Chapter Twenty-Four
Jacob
“Nora! Come back!”
I went after her as she dashed away, and Anne and Roy followed me down the hall and into the backyard. Anne was crying, but there wasn’t time for me to stop and comfort her right now. I had to find Nora. She was in a really bad place after the news she’d just heard, and I had to make sure she was all right, wherever she’d run off to.
The yard was empty.
“Where would she have gone?” I asked her parents.
Roy sighed. “I don’t know. Did she take the car?”
I went and looked over the side gate. My car was still in the drive.
“No,” I said. “But she has to be around here somewhere. She really can’t have gone too far in the last couple of minutes.”
“We’ll go and look in the park down the street,” Roy said. “She used to go there on walks a lot when she was young.”
“Okay. I’ll go the other way,” I replied. I went back into the house to get Oscar, and I told him to sit in the backyard for a second. “Hey, boy. I need you to help me find your human. She’s out there somewhere. Go find her!”
Oscar barked and raced toward the back fence, and I frowned as I followed him. A few of the boards had come loose, and if I pulled all of them back at the same time, it made a space in the fence big enough for a person to fit through.
“Is this where she went, Oscar?” I asked.
The dog barked again and wormed his way through the hole, and I followed suit. On the other side of the fence was an expanse of trees and a path, and I followed Oscar down the path until I reached a creek. It was too dark to see much of anything other than the moonlight glinting off the murky water, but I carefully followed the dog down to the creek bank.
As we approached, I heard sniffles, and I knew Oscar had led me to the right place. “Nora?” I called out. “Are you there?”
“I need to be alone,” she replied. I had to strain to hear her voice; she was so quiet.
“Oscar is worried about you,” I replied, taking a step closer to where she was sitting under a tree at the top of the bank. “And so am I. We all are.”
“You know, just a month ago, I was talking about Walter Simmons’ life and saying how I couldn’t even imagine not knowing who my real father was, like what happened to him. And it turns out that’s actually my life too,” she said, a grim note in her voice.
“I know. Please come home and we’ll talk about it.”
“I can’t go back there. Not now,” she replied tearfully. “My parents…they lied about everything for so long. I can’t even look at them.”
“I know you’re upset at them. Can we at least talk about it, though?” She shrugged, and I took a seat on the leafy bank next to her. “Okay, I know you don’t want to talk, so let me say some things.”
“Okay. Fine,” she whispered.
“Remember how I told you about my father? How he took off when my Mom was pregnant?”
She nodded.
“Well, see, I always knew who he was. Mom told me who he was, so I kept tabs on him over the years. And you know what? It was fucking horrible. I hated knowing that this man was out there, not wanting me or needing to know me at all. He knew I existed, and he simply didn’t give a flying fuck. You know how that made me feel?”
“Shitty, I presume,” she said softly.
“Worse than shitty. It was fucking horrible, growing up knowing that one of my parents didn’t want me.”
“I’m so sorry, Jacob,” she said.
I took a breath and continued. “I always felt like I had to prove something to people; prove that there was a reason to want me or need me. But I never really felt like I achieved it. I never felt like I was actually good enough, because deep down, no matter what I did, no matter how smart I was or what I achieved, I still knew that my own father didn’t want me.”
“But he never even met you. Maybe he would’ve changed his mind if you just had the chance to meet him. That’s why I’m so mad at my parents. They never gave me the chance.”
I shook my head. “No, he did meet me. My Mom did the same as your parents; tried to track him down and show him photos of me and so on. She even took me to see him once. He threw us out. He didn’t care. Didn’t want me.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“He’s the one who should be sorry. Because you know what? After a while I realized my head was full of shit. I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. I was good enough, the whole time. He was the one who wasn’t good enough to be my father, because if he was, he would’ve shown up and been my father. But it took me over twenty years to realize that.”
Nora was silent as she digested what I’d said, and I took the chance to make my point. “So I think this is what your parents wanted to do for you, Nora. They had two choices. They could either let you grow up happy and blissfully unaware of your true parentage, or they could tell you who he was. And part of telling you who he was meant telling you he didn’t want you or care about you or love you. The man was a criminal scumbag who literally wanted you aborted. So you would’ve grown up with a similar childhood experience to my own—always feeling sort of empty, always feeling like you weren’t good enough for your own father to want or love. I don’t think your parents wanted that for you.”
“I guess.”
“So tell me…if it was you, which choice would you make for your own child?” I asked. “Would you try to give them the happiest life you could, or would you go for full honesty, even if that meant possibly ruining their childhood and emotional wellbeing?”
Nora was silent, and I knew I’d hit home with my point.
“Maybe never telling you was the wrong thing to do,” I said. “And that’s all on them. That was their choice. But can you at least try to understand why they did it?”
She nodded. “I guess it’s a bit like what you did with Ina.”
“Exactly. I know I did something wrong there. Did something illegal. But if it was between that and sending her back to a horrible life, then shit…I pick the lesser of two evils every time. That’s what your parents did. They made their choice in a really messy situation, and they’ve been living with it ever since.”
Nora went silent again, and I slung an arm around her. “Your father…well, the man you know as your father, anyway. Roy. He’s the one who loved you and wanted you and took care of you, even before you were born. He raised you, and he never once treated you differently to your younger brother, did he?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“The man who got your mother pregnant—he was nothing. Just a sperm donor. He’s not your real dad. But the man who’s out there roaming the streets right now looking for you…you know who would do that for you?”
As I finished my sentence, the faint sound of Roy’s voice in the distance carried over to us on the wind, calling out Nora’s name as if to emphasize my point.
“My real dad,” Nora said softly.
“Exactly. He gave you a wonderful childhood, and so did your mom,” I said. “Well, a ‘boring, regular’ childhood as you put it a while ago, which believe me, is wonderful. I would’ve killed to have a regular childhood when I was young.”
“I get it,” she said. “I’m sorry, Jacob. I’ve been so selfish. It never even occurred to me that you went through something so similar. I just…I was so upset I could only see my own problems.”
“It’s fine. Everyone’s allowed to be a bit selfish from time to time. But I think you should go back and talk to your parents now,” I replied. “You need to stop running and hiding. Face the issue head on, like I said earlier.”
She sighed and hugged her knees to her chest, looking out at the moonlit water of the creek. “Okay,” she finally said. “I’ll go back. I’ll talk to them.”