Page 67 of Hidden in Memories
He didn’t get in touch again until he was settled in Umeå with his new wife.
Daniel has never been away from Alice for more than twenty-four hours. He can’t imagine not seeing her for a week, let alone months or years.
Memories from his visits to Umeå have begun to torment him more and more. The therapy sessions have made him remember events decades after he managed to bury them in a dark corner, deep down inside.
Now it has all come back, just when a homicide investigation is taking up every waking hour.
He needs to focus on the job rather than brooding over his childhood experiences, but they refuse to be ignored. The conversations with Jovanka have upset many things, and sometimes he wishes that the memories had stayed buried.
They don’t make him feel better—just worse.
Maybe that was why he reacted so strongly to the journalist who spoke to him in the hotel foyer on Monday. He had treated him as harshly as his own father used to do when Daniel was little.
The feeling of never being really welcome, of always being in the way, comes flooding over him again.
He remembers how his father’s new wife divided the children into an A team and a B team.
Her own children, his half siblings, were in the A team. Daniel wasn’t, of course. It wasn’t his siblings’ fault. They were far too young to understand, but the comparison has stayed with him, and maybe that’s why he broke off all contact with them too.
He carries with him the sense of not being good enough.
He was only there on sufferance; he was never part of the real family.
He recalls weekends when he was hungry between meals, but didn’t dare get himself something to eat. He didn’t have the courage to open the refrigerator in case his father’s new wife got mad. The solution was to persuade his half brother to go and ask for a sandwich. Then Daniel could offer to make it for her, and make himself one at the same time.
How old was he then? Eight or nine, maybe.
You developed a strategy to deal with a difficult situation,Jovanka has said.You were forced to come up with survival tools, because no one was taking care of you the way they should have done.
The rage he feels toward his stepmother has never gone away. He blames her and his father equally for what happened.
I was just a little boy back then,he wants to scream in his stepmother’s face.Just a child. You were an adult, married to my father. It wasn’t my fault that I existed when the two of you got together.
How could you treat me like that?
Daniel forces himself to breathe more slowly. Alice is lying on her back beside him, with a little smile on her face. Her small fingers have released their grip on the bottle, which has rolled down onto the blanket. She is sleeping peacefully once more, at the same time completely secure and utterly helpless.
As far as Daniel is concerned, it is obvious that a parent must protect such a young child. That’s why he finds it even harder to understand how his father could be so blind. Why have a child at all if he wasn’t prepared to shoulder his responsibility?
Personally, Daniel would give his life for Alice if necessary.
And yet his own father was able to dismiss him and their relationship without a second thought.
He has never made any attempt to contact Daniel in almost twenty-five years, not even when Daniel’s mother died.
Daniel clenches his teeth, so hard that his jaws hurt. With a huge effort he manages to calm his breathing.
As an adult he has realized that it probably took all his father’s strength to extricate himself from his marriage to Daniel’s mother. He couldn’t risk the new relationship falling apart too.
Today Daniel can understand how it all played out, but the child within him cannot forgive.
His father hated conflict, and always gave in to his wife. He was weak and let her do whatever she wanted; not once did he take his son’s side against her.
Daniel allows his head to sink back on the pillow. Instinctively he reaches for Alice’s tiny hand. The skin is soft beneath his fingertips, he gently presses his lips against her forehead and inhales her sweet baby smell.
A sob bursts through, blocking his throat. The sob he holds back when he is sitting with Jovanka.
He still wonders why his father didn’t love him more.
