Chapter 12 - Dad's Confession
Dad asked us to dinner one Sunday.
After dessert, he became unusually quiet.
“I owe both of you an apology.”
Emma frowned.
“For what?”
“I liked Daniel.”
“So did I,” Emma said.
“No. I mean I defended him.”
Dad remembered a Christmas when Emma arrived without Daniel.
She said he was working.
Dad had joked that she needed to stop giving her husband such a hard time.
Emma remembered.
“I'd forgotten that.”
“I haven't.”
Dad's eyes filled.
“I keep wondering if you were trying to tell me something.”
Emma reached across the table.
“Dad, you didn't know.”
“But I want to understand why I didn't know.”
That distinction mattered.
He wasn't asking Emma to comfort him.
He was examining himself.
Mom admitted she'd noticed Emma becoming quieter but assumed marriage had simply changed her.
We talked until midnight.
No accusations.
No rewriting history.
Just uncomfortable truth.
When we left, Emma whispered, “That's the first family conversation I've had in years where nobody told me what I was supposed to feel.”
May you like
Healing was spreading beyond her.
It was changing all of us.
