“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” I tell him, desperation breaking through. I need him to listen to me, to hear the words that I’m actually saying. “I haven’t met a single woman who made me want to stop and be with her. Not a single one. Don’t you get it? I’ve blown off work for the whole week. Ash is… she’s the one for me. The one I’ve waited all my life for.”
“You waited for her to stop being a child!” Joe says, shaking his head. I can see that he’s tearing up, that he’s hurt by this revelation as well as whatever else he may feel. He doesn’t understand. I can see that in his eyes. He turns on Ashley then, flailing a mad gesture in my direction. “I don’t even want to talk to you, you traitor. But you! You, my darling daughter, you can’t… you can’t think this is real. He’s manipulating you!”
“No, Dad,” Ashley says. She’s crying, too, silent tears falling down her cheeks that make me want to reach out and hold her tightly until it stops. “He isn’t. I want this – all of it. I couldn’t believe he would want to be with me, but he does.”
“That’s my point!” Joe says, shaking his head. He’s not yelling at her but pleading. “You’re so young. So naïve. You’re blinded by him. He’s twice your age, honey, and you’re being led up the garden path. He doesn’t love you.”
“Yes, I do,” I interrupt, but there’s no need. Ashley already has it covered.
“Dad, I’m not being blind here. I’m really not. We spent the week together, and if anything, I took advantage of him. I took him away from his work, spent his money, took over his house – he’s not manipulating me. I want to be with him. I do. And people with age differences work it out all the time. Like… like Catherine Zeta-Jones.”
“You’re not serious,” Joe howls. “You’re doing this because of a celebrity?”
“No, Dad!” Ashley huffs impatiently. “It’s just an example. I’m telling you, people with age differences can love each other just the same as anyone else. So, he’s older than me. So what? Everyone always says I act older than my years.”
“Because it’s adorable,” Joe says, putting his head in his hands. “But it’s not real. You’re still only twenty years old. How can you make a decision after spending just a few days with him? A decision that is going to change your life?”
“Because they were the best days of my life,” Ashley says. “I felt like I belonged, Daddy. I felt right. We want the same things. We want a family, we want each other. Our future together – it would be so easy and so right. We can give each other what the other one needs.”
As she talks, I feel my heart almost bursting with love and pride. She's right, of course. I don't even know if I could be able to articulate it in those words in my own head, to put it together the way she has. But we are so well aligned. We both want families - that much is true. We've discussed it, even if in different contexts. But we both know what each other wants and needs. What we need is to follow this through to the end. She belongs to me now, and that's not ever going to change. Even if he keeps us apart, all that will happen is that we will be miserable.
“How can you even be sure?” Joe asks. “This is your first relationship. You don’t have the experience to know…”
“Like how Mom was your first relationship?” Ashley interrupts, making what I think is a very decent point. “How old was Mom when she had me?”
Joe’s mouth clamps shut. But it’s fine because I know the answer.
“She was twenty years old,” I say. “The same age as Ashley is now.”
“But I don’t want that for you,” Joe says. “I want better. That’s the point of being a parent – to give your kids the opportunities you didn’t have!”
“I have the opportunity for love,” Ashley says. “For a family, for a place in this world that I belong. Can’t you want that for me? If I’m to have better opportunities than you did, don’t you think that the first step is that I at least get the same shot at happiness?”
They argue back and forth, and I’m distracted by a growing thought that won’t get out of my head. That I’m doing more harm than good by being here. Joe is angry at me, and I can easily understand why. He asked me to look after his daughter, and instead, I come back and tell him that I'm the one that, in his own head, took advantage of her. There's no wonder he won't want to agree with anything I say or admit that I could be right, while I'm still around.