Free Julian's Pursuit by Haleigh Lovell Page A

some woman who professed her undying love for Dad.
    My dad . This woman, whoever she was, went into explicit detail about their intense lovemaking, their mind-blowing fucking, and how she knew he couldn’t love his wife if he could love her so completely. And fuck her so passionately.
    Mom sobbed endlessly while I went to the bathroom and threw up.
    Later that day, when Mom confronted him, Dad didn’t even put up a fight. He didn’t beg for forgiveness or tell Mom it was all a sordid mistake.
    Instead, he turned righteous, with an attitude of relief. “I want a divorce,” he told her.
    “Are you in love with her?” Mom’s voice was raw from tears.
    “Yes,” he said unapologetically. Then he twisted the knife, skewering Mom with a dull blade. “I don’t love you anymore.”
    That night, I found a liquor bottle lying next to Mom’s bed, and when she woke in the morning, I was by her side. She stared at me with bleary eyes, unable to remember what she’d done the night before. And every night after that, it was more of the same.
    Mom became lonely, depressed, bitter. The divorce was her private black hole, sucking in every ounce of her energy.
    And while Mom’s life was extinguished, Dad’s took off. He thrived. I soon found out that he had a son with this woman and he’d bought her a house three years before.
    For three years, he’d been living with us, pretending he was a dedicated father and husband, while all along he had this other family on the side.
    At the time I found out, everything just felt sort of strange and warped, like some weird crack in reality had occurred and I’d stepped into an alternate universe where things as I knew them were not what they seemed.
    It felt as if the past fourteen years of my life were unraveling like cheap yarn.
    Dad had lied to Mom. He had lied to me. I felt like I had to reexamine everything I’d been told. Everything I ever knew about him.
    All of a sudden, I had no idea who this man I called Dad really was.
    All of a sudden, this kindhearted man who was my champion, who cared so deeply about me, who comforted me when I cried, who coached me all through Little League, and loved me so unconditionally… he became cold, distant, indifferent.
    He became a stranger.
    Mom called him a masterly puppeteer, but I knew deep down she still loved him. I never stopped loving him either. I waited. I hoped. I prayed.
    But Dad never came back.
    Months later, I was at the mall with my friends and I saw him walk past with a woman. The other woman . She was young, in her early twenties. Though she had her youth going for her, she couldn’t hold a candle next to my mom.
    Mom was strikingly gorgeous, heart-stopping beautiful. She had an enigmatic presence that brought to mind the classic beauties of the Old Hollywood era. Grace Kelly. Audrey Hepburn. Sophia Loren. Lauren Bacall.
    Back then, when Mom wasn’t a drunken mess, she was an amalgam of all those iconic women.
    This rail-thin woman walking alongside my dad was just plain. Ordinary.
    With her stick-insect figure and so much makeup caked on her face, she looked like a praying mantis that flew into a jar of foundation.
    My first thought was, Dad left Mom for HER?!?
    I know, I know . It was a low blow, and there were no lows to which I didn’t sink to at the time.
    I had a lot of anger inside me. Anger at myself. Anger at my dad.
    I was angry that I wasn’t enough for him. I was angry that we weren’t enough for him.
    But what made me even angrier was seeing how happy Dad looked with his new family.
    He was carrying a freckle-faced boy in his arms, beaming like a proud father.
    “Dad,” I called to him with a confidence I wasn’t feeling, but he kept on walking, acting as if he hadn’t heard me. It was Black Friday and the mall was packed with holiday shoppers, so maybe he couldn’t hear me.
    Even so, my heart broke that day. As I stood watching my dad disappear into the crowd, I knew then I’d lost that special place in