Page 50 of Fall

“A tiny part of me hates that she isn’t my daughter, not biologically, anyway. Another part of me wants to be like a dad to her. I hope one day you might let me adopt her and marry you. I’m a hundred percent in this with you, and she comes with you. I’m not that kind of man, Tilly. I love you, and I love her, too,” he tells me, his voice strong and firm. There isn’t a part of me that doesn’t doubt how he feels.

“Harley,” I say with a sigh.

“You know I can’t have kids. That I want to adopt someday; it’s always been my plan. This was never my plan, but I’m a believer in fate. I think it’s fate that brought both of you to me, and I plan to keep you both happy and safe,” he tells me.

“Why don’t you come with me when I register her? I will never let Daniel near her, and I know you’re not her father, but you have been one to her since she was born. That means more,” I say.

“You mean that? I could bring my lawyer and formally adopt her that way,” he says, thinking about it.

“No one has to know she isn’t yours, Harley, if you’re on the birth certificate . . .” I say, and he nods.

“If this is what you want,” he tells me, and I wrap my arms around him, resting my head against his chest.

“It is,” I whisper.

“We will have to tell her someday, who her biological father really is and everything that happened. I don’t want her to hate us if she finds out any other way.”

“When she is older, we will tell her together,” I agree.

I know I will have to tell my baby girl one day about her biological father, but she won’t able to understand the reasons I ran away from him until she’s older. I just hope he never finds us, not just for our sake, but for Harley’s. I know Harley would kill him if he came anywhere near me.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Harley

“You never tell us anything about our mother,” I tell my father as he lies back on the sofa, looking up at the ceiling. I wouldn’t dare ask him anything about our mother if he wasn’t so drunk that he can’t even stand up. I look at my pathetic excuse for a father, dribble coming out of his mouth and his dazed eyes. I doubt it’s just alcohol in his system tonight.

“Your mother was smart and perfect for me to control,” he mumbles out.

“Did you love her? Why did she leave?” I ask him, and he laughs.

“I never loved her, only one girl was for me and–” he goes to answer and falls to sleep, his body falling onto the sofa. I wonder who the girl he loved was, and I hope she is far away from this mess of a man. When I look at my father, it makes more sense why my mother left, but I will never understand why she left us with him. What kind of mother would leave her children with a monster?

“This place looks rough,” Tilly says as I pull into the drive of the mental home. She must be thinking the same things as I am.

The place doesn’t have a colour in sight, even the grass is dead, and the trees look like they are ill. The building is massive but looks like a reformed warehouse. There are gates to get into the driveway, and the building itself has moss growing all over it. Some of the windows look broken, and all of them have thick bars on the outside. There is a massive door with steps up to it, and I pull my car into the parking bay next to five other cars. I look over at Tilly, who I don’t even want to bring into this place. It looks like something out of a horror film, and the online pictures must have been years old because they had flowers and the pavement wasn’t cracked in them.

“You don’t have to come in, I know this place looks dodgy as hell,” I mutter, and she takes my hand as I turn the car off and pull the keys out.

“I’m in this with you, remember?” she says, and I lift her hand, kissing it gently before we get out of the car.

I wrap my arm around Tilly’s waist as we walk up the steps, and I hold the door open for her. There is a big desk with stairs behind it, and several doors in the corridor. Everything is grey in here, much like the outside of the building. The woman behind the desk must be in her sixties, with long, grey hair and a nurse’s uniform on, but she matches the décor, too.

“Can I help you?” she asks me, and I smooth my suit down before answering her.

“Is there someone named Julia Smith here?” I ask, and she nods.

“Ah, you’re her visitor this week. Her frequent visitor told us you would be coming,” she says, picking up the old-fashioned phone. It looks close to falling apart, like most of the building if the cracks in the walls and holes in the floorboards are anything to go from. How has this place not been shut down?

“Please write your names and sign here,” she says, handing me a pen.

I write both mine and Tilly’s name down before I hand her back the pen. Tilly gives me a strange look, not knowing what is going on either, but we wait as the lady speaks to someone. The door to the left is opened, and a security man comes out. The man is young, with dark hair and a serious expression, and he’s dressed in a blue uniform.

“This way,” he says, holding the door open for us.

I walk into the large room, which is full of windows overlooking the dead grass and dead trees. The place is dark, a few of the lights need replacing, and it looks in bad shape with bits of wallpaper falling off. The room is full of old and young people, who don’t look like they notice we have walked in at all. Most of the young people I see are just staring at their hands in their laps, and one girl with black hair is rocking back and forth in her seat.

I pull Tilly closer to me with my hand, and she rests her head on my arm as neither of us know what to say about the sight we are seeing. Most are talking to themselves, some are playing cards or chess in the corners of the room, but no one is talking loud. There’s no noise in the room, and that’s the creepy part. I turn and watch as the security man locks the door behind us.

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