02-15-2008, 11:27 AM
“Well, who’s this wee lass?” His voice was wheezy and creaky, like from an old house’s staircase, but it was also deep. If anything it sounded most like he was warming up, not used to speech after an extended time of no use, his vocal cords were rusted.
“Fran,” Her mother beckoned her foreword with the hand not entwined with the man’s. “Fran properly introduce yourself to your father.” Her fingers flexed impatiently motioning to move towards them. Fran took three steps so that she was within arm’s length of her father, and looked him up and down. He was bigger up close. “Fran!” her mother barked. “Stop gawking and give him a hug.” Her command was gentle but a command was nonetheless there.
“Fran…well that’s a lovely name,” he creaked. “What’s that short for? Francis? Francesca?” Her half lidded eyes briefly opened, revealing her vivid expression of dislike for this man. She realized then that he was not her father, her mother had lied. Disgusted with herself for having any flicker of hope she stuck her hand out.
“
It’s short for Frank. After my real father.” She grasped his hand fleetingly before turning on her heal and marching back up the stairs to her room.
She didn’t turn around to see that the new man in her life was livid, and that her mother was humiliated. She wasn’t there when out of furry the man took the only chair in that room and shattered it against the wall. She didn’t know that her mother wept in the corner, bitter tears against what she called her “wicked thieving child.” A thief for the life she could have had, had not she been born. For indeed, the man who was moving in was not her blood father, he was instead the only person to whom would take on a bastard child and unclean wife. Not even the women knew why, but living the past ten years with no one else to turn too, she clung to a fantasy that was born the day the man performed one small act of kindness to her, lasting longer and deeper than any bruise and scrape he made later.
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