“Erin?” he whispered. The man was incredulous.
“Am I so invisible, Dad that you were going to waltz right past me?”
She was livid, he was in shock, and I was praying I could keep my fists to myself.
"Erin? Is it really you?" he asked. Caleb sauntered toward her, and she took a step back. The man looked like he might go in for a hug, while Erin looked like she might pull out a dagger and put him out of his misery.
"I don’t know, Dad, you tell me. Am I real? Am I a real person with emotions and needs? Maybe you don’t know the answer to that. Maybe that’s what made it so easy for you to leave. But let me tell you right now, this is the closest you’ll ever get to me. You don’t deserve to know us. Liam and I did just fine without you and we’ll continue that way. So why don’t you walk away again, but know, this time, that you’re not leaving us. We don’t want you. I’ll just tell your son that his father is dead.”
Erin could dish it out, that I was learning. She stood her ground and I had to fight every urge that surfaced to rescue her. Erin was her own hero, as usual, I was the coach in the background providing the fight ring.
"I," Caleb started to speak but then stopped.
"What could you possibly have to say for yourself?," Erin asked.
"Your mother cheated on me, and then I tried to kill myself," Caleb blurted out.
"Maybe you should have. Maybe I’d sooner forgive that than the abandonment we suffered at your selfishness. You can leave your wife and still support your children, those two things are not mutually exclusive. It’s called a divorce, it doesn’t absolve you of your responsibility to your own fucking children!”
Erin was dead on, and Walsh was definitely feeling the burn.
“You're going to blame Mom for leaving us? That’s right, throw the addict under the bus. She was so terrible that you couldn’t stand to live with her. You think that means she was qualified to care for us? It was too toxic an environment for you, so you leave your children to rot in it while you run off to the hills? Could you possibly be any more irresponsible?”
She had a point. Walsh couldn’t come up with a rebound because there wasn’t one. Erin was right. He fucked up and he was lucky his two kids were still alive.
“I learned to cook when I was eight, Dad. How to heat a baby bottle on the stove. By the time I was nine, I was stealing from grocery stores, not only for us, but for Mom and her endless string of slacker boyfriends, too. Is that what you wanted for us, Dad? Is that the situation you imagined us in when you thought of us? Or did you block it all out? Out of sight out of mind?
"I couldn’t take care of you because I was such a mess. I could barely take care of myself . I’m sorry."
"What about the seventeen years that followed?"
Erin dug the news clipping out of her pocket and shoved it in his face. "You had no problem coming here and starting a new life, finding a new wife, adopting her fucking daughter. You raised someone else's child and you abandoned your own." Erin pointed to the tattered article her father now held in his shaking grip. "Your only child? Not only did you leave me, you don't even want to acknowledge that I fucking exist."
Caleb closed his eyes, and turned away. Erin stepped closer to him and grabbed her newspaper clipping back, she then shoved the paper almost directly in his face.
“You adopted someone else’s daughter and called her your only child!”
"Let me make it up to you," Caleb tried. His arms were lifted in defense against the litany of wrongdoings being shoved in his face.
"I don't need you now. I grew up by myself and if I haven’t needed you all these years, I sure as hell don’t need you now. Liam might want to see you, but I'm done with you. I just wanted you to know the damage you did. I'm going to move on with my life and I plan on being happy. I thought I needed an explanation, but now I know, there’s no excuse for what you did."
As I listened to Erin, I felt both pain and pride. Heartache for what she endured as a child, but pride for how strong she became. I saw it in her face, the minute I laid eyes on her, my girl, she was a survivor, just like I was. Two souls cut from the same cloth.
"Erin, let me explain," Caleb begged.
"There’s nothing you can say that will affect the outcome. "Just go."