I grew up believing my father blamed me for my mother’s death, but the truth was far more heartbreaking.
I never knew my mother. My father rarely spoke about her, and the only image I had of her was a portrait that hung in his study—she was breathtakingly beautiful, but the sadness in her eyes mirrored my father’s. She had died young, and her absence seemed to cast a shadow over our lives.
My father was a quiet, distant man. He never showed warmth, never spoke to me beyond polite pleasantries. I craved his love, yearned for him to scoop me up in his arms and tell me I was his everything, but that moment never came. I grew up thinking I wasn’t enough, that I was unlovable.
By the time I turned 18, I had resigned myself to being invisible in his eyes. I was a lonely young woman who truly believed my father hated me. If he couldn’t love me, who could?
Everything changed one night at a party my father hosted for his business associates. Among the guests was a woman I vaguely knew, someone who seemed to know my father well—or at least wished she did. She greeted me warmly, and we exchanged pleasantries until my father walked by. I smiled at him, desperate for acknowledgment, but he glanced away as though I wasn’t there. The woman noticed.
“Do you know why?” she asked with a smirk.
“Why what?” I replied, confused.
“Why he hates you,” she said, her words slicing through me.
“My father doesn’t hate me,” I insisted. “He’s just not… affectionate.”
Her smile turned cruel. “Oh, you really don’t know, do you? He believes you killed your mother.”
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