“You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?” I teased.
“If I did, I would be married by now and living on the east coast of France.”
I laughed. “Is that the dream?”
“Oh, definitely,” she nodded. “Until then, however, I need to keep searching.”
“For your soul mate?”
“Naturally.”
“Have you ever considered the possibility that your soul mate might live in another country? Maybe he lives on the other side of the world? For all you know, he could be living in Mongolia as we speak.”
Melody laughed. “I guess I better gear up for a world soul mate hunting tour.”
I shook my head at her. “You are crazy.”
“And, you are a pessimist,” she said accusingly. “Seriously, what is wrong with believing in true love?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t grow up to see true love as realistic,” I admitted.
“How tragic,” Melody said, looking at me as though I were a lost puppy.
“It’s not tragic,” I laughed. “It’s just how I was raised, I guess.”
“Let me guess; your parents had a bad marriage?”
I hesitated. I never really liked talking about my childhood or my adolescence. They were parts of my life that I wanted to leave behind. It wasn’t because they were too painful. It was because they weighed me down. The burden of my mother’s past was stiff around my shoulders, and there had been moments growing up when I’d felt suffocated. Getting out of Michigan was the best decision of my life, and a part of me wished that I’d had the courage to do it sooner.
I thought of that pivotal moment when I’d made the decision to leave Michigan. I had been staring at the old photograph I had stolen from my father’s memory box when I was seven. I had looked at it so often over the years that it was frayed and worn at the edges, but it still had power over me. Somehow, I knew it was time for me to do something about all the questions that had been collecting in my mind since I was old enough to ask the right ones.
“Uh no,” I said, after a short pause. “My parents weren’t even married in the first place. My father was around only sporadically, and after I turned twelve…he disappeared from my life for good.”
“Geez,” Melody said, whistling under her breath. “That must have been—”
“It is what it is,” I interrupted, clearing my throat to stop myself from getting too emotional. “The point is I saw my mother spend the first few years of my childhood being madly in love, and then suddenly, her love story didn’t turn out to be the magical fairytale she had envisioned for herself.”
“Can’t say that I blame her,” Melody said. “Especially if the man I loved abandoned me and my kid.”
“Oh, she was to blame, too,” I said before I could stop myself.
“What?”
I shrugged. “I just mean that she was not the victim. Trust me.”
Melody raised her eyebrows. “I feel like there’s more to that story.”
“Not really,” I said. “My mother moved on, and in time, she realized that it was stupid to have thought of my father as the only man for her. She got on with her life, and so did I.”
“You never missed not having him around?”
“He was only playing at being a father,” I said, without much emotion. “He wasn’t really my father.”
She sighed. “It all makes sense now.”
“What does?”
“Your cynical outlook on life and love,” she said dramatically. “You’re a scarred child.”