Page 106 of Fall Into Temptation
“Dad, you were providing for us,” Eva cut in.
He nodded. “I was. But being a father requires more than bringing home a paycheck. I leaned too heavily on your mother. And I didn’t see that she’d returned to familiar coping mechanisms. You knew. At five years old you knew.”
“I didn’t know exactly what it was. I just knew that when she saw certain ‘friends’ or took certain pills, she was different,” Eva admitted. “I didn’t want to tell on her or to make you guys fight.”
Her father’s shoulders slumped a little lower. “We were fighting a lot towards the end. I know it. I wasn’t home enough. She wasn’t present enough. It doesn’t make me feel good to know that’s the kind of home we had created for you. I’m ashamed to admit that when she left, I was relieved.”
“That makes two of us,” Eva admitted.
Franklin sighed. “I’m sorry for not seeing. I would have fixed it, ended it. I wouldn’t have let things go on the way they did.”
“I know, Dad. And you have nothing to apologize for. You did the best you could. And for the record, your best is pretty amazing.”
He tapped the envelopes on the desk. “There’s one more thing. Agnes didn’t just disappear.”
He turned the envelopes over, fanned them out. And Eva saw the names of her sisters and her father scrawled across them.
“She left notes?”
Franklin nodded. “They’re not pleasant. She didn’t write them to comfort anyone in her absence. She wrote them to hurt and point fingers. I never gave them to you.”
“Can I read them?” Eva asked.
Wordlessly, he pushed them across the desk to her.
Eva opened the one addressed to Franklin.
Frank,
Well, you win. You got your way. Since I can’t do anything right in your eyes, I’m leaving. I deserve to have a life, too. One that doesn’t revolve around taking care of ungrateful, demanding kids who never see their absent father.
You don’t like the way I’m raising them? They’re your responsibility now. Have fun with that. Let’s see what kind of a father you’ll be now that you don’t have a choice.
You never were the man I thought you’d be. You’re weak and boring. No therapy or counseling is going to fix that. I deserve better. I’m going to have better now that I’m done wasting my time. Don’t try to find me. I’m done with you and this joke of a life.
Agnes
Eva blew out a breath and stuffed the paper back in the envelope. “I don’t think I need to read the others.”
“A wise choice,” her father said softly.
“She blamed you.”
He nodded. “Yes, she did.”
“But she’s been telling me all along that I’m the reason she left.”
Franklin waved Emma and Gia’s letters. “She blamed everyone except herself. Never took an ounce of responsibility. No, I wasn’t home enough. No, I didn’t help out enough around the house, and maybe I was boring, but that doesn’t mean that she was without blame.”
“Dad, you were never boring,” Eva smiled. “And you were a better father and mother than she could have ever hoped to be.”
“I wish I would have told you sooner. If you’d read the letters before she came after you for money—”
She waved a hand. “I probably still would have given it to her. She played me that first time. ‘Trying to get her life together. Therapy is expensive.’ She said she was entering a counseling program in Pennsylvania and needed money. I’d have fallen for that part of it no matter what. I wanted it to be true.”
“And now? What if she comes back to you sometime in the future?” Franklin pressed.
“Never again. I wish I wouldn’t have had to learn the lesson so painfully… or so publicly. But Agnes will never see another dime from me.”
