Family Ties

Uncle Harry

Harry's POV

"Babe, you ready to go?" Hannah asked me softly from the doorway and my jaw immediately clenched.

I'd been sitting in my office, staring blankly out the window for the past half hour, trying to figure out how I'd somehow managed to let my wife talk me into going to see my deadbeat father.

"No, Hannah." I sighed as I leaned back in the chair. "No, I'm not."

She sighed as she made her way toward me, looking down at me as she ran her fingers through my hair and leaned against my desk.

"I know." She said softly. "But I don't think you ever will be, Harry."

I closed my eyes and did my best to let her touch soothe me, knowing we'd had multiple arguments about it over the past week and trying not to start another one. As much as I hated to admit it, I knew that I couldn't just sit with the information I had and just go on with my life. I knew I couldn't let it keep eating at me, sitting in the back of my mind at all times keeping me distracting from the things that really mattered to me.

As Hannah had so eloquently explained to me during one of our arguments, it wasn't about Gucc. I didn't need to see him to make him feel better, or give him the chance to get shit off his chest, it was about me getting the answers I needed. I didn't want them, I had no desire to know anything about him or what my life was before he left, but something inside of me needed them.

I needed to hear it from his own mouth. I had to know why my life became what it was, why we had to live the way we did, and I knew that I would more than likely not like the answers I got. I wasn't naïve to think that he would have some magical answer that would somehow make up for it all, as if I hadn't spent my entire life fighting to survive through abuse and abandonment, but I had to know that there was some kind of explanation one way or another.

Hannah seemed so sure of him, and I hated it. I wanted so badly to just write him off, to continue hating him and blaming him for everything I'd been through, but once again she'd forced me to see things a different way. She'd opened my mind to so many things since I met her, and it was the only time in my life that I'd wished I hadn't evolved so much as a person. I wished I was still cold, numb to everything, because it would have made it so much easier to just forget about him and move on with my life.

If there was one thing I knew, it was that I trusted her. I trusted her more than I'd ever trusted anyone or anything, and she had begged and pleaded with me to just believe her when she told me he wasn't as evil as I thought he was. As much as I wanted to make her happy, I'd based my entire life on the idea that he was complete scum, and it wasn't like I could just undo that.

She'd been so patient, so supportive through all of it, as always. I knew she was worried about me, that she felt helpless and she knew it was eating at me, so if anything I felt like I had to do it for her if nothing else. I knew she would never push me into something that she thought was bad for me, but neither of us could deny that hearing him bring up a bunch of old shit would cause emotions to surface that I'd fought my whole life to supress.

The bottom line was that whatever he had to say wasn't gonna be easy, and I'd avoided it as long as possible.

I sighed as I pulled her hand away from my face, cupping it in my own and bringing up to my lips to kiss it as she gazed down at me.

"I love you." I said, my tone serious as I looked up at her.

"I know." She smiled softly. "I love you, too."

She leaned down and kissed my forehead, letting her lips linger against my skin as I closed my eyes and tried to savor the moment.

I didn't know what would happen to me once I knew, and I think that was my fear. I knew I'd never been good at handling my emotions, and the last thing I wanted was to open some kind of box that would throw me into some kind of an emotional place where I took it out on Hannah and the kids. I loved our life, and I didn't want this information to change the way I saw things or the way I'd chosen to live it.