Leaving the closet, I walk over to him and see that he’s holding a jewelry box. Taking it from him, I open it, and my breath catches when I see the ring inside.
Not just any ring, but a wedding set.
“Holy shit, your dad had a ring just sitting in a drawer?” Ridge sounds as shocked as I feel.
The ring has a gold band with one medium-sized circular stone in the middle, with some tiny diamonds on the band. It’s nothing special in general, but it has to mean something for him to have it.
My eyes dart to the top of the box to look for the brand, but my heart stops when I see something folded in the lid. Carefully, I remove the object and hand the box to Ridge. Wordlessly, he steps closer to my side, resting his hand on my lower back, offering me silent support, letting me know that I’m not dealing with this revelation on my own.
I unfold the worn paper and discover it’s a photo. It’s sepia-toned, and the edges are torn. It’s clearly old, but what gets my attention is who is in it. A man and a woman, young and happy. It’s clear that they love each other by the way they are looking at one another.
Ridge’s breath catches. “Is that…”
“Not my mom. I’m pretty sure it’s my aunt,” I whisper.
“Wait, what?” he asks, shocked.
I blow out a breath as I fold the paper back up. “I was never supposed to find out, but according to my grandma, my dad was in love with my aunt. They were together for years, happy, but one night he made a mistake. He was drunk and woke up in the middle of the night to a woman crawling into bed with him. He thought it was Aunt Heidi, but it was really her younger sister. Months later, when she was pregnant, she came forward and said the baby was his. Everyone thought it was a lie until the paternity test came back positive. Heidi took off. Dad tried to make it work with my mom, but we all know how that ended.” I shrug.
It ended with him having a baby with a woman he couldn’t stand, who left me with him and never looked back.
Ridge
“Holy shit,” I mutter.
Out of all the things she could have told me, I wasn’t expecting that.
“He never said anything,” I say, thinking about all the nights we sat talking about life.
I knew all about the shit he went through with Rain’s mom, yet he never once mentioned the sister. He never once mentioned that he was in love once. Even when he talked about Rain’s mom, I could tell it wasn’t love. It was more like an obligation. My heart breaks for him, knowing he had to give up one love in order to keep the other. His daughter.
Rain shrugs. “I’m not surprised. My mom ruined his life by having me. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant with me, he would have ended up with his true love and had a family with her.”
I can see the weight this holds on her shoulders. She feels guilty for not being able to give her father that true love of his.
“You know that’s not your fault, though, right? The sins of your mother aren’t yours to carry.”
Rain looks up at me with sad eyes. “I was proof of his infidelity. Willingly or not.”
“Your dad loved you,” I remind her. “More than anything. He might have loved your aunt, but when he found out about you, you became his entire world.”
“I know,” she says softly.
I watch as she puts the picture back where it was before shutting the box and setting it back on the dresser.
“I’m surprised he kept the ring.” She pauses. “Although he probably forgot he had it.”
I bite my tongue to stop myself from telling her she’s wrong. The box was in the front of his dresser, barely concealed, and by the look of that photo, it’s been looked at a thousand times over the years.
“Your aunt, do you know her?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Know of her, yes. Actually met her, never. She took off before I was born and never looked back. Dad got really drunk one night when I was in high school and said that sometimes it hurt to look at me because I looked like her.”
“I wonder where she is or if she knows he died,” I muse.
“Who knows, and probably not. It’s none of her business, though, since she left.”
I disagree, but I keep that to myself. If I were her, I would want to know if the person I loved was gone, even if I had moved on.
