Too Late for Father’s Love

The day I turned twelve, my father brought a woman home.

That was the first time I met Julia.

She was immaculately kept, clinging to my father's side like a delicate vine. The girl standing next to her, my age, peeked at me shyly.

She called me sister.

01

I just stared, saying nothing. The silence in the room grew heavy, suffocating.

Thats when Julias face lit up with a practiced, dazzling smile. "You must be Sophie! Youre every bit as charming as Richard described."

Just like that, the tension evaporated. My father shot her a grateful look.

Two weeks after the anniversary of my mother's death, Julia, all of thirty-two years old, moved into our house with her twelve-year-old daughter, Rosie.

I was terrified.

"Dad," I asked him, my voice small, "will you still love me?"

He smiled, a sad sort of smile. "Of course, sweetheart."

"Will you forget Mom?" I pressed, my heart hammering against my ribs.

He was quiet for a long time before letting out a heavy sigh. "How could I ever forget her? But Sophie, I truly care for Julia. Can you try to understand that, for me?"

"And Rosie... just think of her as another plate at the dinner table. I promise you, Sophie. No one will ever be more important to me than you are."

I didn't answer. I just squeezed his hand, clinging to the promise in his words.

But a year after they married, things began to change.

He started treating Rosie like his own. He'd take her shopping for new clothes, new shoes, and never missed a birthday surprise. Hed tell anyone who would listen that hed been blessed with another wonderful daughter.

Eventually, his "sincere affection" was returned in kind. The day Rosie finally called him "Dad," he was so overjoyed he ate a second helping of dinner.

Afterward, he looked at me, his eyes full of encouragement, of expectation.

I avoided his gaze, just as I avoided the chopsticks Julia offered me. "Thank you, Julia," I said politely, "but I prefer to eat with a fork."

Her smile faltered for a fraction of a second. She recovered quickly, forcing a laugh, and used her chopsticks to place a shrimp on my rice.

I took the communal serving fork and scraped the shrimp off my plate, along with every grain of rice it had touched, and dumped it on the side.

Julia looked at my father, her eyes welling up with hurt.

He slammed his chopsticks on the table, his face turning cold. "Sophie, where are your manners? Is this how you were raised? An adult offers you something, you accept it!"

The meal ended in a storm of angry silence.

Later, he told me he hadn't meant to yell at me at the table, but he blamed me for embarrassing Julia.

"Julia is good to you, isn't she? Rosie calls me Dad, but you still call her Julia. Have you ever thought about how that makes her feel?"

"No, I haven't," I said, my voice flat. "All I know is that I can accept you remarrying, but I can't accept calling someone else Mom."

"And another thing," I added, my voice trembling slightly. "Like my mother, I'm allergic to shrimp."

He froze.

He didn't say another word. "She didn't know," he mumbled, before turning and walking away, looking utterly defeated.

02

My father always hoped I would one day truly accept Julia as my stepmother, but I kept her at a cool, polite distance.

Our patchwork family stumbled along for three years.

And then came the seventh anniversary of my mother's death.

Before he remarried, my father and I would spend the entire day at the cemetery together.

But things were different now.

The first year, under Julias "understanding" gaze, he came with me.

The second year, Julia had a scheduling conflict and asked him to attend Rosie's parent-teacher conference in her place. He agonized over it for days but ultimately came with me to the cemetery. But after burning a few sticks of incense, he rushed off.

"I just can't miss it for Rosie, honey. Ive been thinking about it, and it wouldn't be right."

I was fourteen, standing in the biting wind, watching his back as he walked away. My eyes burned with tears.

Will there even be a next year? I had wondered.

Now, I had my answer.

He didn't show up.

I waited from sunrise to sunset.

Finally, as the last light faded, I spoke to the photograph on the headstone. "Mom," I said, my voice eerily calm, "from now on, it'll just be me visiting you. Is that okay?"

Her picture smiled back at me, unchanging.

I sighed and started the long walk home.

A week later, at breakfast, Julia glanced at the calendar on her phone.

