“I couldn't have stopped her. How could I?” Force, threats, removal, divorce, the police, there had been a lot of options. “What could I do? If I criticized her for what she did to you, she was worse to both of us, to you particularly. All I could do was leave, and start a new life somewhere else. It was the only answer for me.” And what about me, she wanted to scream at him. What new life did I have? “I thought you were better off with the Sisters. And your mother would never have let me take you.”

“Did you ever ask her, after she left me there?” She wanted to know it all. These were the answers she needed from him. They were the key to her life now.

“No, I didn't,” he said honestly. “Barbara would have objected to it. You were part of another life, Gabriella. You didn't belong with us.” And then he delivered the final blow. “You still don't. Our lives have gone separate ways for years, it's too late to recapture it now. And if Barbara knew I was seeing you today, she'd be furious with me. She'd feel it was a betrayal of our children.”

Gabriella was horrified at what he was saying. He didn't want her, never had, and had simply walked away and left her to her own devices.

“But what about her daughters? Didn't they live with you?”

“Of course, but that was different.”

“What was different about it?”

“They're her children. All you were to me then was a bad memory, a relic of a nightmare I wanted to walk away from. I couldn't bring you with me. Just as I can't now. Gabriella, our lives have been separate for years. We no longer belong to each other.” But he had two sons and two stepchildren, and a wife. She had no one.

“How can you say something like that?” There were tears in her eyes, but she refused to allow them to overwhelm her.

“Because it's true. For both of us. Every time you saw me you'd remember the pain we inflicted on you, the times I was unable to help you. In time, you'd hate me for it.” She was already beginning to. He was none of the things she had dreamed about. He had been helpless then, and he still was. He didn't have the courage to be her father.

“How could you not call me for all these years?” she asked now, close to tears, but she no longer cared what he thought about her. He was indifferent and cruel and he had failed her completely. He had no love for her at all, and nothing to give anyone. He was selfish, and weak, and just as he had been ruled by her mother years before, he was now being ruled by a woman named Barbara.

“What was there to say to you, Gabriella?” He looked across his desk at her with exasperation. And it was clear to her that he didn't want her to be here. “I didn't want to see you.” It was that simple. He had had nothing in his heart to give her, or possibly anyone, not even the pretty children in the pictures. She pitied all of them, and most of all him, for everything he wasn't. He wasn't even a person. He was a cardboard figure.

“Did you ever love me? Either of you?” she asked, choking on a sob now, and he found her demonstration of emotions distasteful. He looked agonized by it, and Gabriella knew he wished she would disappear. But she didn't care. This was for her, not for him. This was everything she needed to take with her to her future. He didn't answer her, and she looked at him with eyes that would not release him. “I asked you a question.”

“I don't know what I felt then. Of course I must have loved you. You were a child.”

“But not enough to take me into the rest of your life. All I got was nine years. Why?”

“Because it was a failure. It was more than that, it was a disaster. And you were a symbol of that disaster.”

“I was a casualty of it.”

“That's unfortunate,” he said sadly, acknowledging it tacitly. “We all were.”

“But you never wound up in the hospital. I did.” She was relentless now, in her pursuit of the truth, but painful as it was, she was glad she had come here.

“I knew you'd hate us for that. I told her so. She had no control over herself whatsoever.”

“Why did she hate me so much?” And why did you love me so little, was the question she didn't ask him. But she knew now that he wasn't capable of it, and probably never had been.

He sighed and sank back into his leather chair, looking exhausted. “She was jealous of you. She always was. Right from the moment you were born. I don't think she had it in her to be a mother. I never realized that when I married her. I suppose I should have.” And he didn't have it in him to be a father, no matter how many pictures he had on his desk now. And then he looked at her, anxious to end the meeting. “Is that it, Gabriella? Have I answered all your questions?”

“Most of them,” she said sadly, although she realized now that some of them would never be answered. He just didn't have what it took to be a father. He was less of a person than she had ever imagined. But maybe, in some secret part of her, she had always known that, and never wanted to face it. Maybe, as Peter said, the answers were within her.

Her father stood up then, and looked at her. He did not come around the desk as she had thought he would. He did hot reach out and hug her, or try to touch her. He stayed as far away from her as possible, and even armed with what she knew now, it still hurt her.

“Thank you for your visit,” he said, indicating that the meeting was over. He pressed a button on his desk, and the secretary reappeared and stood holding the door open for Gabbie.

“Thank you,” Gabriella said. She did not call him “Daddy” this time, or try to kiss him. There was no point. The man she remembered had been bad enough, this one was worse. And whatever he was, whoever he had been to her once, he was no longer her father. He had given up the job fourteen years before, and abdicated completely. That was entirely clear now. The father she had known, such as he was, had died the day he left them.

She stood in the doorway for one last minute and looked at him, wanting to remember him, and then she turned around and walked away without saying another word to him. There was nothing left to say now. It was truly over.

And as soon as the secretary closed the door again, he came around his desk, looking pained. It was like looking through a window into the past for him, and remembering all that sorrow. She was a pretty girl, but he felt nothing for her. He had closed that door a long time before, and there was no opening it again. He had always known that. And trying not to think of her, and the look in her eyes that bore into him like hot coals, he opened a cabinet, mixed himself a stiff martini, and stood staring out the window as he drank it.





Chapter 25




WHEN GABRIELLA LEFT her father that afternoon, she went straight to the ticket office on Fifth Avenue and bought a ticket to San Francisco. And as she purchased it, she was still thinking of the meeting with her father. Nothing about it had gone as she had expected. She felt sad in a way, and relieved too. She realized now that what had happened wasn't because of her, because in fact she had been so terrible, but because they were flawed. It was not because of who she was at the time, but who they weren't. And she had only just begun to understand that.

He was such an empty man, so cold, so frightened, so unable to cope with reality or honest emotions. It still stunned her that during the entire time in his office, he had never touched her, and would have shrunk from it if she tried to. He didn't want her in his life, and hadn't for years. In his mind, she was still too closely linked with her mother. But at least she understood something about him now. It was not that he had withheld something from her at the time, he had never had it to give her, or maybe even to give her mother. And he was right about one thing. It was too late now. As much as she had longed for him for all those years, and dreamed of him, and told herself that he would he there for her, if only he knew where she was, she now knew that he had known where she was all along, and didn't even care enough to see her. He didn't love or want her, there was no hiding from that fact now. It hurt to know that, but in its own way, it freed her. It was almost as though he had died fourteen years before, and she could lay the body to rest now. All these years, he had only been missing in action, and now she had a body to bury. She could still see him watching her as she left his office.

And when she got back to the boardinghouse, she found that Peter had called her from the hospital. She called and had him paged, and told him about the meeting.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked, sounding worried.

“Sort of,” she said honestly. It still hurt her that her father hadn't even wanted to hold her, or kiss her. But that was who he had always been. He had never held her then either, she now remembered. Seeing him had brought back a lot of memories, none of which were pleasant. The only time she remembered him being tender with her, or even something close to it, was the night before he left them. And knowing what he was about to do, he probably felt guilty. “You were right about one thing,” she told Peter, “I think some of the answers are within me. I just didn't know it.” He was relieved to hear it. He was nervous about this odyssey of the past she had embarked on. He suspected that it was going to be very painful for her, and not the homecoming she wanted.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked. They had just paged him again, and he knew he couldn't talk much longer.

“I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow.” He didn't know why, but he felt as though he should go with her. But he knew she'd never let him. She was determined to slay her dragons single-handed, no matter how dangerous, or how painful. And he admired her for it.