Rooftops - A Year In The Making

Chapter 2 - Dad

I didn't see the mysterious girl again for weeks.  The hot summer sun banished me from the house to the roof often, but I didn't see a shadow or hear a sound.  At the back of my mind my head was telling me to knock at the door.  My head was desperate for a friend that it had been deprived of.  But I didn't indulge it,  I waited.  The naked patch of tiles next to me, taunting that I wished for a friend.  But didn't have one.

My mind casted me back to primary school when I was one of the popular kids, I had a big group of friends that were always around the house, playing and laughing.  I had long chocolate hair that wisped in front of my face constantly and I often let people braid it. 

I probably could still make friends. I just don't open up to people, I don't let them in ever since dad left. Not dad, I have to stop calling him that.

Why are they arguing again? I sat on my single bed at 10 years old and listened to my parents shout at each other. I was used to it, they must've argued at least once a day for as long as I can remember, probably more. But this was much worse.

Dad was amazing. He loved me and I loved him, more than anything in the world.  I was his number one princess he said.  I wasn't so keen on mum though. She would hit me when she got annoyed with me. I would get angry because it hurt but afterwards she would be really nice to me, say she was sorry and that it was our little secret, she also said she would never do it again. Every time.

The last time she hit me it was on my shoulder and when dad took me to the park he found the big red mark that covered my slightly sun kissed skin. I knew I shouldn't tell him but it hurt and I didn't want to keep our secret anymore.  I told him my secret that day on the swing.  He sat on the plastic ledge next to me with his head sunk into his hands. 
"I'm so sorry Riles."  He said.  He said it more than one.  I remember being confused because it wasn't him that hurt me, dad would never hurt me.

When we got back he told me to go and play in my room. I couldn't play though, their voices were just to loud. Dad was winning the argument, there was no reasoning mum could make. Their voices traveled through the walls and I could hear her throwing swear words at him. 

"There's no excuses Mary, you can't hit a child"
"It was a mistake John, and you have no right to talk to me like this!"
"I have rights over Riley though, she's my daughter as well!"
"NO SHE'S NOT!" Mum screamed the last part.

There was a silence after this that confused me, I padded down the newly carpeted stairs so I could hear better, dragging my oversized stuffed teddy with me.

"She's Zack's, from down the road now get out, get out of my life and get out of hers"

Dad didn't leave, he tried to take me but mum wouldn't let him. He stayed the night in my room because mum was to scared to call the police. The next day he went to court and started a trial against mum. But they didn't believe dad.  They never would.  I remember asking him why they would believe someone who hit a child over a nice man like my daddy.  He didn't answer.  I didn't know it then, but that was when my little mind knew the world wasn't fair.  That was when I realized.

There's a point in everyone's life when you learn the truth about something that was so important to you.  For many that's Father Christmas not being real, or the Easter bunny.  For me that was finding out my daddy, the most important person in the world to me, wasn't who I thought he was at all.  

Apparently mum got to keep me because he wasn't my biological father.  Biological confused me but dad said I'd found out what it meant when I was older.  I felt like a toy.  Like a toy at school that a child is playing with, but someone snatches it.  A bully snatches it and gets to keep it.  That's how I saw her then,  a bully.  I wasn't wrong.

Dad came round again the day after the court trial had ended. He tried to come into the house but mum wouldn't let him. She stood on the inside of the door shouting at him. He was pleading with her, telling her how much he loved me, how much he wanted to see me. She wouldn't let him though.

It confused me why she wanted to keep me there.  I didn't feel like she loved me like dad did.  Of course now I know it was for the money, the cleaning and the house.  I wasn't the prize to her, I was just a way of getting the prize.  The prize being the lifestyle she wanted to keep, of drinking, drugs and baggy t-shirts.

I sat on the bottom step the whole time, crying, crying for my dad back.  'I hate you' slipped from my lips a couple of times.  That was why I never said it again after that day.  I wouldn't give her the satisfaction those words brought to her sick mind.  The words that brought a smirk before the would return to spitting vile comments to the door.

I had never seen him cry before, not once.  Even though the frosted glass clouded my vision I could tell from the desperate sobs between words that he was.  The pain spread in my chest when I heard them, each time.  The strong, funny father I knew was breaking in front of me, but he knew when he was loosing.

He just simply put his hand on the window, and looked into the glass:
"I love you Riley"
And that was the last time I saw him.