I never wanted my father to find out what I knew about my mother. Everyone described her as having a heart of gold and my father always told everyone the story about he fell in love with her the night he saw in the library. They were both grad students at the time and she was working on finishing her thesis while he was trying to decide if he was actually going to finish his degree. Her hair was a mess, her shirt was rumpled and she was trying to make last minute updates for her oral defense the next day. She was never confident in speaking in front of a crowd, but knew she had to and was determined to make a good impression.
What my father didn’t know was she felt pressured to get married and thought my father was the way out. She hadn’t really loved him when he proposed, but thought she could grow to love him over time. My grandfather was a controlling man who had never let my mother or aunts make many of their own decisions. As they turned eighteen, they slowly disappeared from his life, changed their names and moved away. My father never knew her name wasn’t really Melissa Taylor. He never knew she had three sisters and an abusive father. Until the day he found my journal where I had obsessed over her past life. We only found out he knew when my grandfather showed up at the front door.
Standing Room Only 