Danielle Steel - the Wedding (2000)

I think my dad went kind of crazy when he died. He had tried treating him at the end, apparently. I didn't know that, but Mom told me later. But he couldn't do anything. No one could. But that was my father's specialty and it drove him crazy that he couldn't help him. He never thought much of me, maybe because I was so young, or a girl, or ‘ I don't know ‘ I don't remember much about him, just Paddy. My father was never really there, he was always working. And then my brother died and he fell apart, and he took it out on my mother. He shouted at her all the time, he blamed her for everything. And somehow, like all kids, I thought it was my fault. I thought I had done something terrible to make Paddy die and my father hate us. All I remembered was his screaming.

It went on like that for about a year. I think he was drinking a lot. My parents fought all the time, their whole marriage fell apart. I used to hide in the closet and cry at night, so I wouldn't hear them fighting.

It sounds awful, Jeff said sympathetically.

It was. Eventually, he started hitting her. I was always afraid he would hit me, and I always felt guilty for not stopping it, but there was nothing I could do. And I kept thinking that if Paddy hadn't died, none of that would have happened, but maybe it would have. He started blaming my mom for everything, he even said it was her fault Paddy had died, and she said she was going to leave him. He told her that if she did, he'd turn his back on us and we'd starve in the street without him. My mom had no family, and I guess she didn't have any money saved up. A long time later, she told me she had a plan, and she started sending short stories to magazines. She saved a few thousand dollars. And one night after he beat her up, she took me and we left. I remember we stayed in a hotel where it was really cold, and I remember being very hungry, and she bought me donuts. She was probably scared to death to spend much money.

I think we hid there for a while, and he never found us, but then she went to talk to him at his office, and she took me with her. Everyone at his office acted like he was a god or something, and he was a big deal at Harvard Medical School. Nobody knew that he used to beat my mother up, or any of it. They just felt sorry for him because of Paddy.

Mom told him she wanted to go away, and he told her that if she did, he'd never see either of us again, and I could die too for all he cared. He said that if we left, I was no longer his daughter. Her eyes swam in tears again as Jeff continued to squeeze her hand, but said nothing. That's what he said, I was no longer his daughter. And Mom said we were leaving anyway. He said we were both dead, as we left his office. And I kept waiting to die after we left it. He didn't say good-bye, or kiss me or anything. He acted like he hated us. I guess he hated my mom just then, and in his head, I was all rolled up with it. My mom said he'd change his mind after a while, and I would always be his daughter. She said he was just really sad about Paddy, and acting crazy. And she told me we were going out to California. We came by bus, and every now and then she'd call him, but he'd never talk to her and even hung up on her.

When we got to L.A., she started writing for television right away. I think she got some lucky breaks, they really liked her stuff. And she told her story to some man at the network one day when I was with her, and he cried while he listened. I think he gave her a lot of work. And about six months after we got here, she met Simon. I was six and a half by then. We left Boston right after my sixth birthday. We had been in the freezing cold hotel on my birthday, and there had been no cake and no presents. Daddy never even said happy birthday or called me. But after everything that had happened to us in the past year, I felt I didn't deserve anything anyway. I felt to blame for everything, but I was never quite sure why. I just figured it was my fault.

For years I wrote to my father, asking him to forgive us, and he never wrote back to me. And finally he did write and he told me that what my mother had done was disgraceful and unforgivable, that she should never have left him. She had gone to Hollywood like a whore, and abandoned him, and that I was living a life of sin and debauchery in California and he didn't want to know me. I tore the letter up so I wouldn't have to see it. And I cried for weeks. But by then, Simon was like a father to me. And eventually, I just gave up on Charles Stanton. She never referred to him anymore as her father. He came out to see me, or I guess he happened to be in California, when I was about fifteen, and for some reason he called, and I wanted to see him. And he agreed to see me. I was so curious about him. I wanted to see what he was like then. But it was just more of the same. I had tea with him at the Bel Air. Mom dropped me off, and all he did was say a lot of terrible things about her. He never asked about me, or said he was sorry he hadn't seen me in ten years or that he hadn't written to me. He just said that I was a lot like my mother and he was sorry to see it. He said that she and I had been very unfair to him and we would pay for it one day. It was a horrible afternoon, and I ran all the way home, I didn't even wait for Mom to pick me up. I just wanted to get away from him. And I never heard from him again, until I was stupid enough to invite him to my graduation from college seven years later. And he actually came, to Yale, and he dumped all over me again, but by then I was kind of fed up with the whole thing. I told him I never wanted to see him again after he insulted my mother at the graduation.

He sent me a Christmas card once, God only knows why, and I wrote and told him I was in law school. And I never heard from him again. He completely abandoned and rejected me. My mom may have left him in Boston, but I was still his daughter. He didn't have to cross me out of his life completely, but he did. And for years, I always had this obsession with wanting to see him, wanting to hear from him, wanting to run after him. But I'm over it now. I don't give a damn anymore. It's over. He's gone, he's not my father. And now my mother wants to put him on our wedding invitation. I can't believe it. But I'm not having my name on the same page as his, I can tell you. He's not my father. And he doesn't want to be either. The only decent thing he could have ever done for me was let me go completely and let Simon adopt me, and when I asked him to do that, that day at the Bel Air when I was fifteen, he said that was rude and humiliating and he would never do it. The guy is a completely selfish sonofabitch, and I don't care how respectable he is, or what a good doctor, he's a miserable human being. And he's no longer my father. He had abandoned her emotionally, and she had paid for it for almost twenty-five years. She was not yet ready to forgive him, and she doubted if she ever would be.

I can see why you feel that way about him, Allie. Why invite him to the wedding? You certainly don't have to. He felt so sorry for her after hearing all of it. Although he knew that she had had a good life and a far happier childhood in the home of Simon Steinberg. But the early loss of her brother, and the rejection of her natural father, had obviously hurt her deeply. And she had looked for rejecting men for years, in order to continue the same story. But at last, after years of help from Dr. Green, she had finally broken the pattern.

My mother thinks I should include him. Can you believe that? I think she's crazy. She's trying to heap her old guilt, and whatever relationship she may have had with him all those years ago, on me, and she expects me to carry it along. And I'm not going to. I don't care if the bastard dies on my doorstep, I don't want him at our wedding.

Then don't have him, Jeff said simply.