Forever and a Day. Sophie Love

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СКАЧАТЬ a compulsion, his hoarding behavior. But moreover she remembered the diminishing contact, the way she’d spend less and less time with him in Maine until she reached fifteen and, one summer, he just never turned up to collect her. That had been the last time she’d seen him.

      Emily wanted to be understanding toward her father’s actions. But though one part of her understood he was a broken man who had one day cracked, the torment his actions had caused her could not just be explained away.

      “Why didn’t you say goodbye?” Emily said, the tears falling down her cheeks in torrents. “How could you just leave like that?”

      Roy, too, seemed to be becoming overwhelmed with emotion. Emily noted that his hands were shaking. His lips trembled as he spoke. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been haunted by that decision.”

      “You were haunted?” Emily cried. “I didn’t know if you were dead or alive! You left me wondering, not knowing. Do you have any idea what that does to a person? My whole life was on pause because of you! Because you were too much of a coward to say goodbye!”

      Roy took her words like repeated punches to the face. His expression looked as pained as if they really had been physical blows she’d laid upon him.

      “It was inexcusable,” he said, barely more than a whisper. “So I won’t try to excuse it.”

      Emily felt her heart racing wildly in her chest. She was so furious she couldn’t even see straight. All those years of emotions were flooding out of her with the force of a tsunami.

      “Did you even think about how it would hurt me?” she cried, her voice rising in pitch and volume even more.

      Roy seemed gripped with anguish, his whole body tensing, his face contorted with regret. Emily was glad to see him that way. She wanted him to hurt just as much as she had.

      “Not at first,” he confessed. “Because I wasn’t in my right mind. I couldn’t think of anything or anyone but myself, my own pain. I thought you’d be better off without me.”

      He broke down then, sobs juddering through his body until he was shaking from the emotion. Watching him like that was like a stab to the heart. Emily didn’t want to see her father crack and crumble before her eyes, but he needed to know. There would be no moving on, no reparation without getting this all out in the open.

      “So you thought leaving would be doing me a favor?” Emily snapped, folding her arms protectively against her chest. “Do you know how messed up that is?”

      Roy wept bitterly into his hands. “Yes. I was messed up back then. I stayed messed up for a very long time. When I realized what damage I had done, too much time had passed. I didn’t know how to get back to where it had been, how to undo the hurt.”

      “You didn’t even try,” Emily accused him.

      “I tried,” Roy said, the pleading in his tone irking Emily even more. “So many times. I came back to the house on a number of occasions but every time the guilt of what I had done overwhelmed me. There were too many memories. Too many ghosts.”

      “Don’t say that,” Emily snapped, her mind immediately going to images of Charlotte haunting the house. “Don’t you dare.”

      “I’m sorry,” Roy repeated, gasping with anguish.

      He looked down into his lap where his old hands were trembling.

      On the table in front of them, the undrunk mugs of coffee were turning cold.

      Emily took a long, deep breath. She knew her father had been depressed – she’d found the pill prescription amongst his belongings – and that he wasn’t himself, that the grief was making him behave in unforgivable ways. She shouldn’t blame him for that, and yet she couldn’t help it. He’d let her down so badly. Left her with her grief. With her mother. There was so much brewing anger inside of Emily’s heart even if she knew that blame had no place there.

      “What can I do to make it up to you, Emily Jane?” Roy said, his hands in a prayer position. “How can I even begin to heal the damage I caused?”

      “Why don’t you start by filling in the blanks,” Emily replied. “Tell me what happened. Where you went. What you’ve been doing all these years.”

      Roy blinked, as though surprised by Emily’s line of questioning.

      “It was the wondering that killed me,” Emily explained, sadly. “If I’d just known you were safe somewhere, I could have dealt with it. You have no idea how many scenarios I cooked up in my mind, how many different lives I imagined you were living. I spent years not being able to sleep because of it. It was like my mind wouldn’t stop conjuring up options until it found the correct one, even though there was no way for it to do so. It was an impossible, futile task, but I couldn’t stop. So that’s how you can help. Start by giving me the truth, by telling me what I didn’t know for all those years. Where were you?”

      Roy’s tears finally slowed. He snuffled, dabbing his eyes with his sleeve. Then he cleared his throat.

      “I split my time between Greece and England. I made a home for myself in Falmouth, Cornwall, on the coast of England. It’s a beautiful place. Cliffs and wonderful scenery. There’s a fantastic artists’ scene there.”

      How fitting, Emily thought, remembering his obsession with Toni’s artwork, the way in which he’d hung one of her lighthouse paintings up in the New York City home he’d shared with Patricia, and how angry Emily herself had felt when she’d realized how brazen he’d been, how disrespectful.

      “How did you afford it?” Emily challenged. “The police said there’d been no activity in your bank accounts. It was one of the reasons I thought you were dead.”

      Roy winced at the word. Emily could tell how bad he felt to be confronted by the pain he’d put her through. But he needed to hear this. And she needed to say it. It was the only way they could move forward.

      “I didn’t sell any of my antiques, if that’s what you mean,” he began. “I left all of that for you.”

      “Am I supposed to thank you?” Emily asked bitterly. “It’s not like a diamond can make up for years of neglect.”

      Roy nodded sadly, taking the brunt of her angry words. Emily began to accept that he was acknowledging her, that he was no longer trying to explain his actions but to listen instead to the hurt they had caused her.

      “You’re right,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to imply that it could.”

      Emily tensed her jaw. “Well go on, then,” she said. “Tell me what happened after you left. How you supported yourself.”

      “At first I lived from one day to the next,” Roy explained. “I made money doing whatever I could. Odd jobs. Car and bike repairs. Tinkering. I found my feet making and repairing clocks. I still do that now. I’m a horologist. I make ornate clocks with hidden keys and secret compartments.”

      “Of course you do,” Emily said, bitterly.

      The look of shame returned to Roy’s face.

      “What about love?” Emily asked. “Did you ever settle down?”

      “I live alone,” Roy replied sadly. “I have since I left. I didn’t want to cause anyone any СКАЧАТЬ