“He was so happy that day.”
I swallowed hard and lifted my eyes to meet hers. But I couldn’t give voice to the question I wanted to ask.
What did I do to make him hate me so much?
My mother slid another picture across the table. It was of a family I didn’t recognize. There was a stern-looking older man, a petite woman, and three small children. No one in the picture was smiling.
“He didn’t know I kept this picture,” she murmured.
“Who are they?” I asked as I let my eyes fall over the three young children.
“That’s your father’s family,” she explained. “He’s in the middle, his sister Jeannette is on the left, and his brother Andrew is on the right.”
I slowly sank into the chair in front of me and set the coffee mugs down. I let my fingers skim over my father’s image. “I have an aunt and an uncle?”
“No.”
I looked up at her in surprise. “Andrew died when he was ten. His father…your grandfather…beat him to death.”
I felt tears sting the backs of my eyes.
“Jeannette killed herself a couple of years later.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Your father was a hard man, Nolan. But he did love you.”
I shook my head, but found it impossible to speak.
“It’s true that neither of us were expecting you. We…we never wanted kids.”
I nodded because I’d figured as much.
“Life for your father was very hard growing up. His father hurt him almost every day of his life, Nolan. For no other reason than he was a bad man. Your father was convinced that whatever it was that made his father hurt him was also in his blood. One of the first things he told me when we met was that he didn’t want kids…he didn’t want to risk becoming like his father and hurting his child.”
“What happened to him? His father, I mean.”
“He went to prison for killing Andrew. Died a few years later of cancer. Jeannette became involved with someone just like him when she was eighteen. She jumped off a bridge a year later when she found out she was pregnant.”
I choked back my tears as I turned the picture over so I wouldn’t have to look at the doomed family.
“What about you?” I asked. “Why didn’t you want to have kids?”
“I grew up in a completely different kind of household. It was just me, my mother, and my father. They believed kids should be seen, not heard. Emotions were frowned upon, obedience was rewarded. There were no hugs or tears or laughter growing up. I didn’t want to bring a child into the world that I couldn’t share those things with.”
“But you kept me.”
“We did. We knew you were a gift from God and we loved you from the moment you were born, Nolan. You have to believe that,” she said sadly. “We tried, we really did. But for us, we were fighting so much more than just the normal fear that comes with being new parents. Your father was obsessed he might end up hurting you, and I had no idea how to be a mother. Yes, I fed you and changed your diaper, but I didn’t know how to do any of the rest of it. I’m not saying this to excuse anything,” she said, then shook her head. “He wasn’t a bad person, your father. He just didn’t know how to relate to you. As you got older, you started to like some of the things Andrew liked when he was a little boy. The reading, the music…it just scared your father, and it was easier for him to pull away.”
I hated the tear that managed to escape my eye. “You had to know what people were saying about me…what they were doing to me. Jimmy, his friends,” I whispered. “You never tried to stop it.”
It was my mother’s turn to stifle a sob. “I know,” she nodded. “We thought it would force you to act differently.”
“You mean more like a real boy,” I murmured.
“We were wrong, Nolan. Just like we were wrong not to encourage you to pursue your music.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“Because none of it was your fault, Nolan. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t do anything that made us not love you. You were a kind-hearted, sweet, beautiful little boy who deserved so much more than you got.”
I could feel myself shutting down as the emotions became too much. “It doesn’t matter,” I murmured.
I was about to get up when she slid another picture across the table. I swallowed hard when I recognized it. It was from two years earlier when I’d played at the Kennedy Center. Another picture followed, this one of me performing in London.
More photos appeared in my vision.
New York.
Berlin.
Paris.
San Francisco.
“What are these?” I asked.