Page 82 of Actually Yours

Another loaded silence follows his apology.How do I respond to it? What should come next?

“For what?”

He gestures widely with his hands. “For everything. I don’t know where to start.”

We pause as our tea cups are placed in front of us, and I use the time to gather my wits. Now’s not the time to fall apart. That will come later, with Bella…and cake.

“How about you start from the beginning?”

My dad nods, stirring a teaspoon of sugar into his tea before adding a splash of milk. One more thing we have in common.

“I’m sorry for all of it, Amelia. I know I let you down in so many ways, it’s hard to know how to move forward.”

“You could start with why you left me? Left us? Why you were never around growing up? And why you decided your new family was worth a better version of you than the one we ever got?” I’m panting by the end of this, my chest rising and falling rapidly. There’s too much pain here; we won’t ever be able to fix it.

My dad’s face takes on a greenish tinge and he moves his hand to take mine, only to stop himself, uncertainty radiating from all over him. “I was a terrible father to you and husband to your mother. I know that. And I know there’s no excuse for my behaviour.”

“No excuse, but I’d love an explanation.”

He grimaces. “Your mother and I got married young. I’d just turned twenty-one, your mother was only twenty. We were in love and impulsive and thought that life would just work out for us. That we wouldn’t need to put in any work for things to be OK.”

“You would have needed to be around to put in any work,” I point out, tucking my shaky hands safely under the table and out of sight. “You didn’t even try.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I tried in the beginning. When you were born, I was younger than you are now, a new dad who was terrified of being a parent. But I was also so in love with you.”

My breath catches at this, at the look on his face.

“You were the best thing that had ever happened to me, the perfect baby who grew into a little girl who captured the heart of everyone you met. And things were good with your mum, too. We were happy.”

He pauses, drawing in a deep breath. I wait.

“And then things like money and bills and real life started creeping in on us. Your mother wanted a bigger house, a newer car, she wanted to travel and have nice things for you. And I wanted to make that happen. So, I worked harder and travelled more for work. You probably don’t remember it, but the first five years of your life, I was home all the time. I worked a nine-to-five job. I was home for dinner and to put you to bed.”

I think back, trying to remember this. There are flashes of memories of him reading me a bedtime story, but I can’t know for sure that they’re real and not a figment of my imagination. Made up by someone so desperate to have a dad who loves them.

“And then what?”

“Then I got promoted. Your mother was thrilled. It meant more money, so she could be a stay-at-home mum. In that first year, I travelled once a month, trying to be home as much as possible and we made it work. But as with everything, the higher up you go in a company, the more you get paid, the more they own you. My job became more demanding. I needed to be in Sydney for two weeks out of the month. I didn’t want to commit to that. I even started looking for another job, but your mum convinced me to try it. To see if we could make it work.”

I don’t remember any of the specifics of this, but I do recall in the early days my mum being happy with my dad’s job, that she didn’t complain when he was away a lot. That came later. When he didn’t come home at all.

“How did it go from that to you leaving us completely?”

His eyes fill with tears and it’s like a gut punch.This is hard for him; why had I never considered that this hurt him too?

“Time can make any situation seem normal,” he explains. “At the start, it felt wrong to be away from you, from home so much. But then we all adjusted, and it became the new normal. It only developed into a problem when your mum stopped seeing the benefits and started seeing it for what it was. She had become almost like a single parent to you, and she was resenting it. Me, you, the whole situation.”

This sounds familiar. Many times, growing up, I’d heard my mum complain bitterly to anyone who would listen about how she was basically raising me alone. And I’d agreed, having spent less and less time with a father who’d make only sporadic appearances.

“So why didn’t you guys do anything to fix it?”

He shrugs, appearing deep in thought. “We were too far in it to find our way out. I was making a lot of money and this meant we lived a certain lifestyle, and though your mum complained, she didn’t want that to change. We fought about it a lot. Do you remember that?”

I nod. Their arguments are etched into most of my childhood memories.

“The longer it went on, the angrier your mother got, the more I dreaded coming home…”

“Until the day you decided to not come home.”

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