The Hero + Vegas = No Regrets

He looks older than I remember him, even though it’s only been a few weeks since I last saw my dad. The revelation of his secrets has aged him, and the heart attack probably didn’t help. Or maybe I just see him differently now.

I’ve been putting off this day for as long as possible, but I know if I’m going to get through this, I need answers from Dad. I need to look him in the eye when I ask him my questions.

“Hey, Sophia,” he says, his arms open like he expects me to run into them. I wanted to meet him in the park he’d always take us to the day after he got home from a “work trip.” It’s twenty-five degrees and I’m wrapped up in my down coat, hat, and gloves. I can barely move I have so many clothes on.

“Hey, Dad,” I say, staying seated.

“You don’t want to go inside? We could go to that coffee shop on the corner?” His words come out in puffy clouds of breath and hang there before slowly dissolving into the air.

I stand, but don’t move toward him. There’s no point in niceties when I’m feeling anything but nice. “Nope. We can walk.” I push my gloved hands into my pockets.

We walk in silence for a while, toward the fenced-off playground.

“Remember when I used to bring you here?” he asks.

“Yeah. There was always a trip to the park after you’d been on one of your long work trips.”

A white ribbon of breath pushes out of him, like he’s being exorcised. But we stand in silence.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Sophia.” His tone is harder than I expected. I’m not sure what I expected, exactly. That he’d pretend everything was fine and we wouldn’t talk about his betrayal? Or that he’d beg my forgiveness?

Yes, the second one. I expected him to be contrite. Or that he’d feel some kind of shame. From his tone, it’s like I’m holding on to some unjustifiable grudge.

“Is there anything you want to say?”noveldrama

“Not really,” he says.

I turn to him. “Really? I just found out you’ve been living a double life my entire existence and you have nothing to say?”

“Sophia,” he says exasperatedly, “you had a good upbringing. You never wanted for anything. It was adult business. I don’t know what you’re so upset about.”

“Oh, I don’t know, the fact that my father lied to me every day of my life? The fact that I can’t trust another living soul because of the decisions you made to lie and cheat on your family?”

“Your mother knew everything.”

“We didn’t.”

“You were children.”

“You don’t think we deserved an honest man for a father? One who modeled how to tell the truth? How to be a faithful husband? You don’t think this has anything to do with us?”

“You’re being oversimplistic about the entire thing. You weren’t an adult at the time, so you can’t understand why I made the decisions I made.”

“So explain it to me,” I say. “I’m here, standing in front of you as an adult, asking you why?”

He shakes his head, sighing, like I’m exasperating. Me. When all I’ve done is worship the man in front of me. And all along, patterns have been set in my head, pushing me toward men just like him—men who didn’t live in the same city as me. Men who weren’t as into me as I was into them. Men who wanted the best of both worlds—being single and being in a relationship.

“It wasn’t planned, Sophia. Rita was never supposed to get pregnant.” He pushes a hand through his thinning hair as my blood turns ever icier at the mention of her name.

I know it wasn’t just her—my dad was the cheater. He had the family and children. But did she know he was married when they started their affair? Did she not care?

“That’s what happens when you fuck women who aren’t your wife.”

“Oh god, Sophia. I hope one day someone can sit in judgement of the life you’ve lived. This wasn’t some plan to annoy you. Life happens.”

“Annoy me? Is that what you think I am? Annoyed?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“It’s not the adjective I would have started with. I probably would have started with heartbroken. Then I might have moved on to devastated. Cheated that my father wasn’t actually the wonderful, loving father I thought he was—the hardworking man who sacrificed time with the family he loved in order to provide us with a better life. That was the way you and Mom always framed it. You traveled because you loved us so much. But the opposite was actually true, wasn’t it? You traveled so much, because you didn’t love us enough to stay faithful to your wife and family.”

The betrayal hits me again, like a knife to the chest. It’s so hard and sharp that my breath catches, and I cough into the frigid air.

“It’s worse that you don’t see it,” I say in a whisper. “That you’re trying to justify what you did.” I sigh as I talk into the silence. “But then, why wouldn’t you? If you had to confront the man you truly are, you’d be as horrified as I am.”

I’ve never spoken so directly to my father. It never occurred to me that I ever would. This isn’t the man I kept on a pedestal my whole life. This man is weak. Pathetic. Someone who tricked me into loving him.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he says. “I just want you to see my side.”

“What side is that, Dad?”

