A Matter of Unimportance

13. River

"I came home to leave Marta for you and found out she was pregnant," Daniel said.

"Tamara's only 12," I stated.

"The baby didn't make it."

He said it quietly. It was barely above a whisper. I wiped the stupid mocking look off my face and stared down at the water too, slight shame creeping up by way of a reddening patch on my neck.

"Martas first baby had a birth defect," he added. "He died minutes after he was born. How was I supposed to leave her after that?"

"So you stayed with her and kept me a secret?" I asked on a smaller voice.

"No," he clarified, shaking his head and looking back up to me. "I told her about you. I said you lived with your mom in Portland and that I had to be there for you too. She was upset, but... in our culture family is everything. Children are everything, and mothers... you belonged with your mom. She thought I just couldn't bring you home because that's where you belonged, and so I visited you regularly and lived part time in Portland to be closer to you. I told her I had an apartment there. She didn't know about Florence and I..."

He trailed off and it occurred to me that although it was clear that Marta knew exactly who I was, Daniel had not given her the whole story.

"How did you convince her you had your own place?" I questioned suspiciously. "She had to notice you didn't pay rent. I know my mom sure noticed you weren't paying bills around there."

Daniels eyes stayed back on the water. His jaw went tight and without so much as a single word I deduced that Marta did notice money going missing. I obviously couldn't know the exact details, but Daniel was a consistent person in the most inconsistent of ways. His money went where it always went.

"The casino," I said out loud in a quiet murmur.

Daniels eyes stayed down.

"How'd you keep her from finding out about my mom?" I pressed.

"I told her Florence would have been uncomfortable with you meeting her," he said softly. "I told her it was best if she didn't come to the city with me."

"You blamed Florence?" I demanded harshly.

Daniel flinched.

"You made her out to be jealous," I repeated my qualm. "You were lying to her about everything and then you spoke ill of her behind her back?"

"Darli—"

I felt anger rise up to replace any semblance of shame I could have mustered.

"She loved you!" I exploded. "She gave you everything and you only ever gave her half, and she accepted it because she wanted you so badly. She never loved a single other person and you were lying to her the entire time! How could you do that? Why couldn't you just let her move on?!"

"I loved her!" Daniel snapped back.

It was my turn to flinch. He'd turned to face me quite rapidly, with pure anguish in his eyes that I'd never seen on him before.

I thought to everything I knew about him. I thought about the way he'd been there, so absent and so close at the same time. I thought about how they'd bickered about Christmas with Grandfather Benjamin, and how it had been the beginning of the end. He'd slowly drifted after that. I wondered how much it had to do with the fact that Tamara must have been born sometime slightly before or after then. She was the shiny new toy and I was left forgotten alongside my mom, who waited for Daniel to flit in and out of her life at his leisure until the end. I tried to reconcile such a cold description of his motives with that anguish, but I simply couldn't.