Grantley
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No, it’s not true. You can’t say that. It’s a damn lie.”
My dad could barely catch his breath as he stood in front of me, repeating over and over how sorry he was.
“Did she tell you that?” I screamed. “Because she’s a fucking lying bitch.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Phoebe whimpered, clutching tightly onto my arm. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Nothing Phoebe, nothing at all, because it’s not true. Dad, please tell me it’s not true.”
I rushed to him and grabbed hold of his hand, tugging on it and pleading that he tell me he’d got it all wrong.
“I can’t, I’m sorry. I really wish I could.”
Dad’s eyes were full of sorrow and remorse and worst of all, full of truth.
He wasn’t my dad.
I’d grieved for his leaving for twenty years and he wasn’t mine to grieve for.
I dropped his hand and took two steps back, finding myself in Phoebe’s arms. She wrapped them around me, laying a wet cheek against my back.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Your mom confirmed it, after I figured it out.”
I drew in a sharp breath. She might have been lying.
“No,” Dad said. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s true, son.”
I gave an empty laugh. Son. How the hell could he call me that?
“I think we should leave you two alone,” Deanna said, moving alongside my dad. “Phoebe, sweetheart, how about you come and sit in the yard with me for a while.”
Phoebe looked up at me and then at Deanna.
“Will you be okay?” she asked, her voice breaking.
I nodded and as she let go of me and moved to walk away, I grabbed hold of her elbow and pulled her back to kiss her forehead.
“Are you sure?”
“Yep,” I whispered against her skin. “Go with Deanna. We need to talk.”
Once Deanna and Phoebe had closed the door behind them, my dad ushered me to sit down. As I did, I realized I couldn’t think of him as that any longer. He wasn’t my dad, but just Trent Miller, the man that raised me for six years.
“I still think of you as my son,” Trent said, clutching a hand to the back of his neck. “I never stopped loving and missing you.”
“So why the fuck did you leave me then?”
A vein pulsed in my temple, so fast I thought it was going to burst with the levels of anger running through it. I hated him for leaving, but I hated her more for making him. I hated them both.
Trent sighed. “If I could go back and make different decisions, I would.”
“What, you’d have never had an affair with that biker whore you left with?” My words were venomous, my tone full of spite, and I knew distaste was etched all over my face.
“I mean, I would have taken you with me, no matter what Sue-Ann said.”
Hearing his words should have comforted me, but the truth was they made my anger worse. He knew he’d done the wrong thing, yet in twenty years he’d never tried to make amends. I wanted to shake him and make him see how his decisions had fucked up my childhood. I would never be that happy kid that I should’ve been, because he didn’t take me with him.
“If you’d really wanted me, you would have taken me.”
“I wanted to, I swear, but she said if I did she’d have me arrested for snatching you. You weren’t mine to take, Grantley. I’d have been charged with kidnapping and could have faced a long time in jail. I figured if I left you, I could come back one day, when she’d calmed down and persuade her you’d be better off with me.”
My heart splintered as I remembered all the times I’d spent in the house, alone and scared. Times where she’d been drunk and unconscious, or high on drugs. Times when I had to put her to bed. Times I’d locked myself in my room while she partied with yet another stranger. Times and reasons that Dad could have used to bargain with her to give me a decent life.
“You know what the fucking sad thing is?” I cried. “She didn’t even fucking want me. I was a thorn in her damn side. If you’d have come back and asked, she’d have gladly given me to you.”
Trent let out a smothered sob. “Please don’t, son. I can’t-.”
“Yeah, well tough shit. You need to hear how she left me alone for days on end, with just a few dollars to buy food. I wasn’t even seven when she left me for the first time.”
“No.” Trent clutched at his chest, shaking his head vigorously.
His agony should have softened me, but I didn’t have it in me to care. I was still hurting from years of neglect from both him and Sue-Ann. I needed him to see how shit life had been for me.
“Yes, Dad! She left me in that house to fend for myself. I had to go to school as normal, feed myself and put myself to bed. Every night I slept with a kitchen knife, petrified that someone would break in. I was so damn scared I pissed the bed every night that first time, and every fucking morning I washed those damn green sheets and my pyjamas, hoping that they’d be dry by bed time came because I couldn’t get the fucking dryer to work.”
Trent moaned softly along with his quiet crying. He sounded pained, as though he’d had his heart ripped from his chest – well hard fucking luck. I’d felt that pain the day he rode out of my life on his bike.
“I wish I’d come back. I should have made her see sense. Why the fuck didn’t I come back for you?”
“You tell me,” I scoffed. “In fact, tell me everything Trent. Tell me all about how you found out, tell me who the hell my real father is, because I can’t wait to know.”
