Page 56 of Bitter Prince
Smash!
My heart jumped and I leaped back instinctively. I pressed my back against the wall and my hand to my chest in hopes it would stop its painful beating.
“How could you not tell me, Grace?” Papà shouted. “How could you keep it a secret?”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. I could feel a sob working its way up, but I didn’t want to start crying. Papà didn’t like tears, although Mamma was crying right now.
“And say what?” she sobbed. “She’s not yours.” The words made no sense to me. “It’s not her fault, Tomaso. You can’t hold that against her—or me. Not after your history. At least you could control your history. I had no control over this!”
“I want the name,” he bellowed, the sound so loud it shook the house. A loud bang. The floor vibrated. “You had a choice in telling me. I could have… We could have…”
“What?” she screamed. “Could have what, Tomaso?”
I couldn’t follow their words, but something wasn’t right.
“Gotten rid of it,” he raged. “She’s someone else’s child. Not mine.”
“She’s my child,” she screamed. “Ours, until now. How can you just discard her? You held her the day she was born.”
“She’s a child of…” He didn’t finish. My little heart thundered in my chest. “Why would you keep the baby?”
“You know how hard it was for me to get pregnant,” she cried. Her voice shook hard. “You would have robbed me of my chance to have a baby?”
Another smash and it sounded like glass breaking.
The library door swung open and Mamma’s eyes landed on me, hiding in the corner. A breeze swept through the open door of the library and against my wet cheeks. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.
I sniffled, tears rushing down my face. Mamma’s cheeks were wet and her eyes rimmed with red. She closed the door behind her, then came up to me.
“What’s the matter, my little queen?”
“Is Papà mad at you?” I whispered.
She shook her head, but deep down I knew it was a lie. “No. He’s just stressed with work.”
My tears slowed as I whispered, “He doesn’t love us anymore?”
She wrapped her arms around me, pulling me into a warm hug. Mamma’s hugs always made everything better. “Of course he still loves us.”
Then she took me back up the stairs and tucked me into bed. Her fingers combed my hair gently as my head lay on the pillow.
“It’s hard being a woman,” she murmured softly. “We have to help our mothers. We have to forgive our fathers. We have to heal others while overcoming our own trauma. Over and over again.” She pressed her lips, wet and hot, against my forehead. “And the whole time, we are trying to heal ourselves.”
My breathing slowed. I was tired. The words were confusing.
“I love you and Papà,” I murmured as my eyes grew heavy.
The last image before sleep took me under was of Mamma’s face and her tears that never stopped flowing.
That same summer, my mother took her own life.
I slid down the wall until I sat on the floor, numbness filling my every cell. I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my forehead against them. How did I not remember this before? Maybe subconsciously I repressed it until I could deal with it.
Yet I didn’t think I could handle that realization even now, because it meant that one of us wasn’t Papà’s daughter.
The knowledge was in front of my face. I knew I couldn’t live in ignorance, but I didn’t know what to do with this revelation. Call him out on it? Or ask him which one of us didn’t belong to him?
My mind sifted through the memories of our childhood—Christmases, birthdays, Easters, vacations, allowances. Papà never seemed to give either one of us preferential treatment. He was either mad at us both or loved us both. When we got into trouble, he’d punish us accordingly, equally.
