“They’ve struggled, Dad.” I had to argue with him. It wasn’t like they’d had some amazing time. “They’ve had to fight for their lives.”
“And so did you, and you wouldn’t take a moment of that heartache and hurt and pain back because it made you who you are. I know what you went through with Marini. Do you think I don’t cry about it? Don’t wish with all my heart you didn’t have to? It plagued me for a long time, thinking about what you went through. I had dreams about it at night, and I would wake up and sit there in the dark wondering if I could have done something to save you. Would you take it back?”
“It was the only way to save us all. No.” Now I was the one who was crying. I’d dealt with this a long time ago. At least I thought I had. Maybe we never get over the kind of violation I survived. I’d joined a club no one wants to be a part of, and yet there are so many of us. There are probably more of us in that club than are not. Women understand how fragile we are, how our bodies and souls are protected by the thinnest of armor. And yet we are resilient. We somehow pull ourselves back together and move forward, the great and grand majority of us still finding a way to live and love and open ourselves again.
It’s what women do. In the human world. In the supernatural world.
If this had only happened to me, I would be moving on, trying to weave my life back together. But it had happened to my children. How did I let it go?
And then I realized I was sitting with the man who had the answer to that question. Danny and Dev had tried to talk to me. Declan had pleaded his own case. Lee had accused me. But my father knew what it meant to be in my position. “How did you stop thinking about it?”
“I didn’t. Never, daughter. Not a day goes by that I don’t have some thought about what you went through. It’s a scar on my heart that I couldn’t protect you,” he said. “But it’s the joy of my life that you came through it, that you survived. You are my pride and my joy, Zoey. I might not have been the best father in the world, but I did some things right by you.”
It no longer mattered that my father looked like a gorgeous woman in her twenties. I saw my dad standing there in front of me. I saw him in his slightly wrinkled suit, his silver hair slicked back with that one piece that could never be tamed. I saw his hazel eyes, so much like mine. I looked far more like my mother, with the exception of my dad’s eyes. I saw the man who’d raised me when he’d had no idea what to do with a little girl. My mother had walked away. We’d both been scared that day, both emotional and sad and betrayed, and he’d shoved aside his own pain to comfort me.
I stood and so did he, as though he knew I needed to be in his arms. My dad hugged me and I was six again, desperate to know that he would be here, that he wouldn’t leave like my mother had.
“I wouldn’t have anyone else, Dad. No one. No matter what we went through. If I could pick a thousand times I would always pick you.”
He had been thoughtless and reckless at times. He’d allowed Danny and I to do things no other parent would. I’d been angry with him. No one could make me feel as small as my dad could when he ignored me. He’d also been my everything, and he’d done as well as any imperfect, flawed human being could do.
He’d loved me with every fiber of his being, and that was all I could ask, all I could truly wish for.
“And I would pick you, girl. Every single time.” He stepped back, his thumb wiping away my tears. “Zoey, you forgave me for my mistakes. You have to forgive yourself for something that wasn’t a mistake at all. You didn’t mean to leave them. You didn’t have a choice. They grew up without you physically there, but they didn’t grow up alone. Albert told them stories. Trent did, too. When they came back from the other planes, Neil wouldn’t stop telling them about their mom. And you were there in their hearts and souls. No amount of time could erase the love you gave them for the eleven years you were there. Stop wishing for what could have been and see what you have. I know that you will eventually wake up and be the mom they need. It’s what you do. But, my darlin’, I won’t be here to see it.”