Clara, do you know when Daddy comes back from his trip this time?
«Never,» her mom, Emily, replied flatly, the edge in her voice sharper than a knife. She was still seething about Thomas leaving them years ago.
«But… is he dead?!» Clara gasped, her wide eyes filling with tears. «Daddy can’t be dead!»
«No, he’s alive, but he doesn’t care about us anymore. He found a new family, a new daughter to love. You were replaced, Clara. That’s life.»
Thomas and Emily had tied the knot young—in their early twenties—right after leaving university. Their baby, Clara, came quickly, and they scraped by in a run-down flat in Birmingham. Thomas worked double shifts as a mechanic, while Emily stayed home, juggling childcare and part-time admin work. Their routines were chaotic, arguments frequent.
«He’s always out! You work and leave me to handle everything! What kind of man are you?» Emily would snap.
«Love, it’s temporary! I want a better home for us,» Thomas would reply, exhausted.
The bickering never stopped. By the time Clara started primary school, they’d managed to afford a cramped two-up-two-down in Coventry, but their marriage had crumbled.
One icy winter evening, Thomas returned from his night shift at the garage. «The loo’s leaking,» Emily said curtly, packing Clara for school.
«Alright, I’ll fix it. And… I need to talk to you,» he stammered.
«What now?» she snapped.
«I’m ending this,» he said, his voice quieter now. «I’ve met someone else. She’s pregnant. Clara, I… I just can’t keep pretending.»
Emily stood frozen, her face a mask. «You’ll be out of the flat by tonight. That’ll be the *reasonable* thing,» she said coldly, dragging Clara out the door without a backward glance.
Thomas moved out the next day. Emily didn’t fight for child support at first, but after a few months, she took Clara to her mother’s cottage in Wexham. They stayed through spring and summer. When Clara started secondary school in September, Emily blocked Thomas from their lives entirely.
«Your father’s gone. He’s with his new wife and daughter. Forget him,» she said when Thomas tried to reconnect over lunch boxes and school uniforms.
«Clara needs her family,» he pleaded.
«Then find your new family and leave us out of it,» she snarled, slamming the coffee shop door in his face.
By the time Clara reached her teens, Emily had re-married a wealthy architect named Charles from Manchester. Clara grew up in a leafy suburb, shopping at John Lewis and never lacking for anything. Her mother painted Thomas as a selfish drunk who’d “thrown her away to chase a younger woman.” Clara believed her.
Years later, Emily casually dropped that Thomas’s second wife had died of cancer. Clara mentally shrugged it off—karma, really. She’d inherited a flat in London, her parents had funded her LLB, and Thomas was just a blur in her past.
Until the day her phone rang with bad news.
«Thomas’s funeral is in Coventry. I’m not going,» Emily said. «You can decide.»
«I’m not going either,» Clara replied, her voice flat.
That night, she sleeplessly replayed memories: Thomas holding her on his shoulders in a Birmingham park, his barking laughter as they played Scrabble, the bedtime stories about dragons and starry skies. All gone, buried under years of Emily’s bitterness.
By dawn, Clara had bought a train ticket. Thomas had been killed in a car crash, they said—a closed casket, a muted service. Among the mourners was a gaunt girl in a black skirt, openly weeping. Clara guessed she was Thomas’s biological daughter.
«Tragic, isn’t it?» someone whispered nearby. «Left in care. No one to look after her now…»
Clara froze. Gazing at the girl—Natasha, the vicar had said—she felt a pang, then a defensive surge. *This is why Dad left*, she thought. *This girl destroyed him.*
The months that followed were a blur. Clara’s mother dismissed any questions. «He was a weak man,» she scoffed. «A drunk and a coward.»
But one day, Clara found the caretaker’s office at the Coventry children’s home. Through a cold, gauzy curtain, she saw Natasha, hunched over a sketchbook.
They didn’t speak at first. Just a tentative hug, a shared sigh of grief. Clara bought chocolate bars and mugs of tea. Natasha didn’t flinch when she mentioned Thomas.
«You never visited?» Clara asked.
«The home said no one would,» Natasha whispered. «You were busy. Your parents… didn’t want me to know you.»
Clara didn’t answer. She just held her hand.
It took a year to get legal custody sorted, but she did it. Left her London flat for a smaller place in Coventry. Natasha started weekly art classes, Charles’s will eventually approving the costs. Emily disowned her. «A fool’s errand,» she hissed in a split-second voicemail.
Two years after Thomas’s death, Clara and Natasha stood before his headstone. The gentleman on the plaque still smiled—Thomas in his younger, broader-shouldered days.
«Look,» Natasha said, pointing to the engraving. «He’s still holding out hope for us.»
Clara squeezed her hand. For the first time, she believed her.