BLOOD RUNS THICKER
«Emma,» I said, mustering what little dignity I had left, «as your husband, Ill make one request. Lets forget this silly fling with that eager young man of yours. But promise me one thinggive me a son.» Pathetic? Absolutely.
«Alright, James,» she agreed weakly. The weight of our unspoken bargain hung between us.
Emma and I had three daughters: twelve-year-old Sophie, nine-year-old Lily, and eight-year-old Grace. Where this twenty-year-old upstart, Oliver, had sprung from, Ill never know. He didnt just shake our marriagehe bulldozed it. As they say, its not the years that age you, but the grief.
The girls were baffled. Their once warm, attentive mother had turned into a ghostpolished, distant. The house fell into disarray. Dust settled like snow on every surface, dishes hardened in the sink, and my patience wore thinner than the last biscuit in the tin. I scrambled for answershow to lure my wayward wife back home.
It had started six months prior.
A chance meeting on a cruise, apparently. Emma had taken the girls to Brighton for a holiday. She returned absent-minded, answering questions wrong, staring straight through me. No more spontaneous hugs or bedtime kisses for the girls. Alarm bells rangsomething was off, slippery. A crack had formed, but I played ignorant. Facing the truth hurt too much. Time would tell. And oh, it did.
«Dad,» Lily blurted one evening, «Mum spent the whole holiday arm-in-arm with Oliver.»
«Go on, sweetheart,» I said, gripping my teacup like a lifeline.
«He was always around. Made her laugh. Even saw us off at the station. Smartly dressed. Younger than you.» With that, my heart cracked clean in two.
Impossible. A fleeting seaside fling, nothing more. What could a dandy like Oliver want with a thirty-year-old mother of three? The seafront was crawling with tanned, adventure-hungry girlswhy my Emma?
I was wrong.
Emma and Oliver were in it for the long haul. No pleading, no guilt, no desperate appeals to reason could salvage our marriage. The peace Id known was gone forever.
She did give me a sonlittle Alfie. But he wasnt mine. I barely saw him. Oliver raised him. Emma packed up Alfie before his first birthday and left for good. I stayed with my girls. The icy void in my chest nearly swallowed me whole.
«Dad,» Grace whispered once, dabbing my tears with her sleeve, «if Mummys gone, well take care of you. Well cook, clean, iron your shirts.» It was the only time I broke.
Grief gave way to survival. I taught my little ladies the domestic artssometimes too harshly, regrettably. But the house gleamed again. Sophie adored washing up, Lily swept like a whirlwind, and Grace waged war on dust. Me? I cobbled together passable meals.
Emma visited occasionally, leaving devastation in her wake. The girls wept for days afterward. So, I asked her to stay awayfor their sake.
«James,» she snapped, «youd keep me from my own daughters?»
«No, Emma. Im sparing them. If you love them, let them grow before reopening old wounds.» My logic held.
«Fine,» she sighed, kissing each girl goodbye. «Perhaps youre right.»
As teenagers, my daughters despised Emma and Alfie with a passion. Jealousy, I supposehe had the mother theyd lost.
But time softened them. By the time Sophie, Lily, and Grace married (with four, four, and three children respectively), their bitterness faded. The sting remained, thoughlike tea left too long in the cup.
I live alone now. Thereve been women, yes, but I called them all «Emma.» Unsurprisingly, that never ended well. My heart clung to one woman, irreplaceable. So, Im a bachelor by habit.
Emma passed at sixty. A week before, she appeared at my doorweeping, begging forgiveness, lamenting Alfies choices. «Hes become a woman,» she whispered, shell-shocked. Valerie (as she now called herself) had undergone surgeries, married an Italian named Roberto, and was adopting a child.
Then came the will. Oliverturns out he was a wealthy businessmanhad signed everything over to Emma. And Emma? She left him nothing. Not a penny. Everything went to the girls and Valerie. The shock landed Oliver in hospital.
The girls offered their inheritance to me. «Take it, Dad. You earned it.»
I refused. That money burned my hands. I passed it to the grandchildren instead.
Oliver declared bankruptcy, pleading with my daughters for help. «You stole our mother,» they said. «Now live with it.»
As for Valerie? Shes happy in Italy, corresponding with Grace. Sophie and Lily want nothing to do with her.
Funny, isnt it? We moved to England for a better life. Got quite the story instead.
