Broken // Zayn

Chapter Thirty Nine

39:

"How on earth did you find me?" dad asked me with a huge grin on his face after talking to him nonstop for the longest time, or that's what it felt like. I pointed towards the big brown boxes with all of my letters and gifts from him after wiping the tears on my cheeks. "You got them? Why haven't you been answering?"

I shook my head. "I was just told about them a couple of days ago. Mom hid them." I told him.

The two of us were sitting around the dining room table as we talked. The transparent double doors that lead to that room were shut to give us both privacy after more than a decade without any communication. "Oh." he nodded angrily. "Sounds just like your mother. Sorry," he stated, calming himself down. "Your mother and I don't get along."

"I know that. Mom told me the whole story about how she cheated and everything. But I think after I left, she truly changed. She's gotten away from all the drugs and drinking." I explained to him.

"Has she been doing drugs after I left? Around you?" dad asked me. I nodded. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I honestly should've sorted this out when I had the chance. I wanted to visit so bad."

"Why didn't you, then?" He's always been saying that in his letters to me with no explanation. It was apparently 'too complicated'. How complicated?

He did this motion that was sort of a shrug and rolled eyes. "Your mom put a restraining order against me after I left. 'Cause I was 'threatening' her." It all suddenly made sense. "Then she claimed to have moved, changed her number, and started ignoring all of my calls. I was going to go back and visit Texas but the restraining order." Knowing my mother, she probably made up the whole threatening thing just so that she could keep me. "Everything was just a huge mess."

"I know." I nodded. "It doesn't matter any more, though because I came out here to start over. And to find you."

He smiled and then it faded. "Oh, my, what is that?" he pushed my hair aside and saw my scab. It's only gotten uglier in the past four days. "What happened to you?"

"Long story, but to sum it up, I hit my head against the side of a pool and fell in." I stated. He asked me if I got it checked at the hospital or something. "No, I didn't think it was that serious."

"It looks infected to me. And you said you hit your head? Did you check for a concussion?" he asked me. He was a doctor so I understand why he's all up in my business. After a while of him giving me a check up, he came to the conclusion that I had an infected cut and I definitely have a concussion. With the hit on the edge of the pool and then the cabinet only like five minutes later really affected my head. I didn't even realize. That's probably why I had such a bad headache. "And you were reading all those letters in the car? Wow, don't read and don't look too much into the light. You'll only make it worse."

I pouted. "Fine. So how's your life now? What's going on?" I asked.

"Well, I'm a doctor, I got remarried in 2005, I have two children - Rachel and Mitchell, and I just found my daughter that I haven't seen for twelve years. My life is pretty good right now." he laughed. "What about you, Miss Celebrity?"

"I'm not a celebrity." I chuckled. "The only thing worth sharing is that I found you. Everything else is annoying and you perked up my mood one hundred percent."

"What happened? Do I need to punch some boy band celebrities in the face?"

"Yes," I said without thinking. "No! I meant no. They're all good people for the most part but they just got annoying. It's no big deal. I'm not associating myself with them any more so it's fine." I told him. Dad looked unconvinced but he didn't mention them again.