Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Still… It hardly matters now. It doesn’t change the consequences … the loss of years wondering why I wasn’t enough for my father to want me in his life, the loss of knowing him, the lost opportunities to grow up with some sense of who I really was. The pain is sharp, almost physical, but I need to let it bleed and feel it for a moment so I can let it go. While I don’t think I’m ready to let go of the resentment towards my mum, I have to let go of this pain and loss inside me, or else it will tear me apart. I take in deep breaths and blow them out slowly, and I start to feel a tiny bit better.
I sniffle and open my eyes, staring at the screen. My father’s gaze feels gentle, and I manage a half-smile. I hit play, and the video goes on.
“I do not blame Tracey,” he says quietly. “I cannot. She acted to protect herself in the only way she understood. But it is my hope that you now know the truth. That you understand, finally, that your absence from my life was not a reflection of you, or my love for you, but of painful circumstances out of my control.”
I rest my forehead against my hands, and the room spins slightly. The anger is still there, but so is a strange tenderness. I want to cry, scream, and hug someone all at once. The revelation about my parentage is overwhelming, and I don’t really know how to process the emotions surging through me because I have never felt anything like this before.
“I hope you like the paintings. I bought them for you based on the artists you loved and admired the most.”
I stare at his pain-worn face almost in disbelief. Can it really be possible that this stranger loved me that much and I never knew?
“I love you, Jo. I always have and always will. Even when I am no more, I will always be with you. Whenever you see a fluffy cloud in the sky, it could be me sitting there watching you, your very own guardian spirit.”
Just like that, the video ends, and the screen goes black, leaving me in silence among the paintings. I feel hollow, yet strangely full at the same time. I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself. The truth is undeniable. My mother lied. She kept me from my father, from knowing him, not because she feared him, but to punish him for not loving her. She did it for me, she says, but I don’t think that’s the truth. And the betrayal of that, well, it cuts deep.
My first instinct is to call my mum and have this out with her, but I decide that some distance is necessary. I need to process this trauma without her. Without the weight of her presence and her justifications clouding my thoughts. Forgiveness will come later, when I am ready, but first, I need to breathe, to reconcile, and to understand. I need to adjust to this new information before involving someone else’s emotions too.
For now, I don’t want to think about it. I stand and walk slowly among the paintings once again, letting my fingers hover over canvas, feeling the subtle, almost electrical vibrations of the paint pigments, the varnish, the history trapped in each brush stroke. My father is absent, but in his collection, in the care he took of his legacy, I feel a tangible connection.
He wasn’t a perfect human being. One doesn’t become a billionaire by being a saint. Yes, he had been constrained and bound by my mother’s threat. His fall from grace would have been great, indeed if my mother had carried on with her threat to utterly destroy his reputation. And yet, I wish he had come and explained his situation to me sooner, perhaps when I was eighteen, or even once I graduated from college. I sense his pride in me, though, and that fills a space that has been empty for far too long. His quiet, persistent joy in knowing who I would become is evident in this vault.
I sink into the chair at the workstation. Strange, but already some of the tension in my shoulders has begun to ease. The vault is silent except for the faint hum of the air regulatory system and the soft whirl of my laptop’s fan. My father’s words echo in my head, and I realize that, for the first time, I feel fully seen. Not by my mother, not by strangers, but by the man who seeded me into this world, and wanted nothing more than to be able to love me, even from afar, even never having the love returned.
It is a strange thing, and yet it is enough. It comforts me.