**The Call of Blood**
Marks voice was ragged, his pride in tatters. «Emma, as your husband, Ill set one condition. Forget this foolish fling with that boy. But give me a son.»
«Alright, Mark, Ill try,» Emma murmured, though hesitation laced her words. The weight of their agreement pressed on her like a stone.
We raised three daughters together: twelve-year-old Sophie, nine-year-old Charlotte, and eight-year-old Amelia. Where this smooth-faced twenty-year-old, Oliver, had come from, I couldnt fathom. He had shattered everythingmy home, my peace. They say its not years that age a man, but grief.
The girls were bewildered. Their mother, once warm and attentive, had become distant, ghostlike. Dust settled thick on every surface, dishes sat unwashed, and the air in the house turned stale. I grew snappish, lost in my own torment. How could I bring her back?
It had started six months earlier.
A chance meeting on a holiday cruise. Emma had taken the girls to Brighton for the summer. When she returned, she was differentabsent, staring through me, barely touching the girls. A cold suspicion gnawed at me. Something was wrong.
«Daddy, Mum spent the whole trip holding hands with Oliver,» Charlotte blurted one evening.
My stomach dropped. «Tell me more, sweetheart.»
«Oh, he was always with us. Made Mum laugh all the time. Even saw us off at the station. He was handsome. Younger than you.» Her words were daggers.
It couldnt be real. Just a fleeting summer romance, nothing more. Why would a boy like him want a woman of thirty with three children? The seaside was full of carefree girlswhy her?
But I was wrong.
Emma and Olivers love had taken root, stubborn as ivy. No pleading, no guilt, no thought for the children could save our marriage. My peace was gone forever.
She did give me a sonWilliam. But he was never mine. I saw him only a handful of times before Emma left for good, taking him to Oliver. I was left with my girls. The thought of ending it all coiled in my mind, but then
«Daddy, if Mummys gone, well take care of you,» Amelia whispered, dabbing my tears with her sleeve. It was the first time I broke.
Grief gave way to duty. I taught them what I couldhow to cook, clean, mend. Sophie scrubbed dishes with fierce dedication, Charlotte swept floors, Amelia battled dust like a tiny soldier. The house slowly came alive again.
Emma visited occasionally, but her presence was poison. The girls wept for days afterward. So I asked her to stay awayfor their sake.
«Youre asking me to abandon them?» she hissed.
«No, Emma. Im asking you to spare them. If you love them, let them grow before they choose.»
She left, kissing each girl one last time.
By their teens, the girls despised their motherand William. I think they envied him. He had her love, her touch.
When they marriedSophie and Charlotte with four children each, Amelia with threetheir anger softened, but the hurt remained, bitter as wormwood. They vowed to be better mothers than she had been.
I lived alone. Other women passed through my life, but I called them all *Emma*. None stayed.
At sixty, Emma came to me, frail and weeping. She begged forgiveness, confessed regrets, lamented Williamnow *Willa*.
Shed rewritten her willOliver, once a wealthy businessman, had signed everything over to her in blind trust. She left him nothing.
The girls offered me her fortune. «Take it, Dad. You earned it.»
I refused. Let the grandchildren have it.
Oliver, bankrupt, begged my daughters for help. They turned him away. «You stole our mother. Now live with it.»
Willa married an Italian, Roberto. They plan to adopt. Amelia writes to her, but Sophie and Charlotte want nothing to do with her.
This was England, where Id brought my family for a better life. Yet blood, in the end, called louder than anything else.
