The Girl in the Violet Dress

Dad. I bet that word means nothing to you anymore. Nothing other than disappointment, lies and betrayal. Nothing more than haunting memories, and a broken heart.

    “Do you ever miss dad?” My thirteen-year-old sister stares across at me, eyes sad at my apparent apathy for the man whose abuse is seemingly absent from her young memory.

    What can I say? “No. I don’t miss him at all”? But how can I possibly miss the way he treated me? How am I supposed to miss all those days where I felt scared, unloved, and alone? How can I miss all he symbolizes to me? I don’t, and I never will. I never want to have to re-live a single one of those days. But do I miss him, just because he’s my dad? If he changed, would I in how I felt about him?

    I look back up at her. “I don’t know, Andrea, I don’t know.”

~ Part one, A father’s regret  ~

    It’s a broken, fleeting thought that barely scratches the surface as it passes by my consciousness. An wisp of inexistent joy formed by a dying hope’s despair. What if...? The thought pours from the jug of fantasy, filling my spirit brim full, my eyes sparkling at the thought of a restored existence. An existence where I could be safe with him. An existence where I was loved. An existence in which he actually cared.

    My father.

    What if he were to honestly apologize? Would anything change? Would I change?

    A desk forms before my eyes; wooden, dark and solid, painting itself across the canvas of my imagination before my very eyes. His desk - the desk he made in high-school. A small fire crackles in the corner of the old apartment room.

    There’s a pen. The silver one, with thin, elegant lines running along it, the one he used for the office. It’s laying, useless, cast aside, not unlike my father used to treat me...

    Almost caught up in thought, my attention is captured back to the present as I witness a wind blowing a piece of paper from the corner across, laying it against the darker timber of the desk.

    A ghostly figure seats itself upon the chair, it’s transparent hand grasping for the pen with it’s boney fingers. The ghost of a memory never witnessed.

    Traces of letters form before my eyes as the pen moves across the page in the hand of the man before me - my father. It’s as if I’m standing behind him, peering over his shoulder.

Words form before my eyes through his pen as I begin to read.

Dear Daughter,

    He pauses at this, faltering as if he does not know where to begin. Again he sets his pen to the paper.

    It’s too late for me. I can see it in your ice cold eyes. Everything you say is tainted with the reality that there are no more chances. That you’re done with me, and

there’s no going back.

    You’ve lost interest in having a relationship with me, and I don’t blame you. I was a monster. I hate myself for what I did to you. I only wish you knew that. I want you, no, need you to know that I’ve changed and that I’m sorry, but I know you won’t believe me anymore.

    I don’t deserve you, and I never did. What I can’t believe is that you were even able to put up with me for so long. After all I’ve done, I don’t know how you can even look me in the face.

    I never had time for you. I never put you first. You have no idea how much I regret that. Why could I never spare a moment to talk to you? I’m so, so sorry...