"Time flies!" she sighed wistfully. "It feels like our wedding was just yesterday, but it's already been almost three years."

At her words, the perfectly round egg in my father's hand slipped from his grasp and splattered on the floor.

He looked at me, his mouth opening as if to say something, but he was cut off.

"Dad, Mom, what's for breakfast?"

Rosie had woken up. Her arrival shattered the strange tension in the living room.

Julia playfully chided my father. "Look at this little sleepyhead daughter of yours, just getting up now."

My father, as always, made an excuse for her. "It's winter break. If she wants to sleep in, let her sleep in!"

The scene was so warm, so domestic.

It made me feel like a ghost in my own home.

"Dad," I said, my voice cutting through their laughter, "next year, on Mom's anniversary, you don't have to come with me."

The cheerful chatter stopped dead.

Every eye in the room turned to me.

My father's face was an unreadable mask.

I gave them a polite nod. "I'm going to the library."

Then I tightened the straps of my backpack, walked past them, and closed the front door behind me.

03

When I got home from the library that evening, my father and Julia were huddled around the computer with Rosie, their faces glowing with excitement.

"Dad," Rosie was saying, "if we buy this house, can you and Mom have the south-facing master bedroom, and I can have the room next to yours?"

"Of course, sweetie!"

Just then, he looked up and saw me standing in the doorway. The relaxed joy vanished from his face, replaced by a flicker of discomfort.

"Sophie, you're back?"

Julia was just as enthusiastic. "Your father and I were just talking about how to assign the rooms in the new house! Do you want to take a look with us?"

But her warmth only fanned the flames of a cold anger inside me.

"Is there any point? It sounds like you've already decided everything."

Her words must have hit a nerve, because my fathers face flushed with anger.

"Who taught you to speak to your elders like that?"

My father rarely got angry. But in recent years, every time he did, it was because I had "hurt" Julia's feelings.

I didn't even look at him. I just turned and walked to my room.

As the door closed, I could faintly hear Julia's placating voice. "Richard, don't be angry with her, she's just a kid. We just need to be patient with her."

"Yeah, Dad," Rosie piped in. "Just be patient with Sophie."

"You're so understanding, Rosie."

I shut my door, blocking out their voices. I slid down the back of it, my body feeling heavy and weak. The anger had drained out of me, leaving behind a vast, hollow emptiness.

Am I really not as good as Rosie?

The thought flickered in my mind for a second before I crushed it.

I looked at the box under my desk, overflowing with honor certificates and awards, and a sense of calm slowly returned.

Who says I'm not as good as her?

I'm smarter than her. I achieve more than her. The teachers like me better.

So let Dad like her.

I don't care.

I pushed myself up and opened a textbook.

Mid-terms were just around the corner.

You don't have time for self-pity, Sophie.

04

The hard work paid off.

The day the mid-term results were posted, the school put up a new honor roll in the main hall.

My name was at the very top of the list. First in the entire grade.

Rosie, who used to hover around the top hundred, was nowhere to be found.

When I got home, Julia was jabbing a finger into Rosie's forehead, her perfectly manicured hand a weapon.

"Are you an idiot? You spend all day dressing up, trying to look pretty for who? Why can't you put that energy into your schoolwork?!"

"Sophie is only a few months older than you! How can she be first in the grade, and you can't even make the list? If you do this badly again, your father will stop loving you and only love her!"

My father wasn't home. There was no one to intervene.

When she saw me, a flicker of embarrassment crossed Julia's face. "Oh, Sophie, you're back."

I nodded and greeted her, then walked past the unfolding drama and into my room.

As the door clicked shut, I saw Rosie, head bowed, quietly promising her mother she would do better next time.

May arrived, and with it, the second round of exams.

Unfortunately for Rosie, she didn't manage to claw her way back up the rankings. In fact, she dropped even further.

The night after the parent-teacher conference, Julia nearly beat Rosie senseless.

