“Nothing. Never mind. I forgot I was talking to my child for a second.”
“I’m not a child anymore,” he says. “I haven’t been in a long time.”
“I didn’t say you’re a child, Seth. I said you’remychild. As such, talking about, venting, raging, confiding in, or even discussing the circumstances around my divorce, even though it includes your mother, is wildly inappropriate. Regardless of the age of the children, they should not be dragged into it.”
Seth smirks. “You know Mom hasn’t exactly hidden her anger, huh?”
“Again—inappropriate,” I say, frowning.
He nods, shrugging. “Yeah. Probably. But, just so you know, we know that most of what she’s saying is because she’s upset. Not because she believes it. We don’t believe it.”
“Well… that’s good, I suppose.”
Seth focuses on Martha for a minute, so I arrange my papers back into their folders.
“Dad?” I raise my eyes to meet his. “Why did you stop coming home?”
My hands freeze as I look into his eyes. There aren’t truly words to answer his question because the truth of the matter is, I don’t have a solid answer. I place my palms on the table, feeling the coolness of the glass beneath them.
“I don’t have an answer,” I admit. “I can tell you all kinds of reasons, like I got busy here. I was needed here. I was working on meeting the vision for this school, and it consumed much of my time. I can tell you that the commute was long and took too many hours out of the day. I needed to be close in case someone needed me during all the new projects coming to fruition. In case of an emergency. I can tell you that maybe your mom and I were no longer the couple we’d once been, and maybe I recognized that on a more subconscious level, so I chose to stay here insteadof going home. I didn’t want to feel my marriage deteriorate, so I took myself out of the equation. I didn’t want you kids to see an unhealthy marriage, which I understand is counterintuitive since you didn’t see a healthy one either. There are a lot of things I can tell you, Seth, but I don’t have a solid reason. It was never a conscious choice where I woke up one day and said, ‘I’m no longer going home’ and carrying on with my business.”
Seth nods absently.
“Not what you wanted to hear.”
“No, but I’m not sure what I wanted to hear.”
“You’re looking for closure with a satisfactory explanation of why I abandoned you kids and your mother.”
Seth’s lips press together for a second. “I don’t think you abandoned us. You used to call all the time.”
“I did,” I agreed.
“Then you stopped.”
“I… did. This is going to sound like I’m turning it around on you, and that’s not my intent, but I stopped calling because it felt increasingly like none of you kids wanted to talk to me. I didn’t want to force myself into your life if you didn’t want me there, so I called less frequently, while trying to make sure you knew I was there if you wanted to talk, but not forcing my calls on you either.”
“We weren’t the best kids,” he says.
“You were put into a strange situation,” I counter. I don’t put it into words, but I have a feeling Natalia didn’t keep her opinions to herself as much as she should have. After all, they were kids. They may all be adults now, but it hasn’t been long since they’ve all been adults. Tabby has only recently turned eighteen.
Seth sighs.
A part of me wants to ask about their childhood in regards to how their mother spoke about me, but I don’t. That’s alsoputting our kids in the middle of this situation, and while none of them have outright said so, I don’t doubt that Natalia bitches to them about this divorce, me, and our shared past. I won’t add to that.
“Thank you for being here,” I say. “For Martha.”
Seth gives me an amused smirk. “For Martha. Right.”
“For me,” I amend.
“I don’t hate you, Dad. Briar and Tabby don’t either. You know that, right?”
I do now. It’s a weight off my shoulders, but not all of it. I’m still weighed down by the strained relationship with my kids. I want more. I want a presence in their lives. But maybe I’m far too late in asking for one.
“Yeah,” I answer.
CHAPTER 5