“You don’t need to know, Grantley. What good would it do?”
“I have no damn idea, but my whole life feels like a lie and I need to know the truth.”
Trent wiped at his eyes as he rocked backward and forward, looking at me intently.
“Your biological father was an ex-boyfriend of hers,” he finally said, his Adam’s apple bobbing on a swallow. “I caught them, taking drugs and having sex one day. She’d promised me she’d stopped with the coke. I knew she still drank, but she at least stayed sober until you’d gone to bed.”
“Yeah well nothing has changed,” I griped.
“I came home early from work, and you were watching TV alone, so I went out back and caught them in the laundry room. There was a bag of coke on top of the counter and she was bent over the washer with him inside her and snorting that damn poison off her back.”
He stopped and looked over at the bookcase and I knew he was staring at the photograph of us on his bike. The look on his face as he stared at happier times, told me that this was killing him, just as much as it was killing me, but I didn’t care. His pain was the least I deserved.
“How did you find out he was my father? Did she tell you?”
He shook his head. “I lost it. It wasn’t that I cared about her, we hadn’t cared for each other for a long damn time. Maybe since you were a year old and she’d started using again.”
“She’d used drugs before?”
“Before we were married.”
“Why the hell did you marry her then?”
“Because she was different then. She was fun and pretty and I loved every bone in her body. From the minute we met, I couldn’t wait to get her to County Hall and marry her.”
“But the day you found her with him, you didn’t love her anymore?”
“No, not for a long time.” He blew out his cheeks. “But I loved you with all my damn heart, and I couldn’t believe she’d let him into our house, taken drugs and fucked him, with you just a few rooms away, so I totally lost it. I beat the shit out of him.”
Nausea rolled around my gut at the realization that Sue-Ann had never really cared about me. Trent had loved me like a father should have and I wanted to scream at the injustice of it all.
“And that’s when she told you,” I stated, giving my attention back to Trent, who looked pale and broken.
“She confirmed it,” he said. “As I stood over him, about to punch him again, I saw your eyes looking up at me. There was no mistaking them. That pale green, with the flecks of brown. It could have been you. You even have his nose.”
The pain he must have felt was back in his heart, I could see it. The way he held a palm against his chest, the way his face crumpled and the way his eyes looked at me with regret.
“Your mom knew what I’d guessed. She saw it in my face and she just nodded. That was all she needed to do.”
“What happened to him? Did he leave, did she say anything to him?”
I didn’t care about the man, I just needed to know my history. I needed to learn about my life, my real life for the first time. My life that was playing out like those shit scripts that I’d rejected time and again, because the family story sounded so unreal.
“He ran out the back door, as soon as he got a chance. She didn’t care, she just said ‘well now you know’.”
“How come I never heard any of it? I don’t remember any argument. I just remember the day you left.”
Trent shook his head. “You had the TV so loud, you could have woken the dead with it.” He gave a short laugh. “You always did. We even got you a hearing test once, because we thought you might be deaf, but you weren’t.”
An image of me as a young kid, pushed to the forefront of my mind and it gave me a hint of the happiness I’d felt, before life went to shit.
“I remember. The man gave me a lollipop when I passed with flying colors.”
Trent smiled, creasing the corners of his eyes. “You were three years old and the spunkiest little kid I have ever known. Cute little fucker, too.” Sadness shrouded his features as looked at me. “You just didn’t take after me,” he said wistfully.
“How long after you found them, was it that you left?”
“A couple of weeks. I got myself a job in Cleveland, rented us an apartment, and told your school that you were leaving. It was just a fling with Rebecca, the girl I left with. We’d hooked up a couple of times, but when she heard I was going she asked if she could come too. I didn’t see why not. She was a good kid and I knew it wouldn’t last, but she was nice. I’m not proud of hooking up with her, Grantley, but your mom and me, we’d been done a long time and I was lonely.”
I heard everything, but the one thing that stuck in my mind was that he’d told my school I was leaving. My throat felt raw as tears pooled in my eyes at his words.
“You were taking me with you.” I stated.
“Of course I was. I may not have put you in her belly, but you were my boy. I loved you.”
I swallowed back a sob at his sentiment, and it took everything in me not to break down and collapse at his feet.
“So why didn’t you take me?” I asked, my voice sounding small and fearful.
“Like I said, Sue-Ann threatened to get me arrested for kidnapping. She said…” He closed his eyes and sighed. “She said, she’d tell them I’d abused you too.”
My blood went cold as I thought of the cold-hearted bitch who had ruined my life. The lies she had told from the minute I’d been conceived to now. This one, about Trent needing my kidney, the biggest and vilest of them all, was just another line on the never-ending list.
