“Your mother lied to you about your father.”
I turned around.
“What did you say?”
Robert’s expression suddenly changed.
“George is alive, Emily.”
George was my father’s name.
According to my mother, he’d died in a car accident when I was six months old.
“That’s impossible!”
Robert sat down, trembling.
“Your father never died. And if you leave now, you may lose your last chance to meet him.”
I stared at him, unable to speak.
Then he began telling me the truth.
Twenty-seven years earlier, my father had stopped to help a woman and her children whose car had broken down.
During the rescue, a terrible accident occurred.
He survived, but his injuries left him unable to walk.
After months in the hospital, he became deeply depressed.
He believed he could no longer provide the life my mother and I deserved.
Despite my mother’s desperate pleas, he refused to come home.