I'd never thought of it from her perspective. She was telling the truth. It was her that always caught the brunt of it when things would go wrong. It was her because she was the one who always ended up going home and I was the one who was always leaving and doing all she could to not come back. But I wasn't ready to slow down. I wasn't ready to see that. I was so angry at him, still so angry at him just because he hadn't been a good father to me and I had wanted one so very, very much.

“He never said anything!” I found myself yelling at my sister as if I were speaking to my father, “He never said a word! He let me go without a word! He even gave me money to do it, to get me out of his way! He didn’t give a damn about me! He never stopped me! He could have!”

“Is that so?” She screamed back, “If that’s so then you tell me why he rang Eddie and Ana every time you went to make sure you were there safe! Or why he took a day and drove all the way to Welshpool to sit down with your boyfriend and find out exactly what his intentions were!”

That stopped me in my tracks. “He did that?”

“Damn right he did! He rang Eddie and told him he didn’t like what was going on. He was worried about you and he told him he wanted to speak to Oliver man to man! Eddie had him come down!” She was shaking, her hands in tiny fists, stuck together like she were squeezing my head between them, which is what I know she wanted to do, “I was there, Silvia! He literally grabbed Ollie by the collar and sat him in that chair in corner of the sitting room, the red one, the wing chair, and prodded him! He had him pinned! Ollie couldn't have left if he wanted! And if Oliver hadn’t answered exactly the way he had, if hadn’t been so honest and so sincere…if he had been anything at all like his brother, Alexander…well, Dad was going to send you back to school in Scotland! And that would have been the end of it!”

Oliver had never told me that. Never. I stood there, silenced, stunned.

Lucy continued, “And, besides, he sent you to Bennington to be closer to him! He really did! He was planning on having us both home every weekend! He was going to marry that woman and try to make a real family, but you…you never wanted to come! You met her...what? Twice. And as I recall you were a stone! And after you started Bennington, you asked him not to come and get you! Or do you forget that? You had to study, you told him, but then it was Oliver, wasn't it? You always wanted to stay at the school or go to the Dickinson’s because of Oliver! You never asked if Oliver could come here! Not once! Not for more than ten minutes to come and take you away! Dad wouldn’t have let him, you know? He missed you, Silvia! He missed you! He loved you and you just shoved him off!”

I couldn't say anything to defend myself. Every word of what she'd said was true. I'd always blamed him for abandoning me, but I had abandoned him, too.

“I didn’t want to stay in Scotland after I graduated high school!” She was losing her resolve. She sank back into her chair and covered her face with her hands, “I didn’t want to come home, but I did! Don’t you know what you did to me? I did it for him! I had to! He was all alone and you left him! You were so selfish! I did it for him because I didn’t want him to be alone and you had shoved him so far away!”

I was so ashamed of myself. I’d always thought of my father as being the cold fish, but maybe he hadn’t been. I had shoved him away. Maybe it had been me all along. Maybe I had been the one who left him all alone and not the other way around. Lord knows I was selfish when it came to Oliver. He was all I wanted, the only thing that mattered. That was true. I had cast my father…everybody, really, aside for him and only him. And at what cost to poor Lucy? She'd become not only Dad’s spy and his link to me, but his emotional caretaker.

I shook my head, trying desperately to clear the rush of thoughts that were invading my brain. Had Daddy really reached out for me and I’d been too blind to see it? How many times? How many different ways had I been too caught up in my own pursuits to notice? Had I rejected him over and over until one day he’d just finally given up?

I knew the truth was that I had. I knew as well that he was the parent and he never should have allowed it. He never should have quit on me. He should have kept after me until I saw it. I would have accepted him eventually. He was my father. My daddy. I loved my daddy and I spent so many years wanting him to want me. Oh, God, I would have taken his love if I’d known he was giving it. It was all I ever wanted from him…his love, to be his little girl. I had wanted so desperately for my Daddy to want me all my life.

And he had. He had. I just couldn't see it for all my anger.

“Oh, God,” I felt the sadness and regret building up inside of me, spilling out my eyes, “Oh, God…what have I done?”

I was so selfish. So blind. I had shoved him away, gone through the motions of being a daughter instead of really being one. And now it was too late. My father was dead. I wouldn’t ever have another chance to try again. “Oh, God,” I repeated, “I’m so sorry…I am so sorry…”

Lucy found me. She slipped her arms around me, “He loved you, Silvia,” She rested her head top of mine, “Don’t you ever think for a second he didn’t and don’t you ever think for a second that he loved me more. He loved us differently, because he knew us differently, that’s all. But he loved us. He loved the both of us with all his heart.”

“Oh, Lucy, it's too late!” I wailed, “It's just too late!”

And it was. In too many ways to count for Daddy and I. We'd both lost. Lost because of pride and because neither of us knew the words we needed to get back to each other. And now it was over. No second chances. No take backs, no returns.

It was the deepest emptiness I had ever felt.

About a year later, when all of my father’s worldly belongings had been dispersed and his house was sold, Oliver took me at my request back to the cemetery where he lie beside my mother. I sat on his grave and I closed my eyes and I waited for him. I begged him to come to me, to become part of me the way I had chosen not to let him in life. I begged him to let me need him and to need me in return. I sat and I cried and I felt no touch at all.

And so I left him there to rest forever in Scotland, buried in the soil of his fathers. I left him and I went to Wales, the place he had sent me when I was fifteen and the place where he had left me when I was twenty, when he had given up on me ever needing his hand. I left him there and I went home.

Lucy took the photo albums from his house. Those memories meant more to her than me. If you want the truth, I wasn’t in very many of the pictures. The majority of them were taken without me there at all. I wondered how many of them I might have been in if I'd chosen to. Later, she left one in a silver frame on the mantle at my house. It was of young Philip Cotton and a red haired baby girl in a pale blue dress with yellow bees on the hem. He was holding this child under one arm, facing her toward the camera, but she was peering up at him, her blue eyes wide with wonder, and he was looking down at her the way a father looks at his daughter, with promises to love and protect her forever.

“You gave me away,” I whispered, “But I know you thought it was best. It’s just a shame, Daddy. I miss you, but it’s OK. I always missed you, even when you were here. That‘s my fault. I just wish I‘d known that I had a choice. You should have told me. That‘s your fault. We both lose, but we love each other just the same, don‘t we? I‘m here, Daddy, if you ever need me or you just want to say hello.”

I left the picture where Lucy had set it, but I didn’t look at it much. Hardly ever. And eventually it, like the sting of my father’s death, faded from my mind, to a place where when I thought of him I found only reasons to smile. Eventually, all the anger was gone and I was thankful for him.