Silence tightens between us and I’ve never felt so… untethered as I do right now. He was always my port in the storm. Even though I was closer to Mom in lots of ways, Dad was the one who’d come back and blanket us in a feeling that everything was always going to be okay, so long as he was there.

He was never the man I thought he was.

“I was young,” he says.

I can’t decide if he’s trying a different tack, now that he knows I’m not going to be brought down by the “you were fine” argument, or the “you don’t know what you’re talking about” strategy.

“I found out about this less than a month ago. You haven’t been young for a while.”

I think back to Worth at fourteen, making dinner for his sisters, doing the laundry, signing permission slips. Worth was more of a man at fourteen than my dad is at sixty.

“The die has been cast for a long time,” he says. “I was doing the best I could with the cards I was dealt.”

“Was dealt?” I say, frustrated that he’s not taking any responsibility whatsoever. “I think you dealt those cards to yourself.”

“You’re trying to trip me up with semantics.”

It’s my turn to be exasperated. “It’s my fault, all this, is it?”

“I’m saying I was young when things happened and Rita got pregnant. I’ve been dealing with the consequences the best way I can. None of you have ever wanted for anything.”

“Don’t say that,” I say through gritted teeth. “You have no idea how much I’ve lost. Noah and Oliver too. Finding out this kind of thing about our father? Do you have any idea how this rocks all our foundations? And your other kids—our half-siblings. You’ve taken something from all of us.”

He puts his gloved hands up in surrender. “Look, I’m not saying I got everything right. I didn’t. But don’t make me out to be a monster. I didn’t do a bad job, considering the circumstances.”

I feel like I’m talking to the sidewalk. He doesn’t seem to be seeing this from our perspective at all. He just has his guard up, trying to defend himself—like anything he’s done is defensible.

“I think Mom did the best she could, considering the circumstances,” I say, but not to him. I’m rehashing things in my mind.

“Well, that’s something we can agree on,” he says. “She’s a good woman. Has been a very good mother.”

She sacrificed everything for Oliver, Noah, and me. I respect that and I’m thankful. I just wish she hadn’t had to do it.

“I’m going to go now, Dad,” I say.

I glance across at him as he slides his palm over his hair.

“I do love you, you know. That’s why⁠—”

“Don’t do that. Don’t dress up your betrayal in love. You had a whole other family. You didn’t do that because you loved us.”

“But I didn’t walk out,” he says.

Is that how he justifies it to himself? Is that how he shuns responsibility? By saying it could have been worse.

“No, you didn’t walk out.”

I need to leave. The man I thought my father was has disappeared. It’s like I’m talking to a stranger. I no longer think he hung the moon, although I think he might take credit for it, if anyone let him.

“I love you,” Dad says again. “And I know I got things wrong—I’m still getting things wrong. I don’t want to… lose you.” His eyes are tired and sad. I don’t know what to say to him. “I never wanted to lose any of you.” What he’s saying is selfish, but I know now that’s who he is. At least it feels more authentic than anything he’s said so far today. It’s like he’s lowered his shield, just a little bit. It brings a sliver of hope that there might be some possibility of a relationship going forward.

“You need to stop saying your actions didn’t affect us. What happened was your fault. Until you accept that…” I leave the rest unspoken, but I hope he hears the truth in my silence: Until he takes accountability for his actions, I won’t be able to forgive him.

He swallows and chews the side of his cheek, a habit he’s always had. But maybe it’s a tell. Evidence of vulnerability.

“It was my fault.” He doesn’t look at me as he speaks. Instead he stares at the climbing frame my brothers and I spent hours hanging from, trying to best each other’s times. “I should never have taken up with Rita in the first place.”

It’s a start, even if my father will never again be the man I thought he was.

Then it hits me like a freight train: Worth is the man who steps up and shoulders responsibilities that aren’t his to keep his family together. The one who worries about his sister dropping out of college. The one who flies me across the country to visit my sick father.

He’d never betray me like this.

Why am I concerned that I won’t be able to trust Worth when he’s so clearly ten times the man my father is? Why do I think I don’t know him or can’t trust my judgment of him?

My stomach begins to churn and my cheeks burn hot, despite the cold. What was I thinking, letting Worth go? I was right that he deserves more than someone who doesn’t trust him, but I can. It’s taken this conversation for me to see it clearly. I don’t just want him to lean on—though his strength makes my heart soar.

I want him because he’s the best man I’ve ever known, and I love him.

I just hope I can convince him to trust me after I ran away.