Free Mystery: The Card Counter: (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Thriller Mystery) by James Kipling

They were good kids and they deserved better. Was it possible their mother was right? Maybe I was the bad father she’d accused me of being, a short time ago. That asshole who picked his job over his family; the one who didn’t care that he was missing out on family memories because he was too busy protecting the rest of the city as if they were all his children. Maybe she was right.

 
6
     
    I ate a few more slices of pizza and then took the leftover food into the kitchen and put it in the fridge for breakfast the next day; the girls always overestimated how much they could eat.
    I cleaned up the kitchen before heading to bed and I was about half done when Cassie came down to the kitchen. She didn’t say anything at first; she grabbed a slice of pizza and some soda from the fridge, and sat down on a stool by the island in the middle of the kitchen. I stopped cleaning the counter and turned to face my eldest daughter. “Hey.”
    “Hey,” she replied. That was a good sign.
    “Pretty rough weekend, eh?”
    “You could say that.”
    “Look, I’m very sorry about what happened out there.”
    “I know.”
    “I had no idea you guys were in here.”
    “I know.”
    “Thanks for the pizza. I hadn’t eaten anything at work.”
    “Well, you did pay for it.”
    “I know, but still … you even got my favorite.”
    “Disgusting, but also very true.”
    I paused for a moment. “Usually I don’t get like that with your mother, even when you guys are not around. It’s just been a stressful weekend.”
    “Does that excuse what you said?” she asked.
    “No,” I answered. “I guess not. I’m sorry.”
    “Shouldn’t you say that to Mom too?”
    “Don’t worry. Her lawyer will make sure I regret it even more.”
    “Dad.”
    “I don’t expect you to understand. I hope you never will.”
    “Was it really that bad?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’re the one who left, you tell me.”
    This was the moment I’d really regretted since the separation. Because I left the girls when I left their mother, they naturally blamed themselves as the final straw on my getting fed up. I really wasn’t in the mood to get into it, not after how badly I’d behaved. “It’s complicated, but that’s between your mother and me. You and your sisters had nothing to do with it.”
    “I’m not a child. You can talk to me about it.”
    “I didn’t want to bash your mother like this.”
    “You’ve already crossed that line,” Cassie corrected me. “Might as well let it all spill. Why are you so angry at her?”
    I paused for a moment. “It’s Karl.”
    “What about Karl?” Cassie asked. “After you left, did you expect mom to become a hermit and never date anyone ever again?”
    “Of course not,” I answered.
    “Then why all the hate for Karl and Mom?”
    “Because they were an item for a lot longer than you know,” I answered. “They had been dating for almost a year before I left.”
    I could tell by the look on Cassie’s face that she had no idea. She’d known her mother had cheated, but she’d never known there was a long-standing affair; we’d managed to keep that much from her, as somehow it had seemed much worse, much more shameful, to both Beth and I. Yet, inside her head it all started to make sense, the one reason why I’d finally walked out the door and didn’t look back, and scuttled the marriage without hesitation. Her mother was unfaithful, even more than she’d imagined. “I had no idea. I thought...I thought it was just a short, a one-night... I didn’t know it was like that.”
    “I said it wasn’t your fault.”
    “So you found out about it.”
    “Yes. I moved out the same day.”
    “Why?”
    “I left because I was betrayed by the one person who swore to love me her entire life. I couldn’t stay with her anymore and look her in the face. It wasn’t a mistake on her part, Cassie.  At some point, she made the conscious decision she was okay with being unfaithful to our marriage