Well Matched by Jen DeLuca EPUB & PDF – eBook Details
- Author: Jen DeLuca
- Language: English
- Formats: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Series: None
- Price: Free
- File Size: 1 MB
The card wasn’t addressed to me.
I leaned an elbow on the bar and took a sip of my hard cider. It was
happy hour at Jackson’s, but I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy at all. And this
drink wasn’t changing anything. The card still lay there on the bar. It was still
addressed to my daughter, Caitlin, and it was still from her father. The man
who’d wanted nothing to do with her since the day she was born, or in any of
the eighteen years after that. It was hard to believe that even after all this
time, his handwriting could strike my heart the way it did. Back in the day,
that handwriting had covered pages and pages of love letters. Little notes
we’d leave each other on Post-its on the bathroom mirror or near the coffee
maker.
Then our birth control had failed, barely a year into our marriage. The
marriage itself had failed not long after that. The last time I’d seen Robert’s
handwriting had been when he’d signed the divorce agreement, terminating
his parental rights. Rights that he’d freely, almost eagerly, given up.
Why the hell was he writing to Caitlin now?
Like poking at a bruise, I flipped the card open again.
Caitlin,
I know I haven’t been there for you. But I want you to know how very
proud of you I am. Graduation from high school is an important
milestone in anyone’s life. As you move on to greater things, I want
you to know that if you ever need anything from me, all you have to do
is ask.
With love from your father,
Robert Daugherty
I almost wanted to laugh. If you ever need anything from me . . . How
about eighteen years of back child support? That would be a start. He
couldn’t even stick a lousy twenty-dollar bill in the card.
Our daughter had turned out great, no thanks to him. Caitlin was a smart,
funny, respectful young woman and I couldn’t be more proud of her. But that
had absolutely nothing to do with Robert, who in the end had been little more
than a sperm donor. What the hell was he thinking, getting in touch now and
trying to do a victory lap as a father? Fuck that. And fuck him.
I stared at his name, wishing my eyes could burn a hole through this
cheap card stock. I’d been April Daugherty once, for roughly one and a half
of my forty years. And if we’d stayed married, my daughter would have been
Caitlin Daugherty instead of Caitlin Parker. I thought, not for the first time,
about those two hypothetical Daugherty women, and the life they might have
had.
Would Caitlin Daugherty have had an easier time of things? Would April
D and Caitlin D have worried a little less about affording college, applied for
fewer scholarships and grants? I’d sat up a lot of nights with Caitlin P, our
laptops side by side at the dining room table, filling out forms late into the
night. At the time it had felt very feminist, very “us against the world,” the
way most of our lives together had been. But Caitlin Daugherty would have
had a provider for a father. Maybe she would have had to fight a little less.
Maybe—
“What’re you drinking?”
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