I could hear her screaming through the walls. "I told you to break up with that boy and focus on your studies, didn't I? You're too young to be sneaking around with boys!"

My father came home from work to find the chaos and threw himself between them, taking a blow from a broom handle that was meant for Rosie.

"She didn't mean to fail, did she?" he pleaded with Julia. "If you hurt her, you'll be the one who regrets it later."

Then he shot Rosie a look. "Apologize to your mother. Now."

Rosie just stood there, defiant and silent.

That's when my father turned his fury on me. I was sitting at the dining table, trying to stay out of it.

"Your sister is getting beaten, and you just sit there? Won't you even try to stop them?"

"What do you want me to do?" I shot back, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "Jump in front of her and take a hit for you? Would that make you happy?"

He was speechless.

After that night, Julia started monitoring Rosie's every move. Rosie had no choice but to temporarily shift her focus back to her studies. But after months of slacking, catching up was nearly impossible.

When the final high school entrance exam results came out, I was the top scorer in the district. She didn't even meet the minimum score for a regular public high school.

When I came home after submitting my school choices, I found Rosie sobbing her heart out. It seemed the reality of her failure had finally hit her.

Her tears brought my father and Julia rushing to her side, cooing and comforting her.

I slung my backpack over my shoulder, walked past the three of them huddled together like a real family, and headed to the library, just like any other day.

Good grades come from hard work.

And good grades pave the way for a good future.

I just never imagined that the path I was so carefully paving for myself would be so violently destroyed.

05

On July 2nd, I got a text from my father asking me to bring a file to his office. He said it was urgent.

I didn't want to go, but Julia and Rosie weren't home. What if it really was an emergency?

I grabbed the file and left.

Fifteen minutes later, I regretted it.

Who could have imagined that a teenage girl, on a deserted stretch of road, could be silenced by a hand clamped over her mouth and dragged up a wooded hill?

The last thing I saw before I blacked out was a tattoo on the man's arm. Two letters: Z&Z.

...

When I woke up, the pages of the file I'd been carrying were scattered beneath me, stained with a crimson that burned my eyes.

After he was done, the man left.

I just lay there, staring up at the canopy of leaves, my body a constellation of pain.

It felt like an eternity before I could force myself to move, to pull my torn clothes back on and start the long, agonizing walk home.

Only one thought echoed in my mind: I have to wash this filth off me.

I was grateful for the approaching darkness. The evening shadows would hide my shredded dress, my tear-streaked face.

The house was still empty when I got back.

I locked myself in the bathroom. As I stripped off my clothes, I saw my body in the mirror. It was covered in bruises and angry red marks.

His vile words from before I passed out flooded my mind:

"Wearing a skirt on a road like this... you were just asking for it, weren't you?"

"Slut."

I grabbed a washcloth and started scrubbing my skin, harder and harder, faster and faster. My skin turned raw, then started to bleed in tiny pinpricks under the surface.

But I couldn't get clean.

Staring at my reflection, at the broken girl covered in wounds, I finally crumpled to the floor and sobbed.

But crying wasn't enough. The memory of his hands on me, exploring, violating, sent a wave of nausea through me. I lunged for the toilet and retched, my body heaving with violent, dry sobs until my throat was raw.

Exhausted, I collapsed onto the cold tiles, gasping for air.

A long time passed.

Finally, I summoned the courage to call my father. I needed an anchor, something to hold on to. Even just a single word of comfort.

But...

"Dad, I"

"Where the hell have you been?" he cut me off, his voice sharp with anger. "We're all celebrating Julia's 35th birthday tonight! Why aren't you at the hotel yet?"

My mind went blank. The world dissolved into a dull, humming static.

"I'm giving you thirty minutes. Take a cab, whatever. Get yourself to the Grand Oak Hotel. Now."

The last thing I heard before the line went dead was Julia's softer voice in the background, "Richard, don't be so hard on the kid..."

He hung up.

I tried calling back.

No answer.

Outside, the cicadas buzzed, a relentless, deafening chorus. It was the peak of summer, but I had never felt so cold.