Page 64 of Revealing Mark

He squeezed my arm gently.

An older woman then stepped into my line of sight. Mrs. Westwood.

“Hi,” she said softly, and I nodded, trying to stop myself from tearing up further.

“I’m Maggie. Come, sit,” she said and led me to the sofa where she sat down beside me. Cole and Sebastian took single seats across from us.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, hating how overwhelmed I was. I hadn’t expected this.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Mrs. Westwood said. “I can’t imagine how difficult it was to discover the truth. We probably should have given you more time to get used to the idea.”

“It’s fine.” I wiped the wet tears from my cheeks.

She studied me for a few moments. “You’re beautiful.” She touched my cheek. Was she seeing a part of my father in me?

“This can’t be easy for you,” I whispered.

She smiled, taking both my hands into hers. “That is something I dealt with a long time ago. It wasn’t easy but it was nothing compared to Robert giving you up.”

I still felt a sharp pain when I thought about it. “Why?”

“He didn’t want to tear apart two families, and he believed it would be better for you.”

“I wish I’d gotten to meet him.”

“Me too.” Her eyes misted over. “I have something to show you.”

She leaned to get what looked like a photo album on the coffee table in front of us. She handed me the album and I settled it on my knees. It was quite big.

Was it photos of my father? I frowned when I opened it up. On the first page was a photo of a baby. I looked closer. It was a photo of me when I was a newborn.

“It’s me,” I murmured when I looked up at Maggie.

She nodded.

I flipped to the next photo. I looked like I was about a year old with a one-tooth smile. How had he gotten the photo?

“I don’t understand.” I flipped to the next one and then the next one. There were photos for each stage of my life.

“He never forgot about you. He watched you grow up from afar.”

It made me feel better than believing he had handed me over without thinking about me again until he discovered he was going to die.

“How did he get these?” I asked. Some looked like they had been taken when I had been playing in the yard. Some were with Matthew and Sophie. But there were some that were duplicated of my school photos.

“Some he got from your mother… some he took when he went to see you.”

My fingers tightened on the page of my toothy smile in fourth grade.

“I found the album when I was eighteen and he told Cole and I about you,” Sebastian explained. “We wanted to meet you but he didn’t want to turn your world upside down.”

My eyes lifted to meet my brother’s. “I don’t know how this makes me feel.”

I was lost somewhere between the pain of being abandoned and the knowledge that he hadn’t entirely turned his back on me. It complicated my feelings for my parents.

I was fixated on the book in my hands. It gave me some insight to the man who was my father. I flipped pages quietly, taking in each photo that had captured a moment of my life through the years until I finally reached the last page. It was taken about a year ago. It had been taken outside my parents’ house. I had been talking to Mark. My fingers brushed over it.

Had he realized from watching me how I felt about Mark?