“She is fucking poison,” I hissed, hating her with every single fiber of my being.
“Yeah she is,” Trent said on a long exhale. “She was going to let you come with me, but when she found out about Rebecca, well that’s when she said you had to stay. It damn near killed me riding away from you that day.”
“Why didn’t you stay? Why go to Ohio? Why not stay close?”
“I did for a few days. I put off my new job and hung around trying to persuade her. I went to the house after you left for school every day for a week, begging her to let me take you. In the end I thought I’d go and come back for you, let her calm down. It was going to be a week at most, but I broke my ankle at work and couldn’t ride my bike for months.”
“You could have called me, or written. Got Rebecca, or whatever her name was, to drive you. Anything, to let me know you were coming back.”
I wanted to heave out a huge sob, for the boy I’d been. The lost and lonely boy who thought his daddy didn’t love him anymore.
“I called seven times and every time she put the phone down on me. Wouldn’t let me talk to you. I didn’t see the point in writing, she’d have ripped them up and you were six, Grantley, were you really going to read my letters? As for Rebecca, she left as soon as I got laid up with my ankle. Said she didn’t sign up to be a nurse maid. I could barely hobble around my apartment never mind come back to you. My boss even put me on reduced pay because he had to give me a ride every day so I could work in the office until I healed. So, do you see how hard it was?”
I shrugged, realizing he was probably right, but it didn’t make what happened to me any easier to stomach. No journey, pain, or suffering should be enough to stop you from getting to your kid.
“I finally made it back and you were in the front yard playing ball with her and I thought I’d die of happiness. I hadn’t seen you for three whole months.”
“I don’t remember that,” I said, furrowing my brow.
“You didn’t see me. Before I got to you, he came out of the house, your real father. He picked you up and tickled you, making you laugh and then carried you on his shoulders inside the house while your mom held your hand.”
I took in a shuddering breath. Knowing he had been so close made me want to scream. If only I’d looked up, or he’d called out to me.
“I don’t remember him, or that day,” I said, pushing the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to stem the tears. “There were a lot of different men around after you left.”
And there was a whole line of them, which started just days after Trent left. My ‘real dad’ must have been one in that line.
“I puked my guts up, seeing him with you,” Trent said. “And I just knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t watch another man bring you up. You seemed happy with them both and I thought you’d forgotten about me. I called one more time after that and she told me the three of you were moving to Florida.”
“We never moved to Florida,” I protested. “We stayed in that house until I was thirteen and we only moved then because she couldn’t afford it. And I certainly don’t remember any particular guy hanging around for long at that time.”
“I didn’t know. I cut myself off and just transferred money for you into her bank account each month. I found out a few years back that he was already married and had died of a heart attack about a year after I left.”
I looked at Trent and saw how he’d appeared to have aged in the last hour. He was still the tall, lean, and handsome guy I’d remembered, with bright blue eyes and sun-bleached hair, but he looked tired and pale, with a few more lines on his face than when we’d arrived at his house.
“I should have come to find you,” I said quietly. “When I was old enough, I should have looked for you.”
God, how I wished I had. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t my biological father, he’d been my dad. The man who’d loved and nurtured me. The man I’d looked up to. We had both wasted so much fucking time.
“No, son,” he replied, shaking his head. “Do not blame yourself for this. There’s only one person to blame and that’s Sue-Ann. For not letting me see my boy all those years ago, and for lying about this now. And speaking of which, what the hell is she up to?”
I raked a hand through my hair and then scrubbed it down my face. I couldn’t believe I was even thinking it, but I had a suspicion of what Sue-Ann was up to.
“I have an idea,” I said.
I hoped to God I was wrong, but was fearful I wasn’t.
“I don’t know how she thought she’d get away with it,” I continued. “But I think she was going to sell my kidney.”
Trent’s eyes went wide as he opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He was shocked, but what was so damn ugly about it all, was that I really wasn’t. Sue-Ann was selfish and mean and only ever thought of herself. She was a take, take, take and fuck the consequences person – even if her own child got caught in the crossfire. That thought, even though it wasn’t new to me, was like a dagger to the heart. I was that lonely, scared kid who just wanted his momma to care about him, all over again.
“I offered her money, but obviously it wasn’t enough. Whereas if someone is desperate for a kidney, they’ll pay a shit load more than I’d ever give her.”
“You have to be joking,” Dad gasped. “No way, she wouldn’t.”
“Yeah she would. She’s still hooked on the booze and drugs and even coming to see me in the UK, she stopped over in Paris to pick up some drugs to mule over.”
“What the fuck?”
“Oh yeah, she’s a real treasure.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I growled. “But whatever it is, she’ll fucking wish I’d never been born.