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More tears spill over her lashes, and then she’s crying properly. I pull her into my arms, and she comes willingly, snuggling up against my chest. I hug her tightly and kiss the top of her head.
“It’s okay,” I murmur, sensing this is the first time she’s let herself believe that she doesn’t have to see him. “You don’t ever have to tell me about him,” I continue, rubbing her back. “But if you ever want to, I’m happy to listen.”
Part of me hoped she might open up and tell me everything, but to my disappointment she just nods, her shoulders hunched. Well, I can’t force her to tell me.
We stand there like that for a minute or two while she sniffles and snuffles, and then eventually she moves back. I lower my arms and watch as she wipes her face and blows her nose on a tissue.
“Sorry,” she says.
“You don’t have to apologize. I shouldn’t have asked about him.”
“No, it’s okay, it was a fair question. It’s just… I’ve moved on, you know? I haven’t thought about him in ages. And then the letter arrived, and it was such a shock knowing he’d found out where I worked, and it turned me inside out. I’ve tried not to think about it, but it’s been building up inside me, I guess.”
We start walking back, more slowly this time.
“I saw that there was a phone number and an email address on the envelope,” I say. “You can contact them and request not to receive mail from the sender.”
“Yes. I think I might do that. Dee said that Mum has been in contact with him, and she was the one who told him where I work.”
“Jeez.” That shocks me. Presumably Hallie has made it clear to her mother that she wants to distance herself from her father. It’s a huge invasion of her privacy to tell her dad where she works.
“It’s really upset me,” Hallie says. “I need to go and see her, but I thought I’d take a few days to calm down first.”
“I understand.” We walk quietly for a bit. Then, struggling with my curiosity, I ask, “What was Ian’s view on all of it?” Maybe he didn’t understand why she didn’t like talking about it, and that was why she’s so reluctant to tell me?
“I never discussed it with him,” she says.
I stare at her. “What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “I never told him my dad was in prison.”
My jaw drops. Holy shit. No wonder she was so upset to let it slip.
I close my mouth, but I’m having trouble processing that information. “So how did you explain where your dad was when Ian asked?”
“He didn’t really. I mean, in the beginning he asked if my parents were divorced, and I said yes and that I didn’t see my father anymore, and he just kind of accepted that.”
“He never wanted to know why?”
“No.”
“You never talked about your childhood, or why you moved away from Dunedin?”
“No, not really.”
“But you were with him for ten years.” I’m so puzzled at their relationship. “It’s such a long time. He never wanted to know more about you?”
She smiles. “He was very different from you, Fraser. He wasn’t inquisitive. He never analyzed. He didn’t look back much; he wasn’t interested in history, either long past or the more recent past. He was very much a live-in-the-moment kind of guy.”
I’m still baffled as to why she stayed so long with him. “Why didn’t you marry him?” I ask, puzzled as to why she’d turn him down when she must have loved him a lot, despite all his weaknesses.
Her big brown eyes study me for a moment. Then she says, softly, “Because he never asked me.”
It’s my turn to stop walking. “You’re kidding me?”
She stops too, turns to face me, and smiles. “No.”
“I don’t… I mean… why not?”