The stranger at my door had a crooked smile and hard eyes, and he looked like trouble. When he opened his mouth, however, he didn’t make a sales pitch or ask for instructions. After saying something that made my blood run cold in my veins, he made a demand that completely changed the course of events.
When the doorbell rang, I had just put our four-year-old to bed for the day. I went to the door and grabbed a dish towel from the table to wipe my hands. However, the person I saw when I opened the door was even creepier.
The man standing there looked stern, as if he’d spent decades fighting his way through life with his bare hands and losing most of the time.
Then his gaze returned to me, and a crooked smile spread across his weathered face.
‘Emily,’ he said, his voice a strange mixture of gravel and nerves. “It’s me. Your father.”
I blinked. For a second, I thought I’d misheard. ‘I’m sorry, what?’
He shifted his weight, clearly enjoying my confusion. ‘Your father,’ he repeated, louder this time, as if that was meant to convey the meaning of what I was saying. ‘You don’t recognise me?’
‘No,’ I replied emphatically, gripping the edge of the door. ‘I don’t recognise you.’
My biological father was a shadow, a part of my history that I’d studiously ignored. And suddenly he’s standing on my porch, brash and uninvited.
‘That’s all right,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m not here to be nice. I’m here to claim what’s mine.”
My stomach churned. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Half,’ he said. “All of it. Half of your life.”
“I hear you’re settling in well. Really well. Nice house, nice car. Married, got a kid.” His gaze darted to the gleaming engagement ring on my finger. ‘I thought it was time to share the wealth with the man who made it all possible.’
I blinked stunned. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Don’t play dumb,’ he said, leaning against the doorjamb like he had every right to. “You wouldn’t be here without me. You wouldn’t have been adopted by that rich family of yours. I gave you that chance by letting you go. Now it’s time for you to pay me back. I want fifty per cent of everything you own.” His hand rose sharply over the entrance. ‘I love this mansion you live in.’
His words hit me like a slap in the face for arrogance.
I folded my arms, trying to calm myself. “You gave up on me. Do you know how I felt? Do you have any idea…”
He interrupted me with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Spare me the heartwarming stories. You’re doing fine now, aren’t you? That’s what’s important. And you’re welcome, by the way.”
‘You’re crazy,’ I replied, my voice shaking. ‘You can’t barge into my life after twenty-five years and demand something.’
My husband, Daniel, was there and entered the foyer with the cold confidence of a man who wouldn’t put up with bullshit.
The sight of Daniel seemed to deflate the cockiness radiating from my biological father. His smirk disappeared, replaced by uncertainty.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Daniel in an even but defensive tone.
‘My biological father,’ I replied, feeling a bitter taste in my mouth. ‘Apparently he thinks I owe him half of everything I own because he “let me go”.’
‘You have a lot of nerve showing up here,’ Daniel said, his voice low and harsh. ‘Especially with demands like that.’
My father pouted slightly, though his posture betrayed his discomfort. ‘It’s unreasonable,’ he said, trying to regain his confidence. ‘Without me, she wouldn’t have a chance…’
‘A chance?’ Daniel cut him off abruptly, taking another step forward.
“Without you, she wouldn’t have suffered the way she did. She wasn’t adopted by a “rich family”. She was thrown into foster care and passed from one horrible home to another. In one family, she was treated like a maid – made to scrub floors when she was barely tall enough to hold a mop. She ran away at sixteen with nothing but the clothes on her back. That’s the legacy you left her.”
The man blinked, his courage shaken. ‘It’s not…’
‘And she didn’t build her life alone,’ Daniel cut in, his voice flat, but he could hear the righteous anger in it.
“We met in that very orphanage after my parents abandoned me there. We were still children, but we made a promise to each other to survive, to create the life we deserved, and to find each other again one day. And we did find each other. Every dollar we have, every brick in this house, every ounce of joy – we earned it. You’ve given her nothing but scars.”
Daniel stepped closer, his voice lowered to a low, dangerous tone.
“Not a damn thing. Not your approval. Not your approval. And certainly not your greed. You can’t come in here and rewrite history. She’s better off without you. Now get off my property before I call the police.”
Daniel waited until the man disappeared from the street before slamming the door shut. The silence that ensued was deafening. I cried as he turned to face me and walked across the room to enclose me in a hug.
‘You’re the strongest person I know,’ he murmured, his voice turning soft. “He doesn’t deserve a second of your energy. You built this life. We built this life.”
I nodded, pressing myself against his chest, and the heaviness of the encounter slowly faded away. ‘You’re right,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t owe him anything.’
Daniel pulled away to meet my eyes, and a small, determined smile appeared on his face. “That’s because everything you are, you deserve. And no one – especially him – can take that away from you.”
