“She was going to live with her mother. I might be old school, but a girl belongs with her mother if it’s at all possible. There was never any fight for custody. I didn’t want her to hold a grudge against the woman she needed to look up to.” Taso shook his head and sighed. “Eleni didn’t want to lie to her. It was all my idea. I didn’t fight her for custody of the girls, agreed to the support she wanted, and promised I’d never miss a visit with my daughters. In exchange, I asked her for two things in return. One of them was to say it was me who had had the affair. Eleni wouldn’t come right out and say it, wouldn’t lie to the girls, if asked. But she promised to never tell them outright. The night I left for good, I apologized to the girls for what I’d done to break up our marriage. All the years that followed, they never asked anything else about my supposed affair, and Eleni never told them anything different.”
“Bianca harbors a pretty heavy grudge against you still.”
Taso’s shoulder’s slumped. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I know. When I came up with the plan so many years ago, I figured they were kids and would get over it. Bianca, though, she could never really forgive me.”
I realized in that moment how much trust Bianca was placing in me by giving me a second chance. She’d never even afforded her father that same opportunity. I turned to Taso and looked him straight in the eyes. “I have to tell her.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “I understand. She’s not a little girl who needs protecting anymore. She’s a grown woman who deserves the truth from a man she clearly cares about. The lies were what ended things between Eleni and me. I loved her. Part of me still does, if I’m being honest. But when I figured out what was going on, I gave her a second chance. Thought maybe we could move past it, if we worked hard enough. A few months after, things had just started to settle down again, when I caught her in another lie. Went to her office and found…well…I’m sorry…you don’t really need to know the details.”
After that, we sat and talked for a while longer. When my phone buzzed in my pocket, I realized I’d been gone for more than an hour. Taso saw me check my phone.
“My daughter?”
I nodded.
“You should go. Get this off your chest. She’s a big girl, loves her mother. She’ll eventually understand that sometimes when one person makes a mistake, it’s not always only that person’s fault. She’ll get over it. Just make sure you’re there for her when she needs to work through it.”
We both stood. I extended my hand to Taso. “Thank you for understanding.”
“Take care of my little girl.”Knowing it was the right thing, didn’t make it any easier. I stood outside of Bianca’s door for a few minutes before finally growing a pair and knocking. She answered almost immediately and stepped aside for me to enter. Bandit charged ahead and disappeared inside.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming back.”
“Sorry about that. I was talking to your dad, and we must have lost track of time.”
“You two seem to have hit it off. I hadn’t really thought of it until I watched you together, but you sort of remind me of my dad.” She scrunched up her nose. “Is that weird?”
“Only if that makes it weird for you.”
She smiled. “Would you like a glass of wine?”
“I’ll take something stronger, if you have it.”
Bianca went into the kitchen and brought us each back a glass. Mine was filled with an amber liquid. When she sat down and looked at me expectantly, I gulped back half of it without even a sniff test.
She got right to the point. “Something has been troubling you since you knocked on my door earlier. What’s going on?”
I took a deep breath. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Okay…”
“It’s something you’re not going to be happy about.”
It was her turn to drink some liquid courage. She tossed back half her wine glass and then looked me straight in the eyes. “I prefer the truth, even when it’s something I might not want to hear, Dex.”
“Alright.” There was no easy way to say it, so I just let it rip. “My father had an affair with your mother.”The floor was going to be worn from her pacing. Bianca had her silver stress balls singing a mile a minute in her hand as she walked back and forth. I’d explained what I knew from my talk with my father, and now she was trying to make sense of the lies. She’d passed through the disbelief stage and moved on to angry in the last fifteen minutes.