Enemy Beloved

47 | fixed

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C L A I R E

Just like Mom said, I find him at our private home bar in the hall. He is pouring himself another glass of drink. He has already had three in the last ten minutes without looking anywhere but ahead where more bottles of expensive wine sit on the shelves.

As he is about to drown down another, I walk up to him, my feet pacing slowly across the hall. Even if he hears my footsteps, he doesn't show it on his face. I take a seat on the stool beside him, my feet hanging in the air.

"Dad..." I touch his shoulder with one hand while with the other, I gently take the glass away from him.

He narrows his eyebrows, giving me a studying look.

"What do you want?" He grumbles the question, avoiding looking at me. His forearms rest on the counter as he looks at the glass I have placed back on it.

He wouldn't drink in front of me. It embarrasses him.

It is like for the first time I am seeing my father for real. His T-shirt is tucked out of his trousers, his hands are cold when I touch them and his hair is longer than usual, falling over his forehead. I have never seen him like this. He has always been the tidy, neat man who pays great attention to his appearance but tonight, he looks pale with his lips dry and there are black patches underneath his eyes.

"Dad...I..." I intertwine my fingers over my lap as I stare at them nervously. "I wanted to apologize."

He pays no heed to me, staying focused on the numerous bottles of wine ahead of him. That gives me a little courage to keep speaking. If he had looked at me, I would have lost that courage and gone back to being uncomfortable to say what I came here to say.

"I shouldn't have disrespected you like the way I did all these years," I continue. "I thought you hated me and so I started to hate you back...It...it makes me feel bad. But, you should know that...I never stopped loving you, Dad. The resentment I felt for you was because of the way you sometimes treated me. I felt disrespected too, you know? Like...the time when you stopped speaking to me after Chris's funeral. I know you thought his death was my fault but...it wasn't. It was fate. Not me. I'm sorry but I can't live with a guilt that isn't mine...just because you want me to."

Knowing that I am about to go off-track, I stop speaking. My cheeks warm up with the anticipation of his response. Still, I keep looking at my hands instead of Dad, afraid that he will say something which won't go well with me. I am here to solve the problems between us, not create new ones.

"You know what's the worst thing about being a parent?" Dad suddenly speaks and I snap my eyes at him, surprised at his choice of words. He turns his head to face me and I see the small smile on his lips, shadowed by the look of grief in his eyes. "It is that you can never love your children equally at the same time."

I inhale a breath, letting that sink in. That is not something I thought I would ever hear from him.

Is he finally telling me that he loved Chris more and will always hate me? Or is it something else?

He shifts further on his seat to face me, such that we are knee to knee with each other.

"Dad, I don't—"

"You don't understand?" he chuckles, rubbing his hand on his chin. "You'll someday, honey. That's the truth about being a parent. You always prefer one of your children more than the other but never at the same time. The fact is — there is one point in life where you realize that all this time you've been loving them as equally as possible, even if they never saw it."