The Dare

But Karen isn’t here so I can give everything to Amelia. That’s the same reason I don’t date anyone else either. I have to give everything that I can to the life that I have right now, to my family.

Eventually, after dinner, my mother heads to her apartment on the left-hand side of my house, which used to be the guest house until I found myself alone, and I go through the bed time routine with Amelia. We play for a while, then I bathe her, and read her a story in bed. Amelia hugs me a lot through all of this, clinging to me, especially at the part of the story which talks about the character’s mother. Mom’s are impossible to avoid in children’s stories, and it always makes me feel guilty, because I’m sure that Amelia is becoming more self-aware. She’s going to eventually realize that her mother isn’t around, and she will want to know why. I’m dreading the day when she will blame herself and wonder why she wasn’t enough to make her mother stick around.

I won’t have the answers for her. Nothing satisfying anyway, and it’s going to be really hard on both of us. My mother will be able to help with that as well, but again, I will be her father and she her grandmother. Neither of us will be the woman who she really wants which scares me. I don’t know how to make it right.

I would do anything for Amelia, which only leaves me with more questions when it comes to Karen. How could she not want the same for her daughter as well? How could she not care enough? I torture myself with these questions all the time when I’m at home. I wind myself up with questions about Karen over and over again.

I sneak out of the bed as Amelia finally drifts off to sleep in the middle of the story, and I tip toe across her room to flick her light off. But before I darken the room, I stop for a couple of seconds and admire my girl proudly, happy to have her with me. In all of the mess that has come with Karen, Amelia is the one out come that I can be happy with. I wouldn’t change my daughter for anything in the world. I adore her.

And it’s because I adore her that I eventually leave the bedroom because I have a phone call to make. One that’s very challenging for me, that I don’t really want to make, but that I have to for Amelia.

Ring, ring… Ring, ring… Ring, ring…

I pace up and down the living room with anxiety coursing through my veins as I wait for the phone to be answered. I make these calls a lot, but I never know which way it’s going to go, nor do I know what way I want it to go. Either outcome scares the living shit out of me which only makes it weirder…

“Hey there, Zack”.” Finally, Terry, my private investigator answers. “I was just about to call you.”

My heart leaps up in to my throat. “What does that mean? You have something? You have found her?”

The life that I have now with Amelia spins through my mind and I imagine it being shattered in to a million pieces. If I didn’t think that my daughter might want to know what happened to her mother at some point, then I wouldn’t bother trying to track her down. But I need Amelia to know that I tried my best.

“I haven’t found her, no.” I’m disappointed and elated all at once. Nothing needs to change right at this moment. “But I am on a trail. I have found some places where she has definitely worked in the last year.”

Terry is getting closer. That terrifies me to the core. But I suppose this is good. Even if I close my eyes and remember the angry words Karen screamed at me as she packed to leave me. ‘You were only supposed to be a fling’. ‘I can’t be tied down to a stiff like you’. ‘There’s no way I could even think about marrying you’. Each word cutting me to the core, killing me, stabbing me and slicing my body to pieces, putting me off the idea of romantic love forever. Changing me and causing my walls to rise sky high around me. I don’t think anyone could tear them down now. They are closing me in, locking everyone else out, and that’s the safest way.

But this isn’t about me. It doesn’t matter that she was utterly cruel to me. As long as she can be nice to her own daughter then that’s all that matters. But if she ever does anything to hurt Amelia, or anything else since she already harmed her by leaving her, then things will change.