When I told him I loved Edmund — his blood wasn’t the right kind, his family not the right name — my father’s face twisted with something colder than winter.
“Doris,” he said, voice like steel, “you’re dead to me. You don’t get to drag our name into this dirt.”
I stood my ground, tears burning but voice steady.
“I’m not your possession.”
He laughed, cruel and hollow. "You are my daughter, yes. But you’re no Rossini anymore,” he spat. “Marry that boy if you want, but don’t expect me to recognize you. You are dead to me. If you come back, I’ll kill you myself. And you know I don’t bluff.”
I swallowed hard. “I love Edmund.”
“You love a shadow. You’ll die in that darkness.”
---
And now—thirty years later—Edmund’s true colors bled through all those pretty words. That boy who promised to care for me, who whispered forever, was gone.
Replaced by a man who could kick me down and never look back. A man who packs his bags for a cruise with another woman and leaves me packing silence.
And I sit here, wondering how a love so loud became a ghost I can’t outrun.
I smiled bitterly and reached for the landline no one uses anymore. Dialed a number I hadn’t called in thirty years.
It rang.