“I’m not married,” I say. “But I did meet my fated. I knew about him for ten years, but I only just found him a couple months ago. His name is Daniel.”
Matthew smiles slightly. “Daniel. Is he…a good guy?” He’s testing out his dad reach here, I can tell.
“He’s a great guy,” I say.
“But?” he asks, gentle.
“He doesn’t know if he wants to have kids.”
“Ah,” he says softly, his eyes dropping. “That old story.” I know he’s thinking about himself.
“When Sunny found out, she felt like she owed it to Mom to tell me the truth about you guys,” I say, emotions bubbling to the surface again. “She’s been feeling guilty, and she thinks that I shouldn’t be with Daniel if I don’t want to be.”
Matthew’s quiet, eyes still on the floor, looking at his striped rug. “And do you? Want to be with him?”
My eyes fill up with tears. “I don’t know. I thought I did. Everything I’ve done…my entire life—it’s been circling around this one promise. That I would end up with the love of my life. But look at what happened with Mom? The saddest fucking ending to the saddest fucking love story.”
I hear him get up and suddenly I’m being engulfed in his arms. I want to push him away, but I don’t. I sob into his shirt, and over and over he says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I imagine this is what having a dad is like and it makes me cry harder.
“I don’t want to make the same mistake,” I whisper into his shirt.
“Oh, Cassia,” he says sadly. “Your mom didn’t make a mistake—I made the mistake.Ileft.Igot scared. But your mom? She got you. The best ending.”
I don’t forgive him. But I let myself be comforted by him this one time. Once I stop crying, he hands me some tissues.
There’s a part of me that wants to lash out at him like a petulant teenager, to rage at him and defend my family business—our entire belief system. But other than Mar, there’s no one outside my family I can talk to about this. Freely and without any emotional ties to my family’s feelings.
And here’s my long-lost dad, who knows all about it.
“Things with Daniel are good. But.”
He waits for me to finish patiently. I appreciate it. “They’re good. But…not only did the whole baby thing throw me, but…there’s also someone else.”
I wait for shame to flood me, but I’m sitting here with someone who will never have any moral high ground over me. There’ssomething freeing about it. He nods and keeps his expression neutral, teetering on sympathetic.
“I am finding myself…questioning things. Nervous. It’s the first time since Mom died, where I feel like…my world has destabilized. I’ve always had this one thing, you know? This knowledge about my future, who I would end up with. Who I would behappy foreverwith.”
The “forever” hangs between us. He was supposed to be forever.
“And what would happen if you didn’t end up with Daniel?” he asks. And there, I see it, another flash of what he would have been like as a dad helping me through something. Homework. Friend drama. A broken heart. I wonder why he never had kids after me.
“I have no fucking idea what would happen,” I say with a broken laugh. “That’s the problem.”
For the first time, he allows himself a real smile with me. “Or maybe that’s the adventure.”
45
For some reason, I want to see Betty when I get home.
I drop my bag on my dining room table and open her cage. She must sense something in my mood because instead of screaming at me and flying away in indignation, she hops to the back of a chair. I pet her, her feathers soft like velvet.
“You have no idea what the past twenty-four hours have been like,” I say to her. She tilts her head and just stares at me with her beady little eyes. I scratch under her chin fondly. I remember Betty loving my mom. I was a little nuisance in Betty’s life, loud and fighting for her favorite person’s attention, but my mom was her entire world. It occurs to me that she probably also knew my dad.
After pouring myself a giant glass of ice water, I walk out onto my back deck. The night sky is a little hazy, but the moonlight is still bright. I call Mar.
The sound of jackhammering greets me before Mar shouts out, “Cass? Hold on a sec.” Some more noise and then it’s quieter when she says, “Sorry, I’m at the new space.”
It’s almost ten p.m. “Still? Are they even allowed to do that loud work this late?”
