Page 194 of Over the Line

After a solid ten minutes, the footsteps above me changed direction. Then they started down the stairs.

I held my breath, watching the kitchen doorway.

Outside the door, the footsteps paused. I wondered if she was having second thoughts. Or steeling herself. Or both.

After a brief hesitation, though, my daughter stepped into the kitchen.

As soon as she did, all the air left my lungs. Oh God, it was really her. The long dark hair I remembered was a short, highlighted bob now. The band on her T-shirt was different from the ones she’d worn back then, but still one I didn’t recognize. Still the same brown eyes she’d inherited from me, though they weren’t full of cheerful mischief like they’d always been.

The last time I’d seen her, she’d been barely twenty-one. Now she was almost twenty-seven. She was all grown up, but still every inch the little girl I’d been missing for six years. Seeing her now drove home just how much time I’d lost with her.

It was also hard to imagine that at her age now, I’d already been married for the better part of a decade. I’d already been a father of four. She was still so young, which just drove home how young and unprepared I’d been back then. Hell, even now, twenty years later with a grandchild, I still felt young and clueless sometimes.

Especially when I was facing down my daughter, who’d been angry enough to cut me off. There hadn’t even been any dramatic parting words—she’d just blocked me everywhere and stopped speaking to me.

Now here she was, and more than ever, I felt like that terrified nineteen-year-old holding his newborn for the very first time and wondering what to do next.

Neither of us spoke for a long moment. She took a couple of tentative steps into the kitchen, and her expression was closed off as she sat down opposite me. The hurt and anger in her eyes were impossible to miss.

For a moment, we faced each other across the table. I’d rehearsed a million ways to start this conversation and all the things I’d wanted to say, but sitting here now, I broke the silence with just two words:

“I’m sorry.”

Ally blinked.

Voice as even as I could keep it, I went on, “I just want to say that right out of the gate. I’m sorry. Your mother and I—when we decided to stay together even though we were unhappy, we thought we were doing the right thing. But it doesn’t matter. We were wrong. I was wrong. I messed up, I made it worse, and I kept making it worse, and I’m sorry.”

Her lips were pulled into a thin, taut line, but the corner twitched ever so slightly. She still didn’t speak, though, and the silence was killing me, so I kept going.

“I know it doesn’t change anything,” I went on softly, “but if I had the chance to do it differently—all of it, especially the part where I cheated on her—I would. In a heartbeat.”

Ally’s jaw worked and she looked away.

“I can give you a million reasons why we did it the way we did. Staying together even though we were unhappy. All of them made sense to us at the time. But we hurt you kids. We made you miserable. And I made it all far worse than it ever needed to be with what I did to your mom.”

She flinched, still not meeting my gaze.

“That’s the only thing that matters now,” I went on. “That we both messed up, especially me, and we hurt you and your siblings. And I am so, so sorry for that.”

She stared at nothing for a moment before finally turning to me again, eyes simultaneously cold and full of hurt. “Even if you’d never cheated on Mom, how was it good for us to live in a house where our parents hated each other?”

The question pushed all the air out of my lungs. “We didn’t hate—” I stopped when her expression darkened. Showing my palms, I tried again. “We thought we were keeping it out of sight. We were—we honestly thought we could pretend everything was fine.”

“Did you really think we were that stupid?” she snapped.

“No,” I whispered. “Not at all. We just didn’t realize how obvious we were being. We were the stupid ones.”

She glared at me, but said nothing.

I took a sip of coffee just to wet my mouth. “Can I tell you why we did it? I’m not excusing it. I’m not justifying it. I just want to tell you where our minds were. That’s all.”

Her jaw tightened. “Because our grandparents were divorced?”

“That’s part of it, yes. But it’s a little more complicated than that. If you’re willing to hear it.”

She was quiet for a moment, but she finally gave a subtle nod.

I inhaled deeply. “Your mom’s parents ended up living in different cities. She’d see her dad on holidays and over the summers, but even that started tapering off. By the time she was in her teens, he barely talked to her on the phone, never mind saw her in person. Turned out that after he remarried and had kids with his new wife, he just… didn’t want as much to do with his old family anymore.”