Chapter 10 - The Crack in the Armor
By mid-December, the winter chill had settled deep into Richmond, but inside my Church Hill home, life was warm, chaotic, and filled with love. Matilda was growing rapidly, her bright eyes tracking every movement around her. Zora had knitted her a tiny red winter hat with woolen bear ears, and Sunny dropped by twice a week just to snuggle her during lunch breaks.
Then came an unexpected visitor at my studio door.
It was a Tuesday afternoon. The bell above the studio entrance chimed, and I looked up from my editing desk expecting a client. Instead, standing there with his hands shoved deep into his winter coat pockets, looking older, smaller, and utterly defeated, was my father.
He wasn't wearing his Grillfather apron. He wasn't standing tall over a barbecue. His shoulders were rounded, and his gray hair looked like he had been running his hands through it in panic for days.
"Emmy," he croaked, his voice cracking slightly.
I didn't stand up. I kept my hands resting on my keyboard, my expression completely neutral. "How did you find this place, Dad? I thought I blocked you."
"Vaughn mentioned you opened a new studio downtown," he mumbled, taking a tentative step forward. He looked around the bright, sunlit studio, noticing the high-end professional lighting, the clean hardwood floors, and, hanging proudly on the back wall, the large framed portraits of my chosen family—Zora, Sunny, Yara, and Vaughn holding Matilda.
Dad stared at the wall. His eyes locked onto my face in the hospital photo, radiant and exhausted, holding my newborn daughter. Then his gaze drifted to the empty space beside it where a family portrait could have been.
"Your mother isn't doing well," Dad said quietly, his voice trembling. "She hasn't left the house in a week. Mrs. Gable and the church ladies... they stopped calling, Emmy. Your uncle Greg called from Florida asking if we’d lost our minds after seeing that thing online. Our life is falling apart."
"Your life isn't falling apart, Dad," I said, my voice cold and calm. "Your illusion is falling apart. There’s a big difference."
Dad flinched as if I had physically struck him. He dragged a chair over—the exact same old wooden chair that used to squeak in my old studio—and sat down, burying his face in his weathered hands.
"I was proud," he whispered through his fingers, a tear finally escaping and cutting a clean path down his dusty cheek. "I spent forty years building a name in that town. Doing everything right. Going to church, keeping up appearances. When you told me you were having a baby alone... I panicked. I thought about what people would say. I was a coward, Emmy. I let your mother drive the bus, and I just sat in the passenger seat."
I stared at him. For months, I had imagined this exact moment—imagined screaming at him, throwing things, making him feel every ounce of pain he had inflicted on me. But looking at him now, I just felt a profound, heavy pity.
May you like
"You traded your daughter and your granddaughter for the approval of people who wouldn't even visit you if you ended up in a nursing home," I said softly. "And you did it willingly."
"I know," he choked out, looking up at me with red, swollen eyes. "I know I don't deserve a second chance. But... can I just see her? Just once? I won't touch her. I just want to see my granddaughter."
