacy can hold until the morning, if need be.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay.” There was a park bench to the left of the walkway we were on. I motioned to it. “Would you like to sit?”
“I’m fine. We can keep walking if you’d like.”
Not knowing any other way to break the news, I blurted out, “You know my father. My name is Dexter Truitt.”
Bianca’s father, Taso, stopped short in place. He looked me in the eyes. Finding I was dead serious, he said, “Maybe we should have a seat after all.”
“She was going to live with her mother. I might be old school, but a girl belongs with her mother if it’s at all possible. There was never any fight for custody. I didn’t want her to hold a grudge against the woman she needed to look up to.” Taso shook his head and sighed. “Eleni didn’t want to lie to her. It was all my idea. I didn’t fight her for custody of the girls, agreed to the support she wanted, and promised I’d never miss a visit with my daughters. In exchange, I asked her for two things in return. One of them was to say it was me who had had the affair. Eleni wouldn’t come right out and say it, wouldn’t lie to the girls, if asked. But she promised to never tell them outright. The night I left for good, I apologized to the girls for what I’d done to break up our marriage. All the years that followed, they never asked anything else about my supposed affair, and Eleni never told them anything different.”
“Bianca harbors a pretty heavy grudge against you still.”
Taso’s shoulder’s slumped. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I know. When I came up with the plan so many years ago, I figured they were kids and would get over it. Bianca, though, she could never really forgive me.”
I realized in that moment how much trust Bianca was placing in me by giving me a second chance. She’d never even afforded her father that same opportunity. I turned to Taso and looked him straight in the eyes. “I have to tell her.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “I understand. She’s not a little girl who needs protecting anymore. She’s a grown woman who deserves the truth from a man she clearly cares about. The lies were what ended things between Eleni and me. I loved her. Part of me still does, if I’m being honest. But when I figured out what was going on, I gave her a second chance. Thought maybe we could move past it, if we worked hard enough. A few months after, things had just started to settle down again, when I caught her in another lie. Went to her office and found…well…I’m sorry…you don’t really need to know the details.”
After that, we sat and talked for a while longer. When my phone buzzed in my pocket, I realized I’d been gone for more than an hour. Taso saw me check my phone.
“My daughter?”
I nodded.
“You should go. Get this off your chest. She’s a big girl, loves her mother. She’ll eventually understand that sometimes when one person makes a mistake, it’s not always only that person’s fault. She’ll get over it. Just make sure you’re there for her when she needs to work through it.”
We both stood. I extended my hand to Taso. “Thank you for understanding.”
“Take care of my little girl.”
Knowing it was the right thing, didn’t make it any easier. I stood outside of Bianca’s door for a few minutes before finally growing a pair and knocking. She answered almost immediately and stepped aside for me to enter. Bandit charged ahead and disappeared inside.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming back.”
“Sorry about that. I was talking to your dad, and we must have lost track of time.”
“You two seem to have hit it off. I hadn’t really thought of it until I watched you together, but you sort of remind me of my dad.” She scrunched up her nose. “Is that weird?”
“Only if that makes it weird for you.”
She smiled. “Would you like a glass of wine?”
“I’ll take something stronger, if you have it.”
Bianca went into the kitchen and brought us each back a glass. Mine was filled with an amber liquid. When she sat down and looked at me expectantly, I gulped back half of it without even a sniff test.
She got right to the point. “Something has been troubling you since you knocked on my door earlier. What’s going on?”
I took a deep breath. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Okay…”
“It’s something you’re not going to be happy about.”
It was her turn to drink some liquid courage. She tossed back half her wine glass and then looked me straight in the eyes. “I prefer the truth, even when it’s something I might not want to hear, Dex.”
“Alright.” There was no easy way to say it, so I just let it rip. “My father had an affair with your mother.”