When I was in middle school my father moved with my stepmom to another state far away in the south. He moved because he was sick of the cold weather, the expense of living in NY, and he wanted to be closer to his siblings. I never really understood why he didn't want to be closer to me his daughter and his other children, but he did spend a good deal of time trying to push me to go to college by him.
When I was little we weren't that close, wasn't until I was in fourth grade and started playing soccer that I started seeing him twice a week, despite him living less than 5 minutes from me. He would take me to soccer practice during the week and then I would go to his house for dinner with him. We would work on my homework together and then my stepmom would come home from work and we would hang out/watch TV for a little before he brought me home. Then on the weekends we would go to my soccer games and I would go back to his house for dinner and whatever else he had going on. When it wasn't soccer season I would just go to his house, in the spring and summer we would go sailing in the harbor by our town. The winter we would watch hockey and football on TV. As I got a little older and closer to my teen years, I started making friends in his neighborhood (it was a different school district even though it was so close) and my mom would spend time at my future stepdad's house so I would cancel on him more often. Then he moved, I went for the drive with him down stayed a couple days then flew back home, I cried the entire flight. Our relationship was so new and he was leaving, I never had the guts to tell him how much it hurt that he left, so I didn't even let him see that I cried when I left. We would talk on the phone every once in a while and he would write me letters some times. The time between our calls got farther and farther apart as I got older and did more things with my friends and worked a lot. He came back to visit when I was in 8th grade for my half brother's wedding and when I was in 9th grade I went to visit him for a week during spring break. It got to the point that I would only talk to him around holidays. My stepmom would send me care packages, which usually included a novelty item for whatever holiday was coming and a package of socks.
Around my junior year of high school we talked about me coming for a visit but time would pass and it would never happen. February of my junior year of high school my stepmom came back to see her family and friends. I was able to get together with her twice, at the time I tried to make it for as short as I possibly could, I was a teenager and would rather be with my friends. Plus as much as I loved my stepmom I was jealous that she had my dad all to herself. During her visit I spoke with my dad once on the phone and that was the last time I ever spoke with him. A couple weeks after my stepmom went back I received a care package with Valentine's Day chocolates, an Easter bunny and a package of socks. I never got around to calling her and thanking her.
April was a very busy month, I was preparing for prom (I was the only one of my friends that was actually looking forward to going), I was preparing to pick and apply for colleges, I had even toured a bunch of them, I had a boyfriend and worked 5 days a week. Our spring break was in the beginning of April that year and the day before it started a peer was pulled out of our classroom to be told his father had suffered two heart attacks only hours apart but passed away during the second one. I wasn't close to this peer but we had a lot of classes together, I remember thinking to myself I have no idea what I'd do if I lost a parent (not so much my mother as we have never been close). So I spent the entire break contacting our class teacher and other students to try and do something for him.
Sunday evening before school started back up my mother sat me down to tell me that the night before she received a call from my dad. He told her that him and my stepmom had gotten into an argument over the phone one night while he was at work and when he returned from work she wasn't home. It had been a couple weeks and she hadn't come home, she had called him once and told him she was fine but since he hadn't heard anything. My uncle convinced him to file a missing persons report with the police and he was wondering if we had heard anything from her. She left the house with the dog but didn't take her car. The next day when I went to school I hung around after my one class to talk with my favorite teacher. I told him what was going on and broke down, I told him it didn't seem right (my stepmom was a very nervous person and I could not see her leaving the house late at night with the dog and no mode of transportation) and that I was thinking the worst. My teacher calmed me down and told me not to think like that and that she was fine. One of my biggest mistakes in life was not calling my father to talk to him after that.
That Thursday I had a guidance counselor appointment with my mother to pick colleges to apply to. I walked in the room and my mother was shockingly on time and already there, she was also wiping tears from her eyes. I didn't think more of it other then it was her crying because I was planning on going away to school. Later that day I went to see my favorite teacher about a project I owed him and he quickly shooed my off and said we would talk about it another time. That day after school I had a staff meeting at work and then I was picking up a friend to go to a SAT prep course. On my way to go pick up my friend my mom called me and demanded that I came home so we could go and drop off the deposit with the limo company for prom night. So I went back home and she told me we had to talk but not in front of my little brother so we went up to her room.
She sat me down and immediately starting crying. She told me that a couple days before she got a call from a police officer and he told her that my stepmom wasn't alive. He told her that she was murdered and that they brought my father in for a lie-detector test which he failed. My mother then told me the police officer told him that he confessed to killing her. All I could say was no you are lying to me, she kept trying to hug me but I just kept pushing her away. I finally left her room and said I needed to get out, my stepdad was at the bottom of the stairs, we hugged forever while I cried into his chest. I left to go be with my friends....
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