BLOOD CALLS TO BLOOD
“Emily, as your husband, Ill set one condition. Lets forget this foolish fling with your eager lover. But grant me one thinggive me a son.” I sounded pitiful, humbled in a way Id never been before.
“Alright, James, Ill try,” my wife murmured hesitantly. The agreement weighed heavily on her.
…Emily and I had raised three daughters: twelve-year-old Charlotte, nine-year-old Sophie, and eight-year-old Lily.
Where this twenty-year-old upstart, Oliver, had come from, I couldnt fathom. He tore my life apart at the seams. They say its not age that ages a man, but grief.
The girls were bewildered. Their mother, once warm and doting, had turned into a ghostoverly polished, distant. Everything at home fell apart. Dust gathered in thick drifts on every surface, dishes piled up unwashed in the sink. I grew snappish, lost in my own head, scrambling for ways to bring my wayward wife back.
…It had started six months prior.
A chance meeting on a cruise ship, or so it seemed. Emily had taken the girls to the seaside. She returned distracted, answering in half-sentences, staring straight through me, no longer smothering the girls with kisses as she used to. Suspicion gnawed at mesomething wasnt right. The cracks in our marriage were widening, but I played oblivious. Facing her betrayal would have shattered me. Time would tell. And it did.
“Dad, Mum spent the whole holiday arm-in-arm with Oliver,” Sophie blurted out innocently.
“Tell me more, love,” I said, forcing calm while my blood ran cold.
“Well, at the beach, this man was always with us. Mum laughed at his jokes. He even saw us off at the station. Handsome, stylish. Younger than you.” Sophies words gutted me.
It couldnt be real. Just a silly holiday fling, nothing more. What could a flashy young rake want with a thirty-year-old woman saddled with three children? Werent there enough girls along the promenade? Snap his fingers, and theyd flock to himtanned, carefree, hungry for adventure.
But I was wrong.
Emily and Oliver were tangled up for life.
No pleading, no appeals to conscience, not even the children could save our marriage. Peace deserted me for good.
Emily did give meor perhaps herselfa son, little William. But he never saw me as his father. I barely laid eyes on him. Oliver raised him. Emily took the boy and left for good. I stayed behind with my daughters. The thought of ending it all crept in, ice settling in my chest.
“Dad, since Mums gone, well cook and clean for you,” Lily whispered, dabbing my tears with her handkerchief. It was the only time I let myself break.
I pulled myself together. Three little ladies depended on me. I taught them what I couldscolded them, frightened them, sometimes hurt them without meaning to. But the house grew tidy again. Charlotte adored washing up, Sophie swept the floors, Lily chased dust from every corner. I managed the cooking, barely.
Emily visited sometimes, but it only reopened wounds. The girls wept for hours afterward. So I asked her to stay away.
“James, I love them. Youd have me abandon them for you?” she argued.
“No, Emily, for *them*. If you love them, let them grow up first. Then theyll decide if they want to see you.” I hoped I sounded firm.
“Maybe youre right. I cry after seeing them too. Time will settle this. Goodbye, James.” With one last kiss for the girls, she left.
…By their teens, my daughters despised their mother and William. I think they envied himhe had a mother he could touch, one who doted on him alone.
…When they married, their bitterness softened. The rage faded, but the hurt remained, bitter as wormwood. Charlotte and Sophie had four children each; Lily had three. They vowed to be better mothers than Emily had been.
I live alone now. There were other women, but I called them all “Emily.” No one stayed long. My heart clung to just one. You cant rewrite the past, and memory wont erase it. So Ive stayed a bachelor.
…Emily passed at sixty. A week before, she came to me unannounced, weeping, begging forgiveness, raging about William. She couldnt fathom ithed changed, become a woman. Endured surgeries, claimed hed never been happier.
Then came the will. Oliver, a successful businessman, had signed everything over to her. Loved her blindly. Yet she left him nothingeverything went to the girls and William. His transformation, she said, hastened her death.
Why? Maybe blood runs thicker. She *did* love our daughters. Just buried it deep.
The girls offered me their inheritance. “You deserve it, Dad.”
I refused. That money burned my hands. I passed it to the grandchildren.
Oliver went bankrupt, begged my daughters for help. “You stole our mother, our childhood. Now live with it,” they said.
Williamnow Willowmarried an Italian, Roberto. Truthfully, hed always been delicate, pretty. They live in Italy, planning to adopt. Lily writes to her, but Charlotte and Sophie want nothing to do with Willow.
This all happened in England, where Id brought my family for a better life.
