Read Online Love's Awakening by Kelly Stuart - Free Book Online

was able to hug Dad. I sure as hell couldn’t.
    This strange person who looked like my father was doing…this. Being human. Crying. Instead of acting like a god.
    Dad told his story and listened to Sebastian’s story, which was similar to Dad’s. Several suicide attempts, two for Sebastian, and for Dad, three, all shortly after my mother died. I so did not need that information about Dad. He can’t be distant my entire life then suddenly let me in with a flood of information and expect me to be his best pal.
    Anyway, Sebastian’s story had a happy ending. “Yours can too,” he told Dad.
    “I’d lose my job. My parents would be devastated. And Celia…”
    “She deserves to know,” I put in. Basically my first comment of the lunch. “She’s your wife.”
    “I know she’s my wife!” Dad said, and his nose went dripdripdrip .
    Sebastian spoke up: “I’ll go with you to your first therapy appointment. We’ll figure out a way to tell Celia.” People considering sex changes are required to undergo at least ninety days of therapy before they start hormones. They have to be fully resolved to their new identities and tell their families.
    Sebastian and Dad met a few times on their own. Fine with me. Let Sebastian deal with him. Sometimes Dad came into Azizi while I was on duty, sometimes to talk to just me, sometimes to Sebastian.
    I made a conscious effort, first in my thoughts and later in my conversations with Sebastian, and with Dad, to refer to him in the feminine. But I couldn’t call her “Mom.” David Hall is my father. Therese Hall was my mother. Dad didn’t want me to call him “Mom,” and I was glad. I’m going to try again with the feminine now that hopefully you’ve had time to absorb this information.
    I apologize if the rest of this letter is a confusing mix of she/her/him/his. I slip a lot.
    I would like to say that Dad’s secret brought us closer, and apparently she thought it did. We spent more time together. Inside, though, I was just…I don’t know. Scared. More compartmentalized about my feelings for Dad.
    So, fast forward to Almond’s, the day of the wreck. Dad told me about the fight with you. You wanted to know why she was freezing you out. You thought perhaps she was cheating. You wanted a separation if things would not change.
    Dad told me some things he had done to you. Criticizing your everything, even the way you walked, your shoes making a squeek squeek .
    “I’m leaving Celia,” Dad said.
    I stayed quiet. Dad had rejected her girlfriends before they could hurt her. She would do the same to you and lacked the guts to explain why. I went to the bathroom and hoped Dad would be gone when I got back. No such luck.
    At last, I said: “You’re a coward. Damn right you’re a woman. You don’t have balls.”
    Dad grimaced. “I know,” she said. She gulped down a glass of water. Got up to leave. “You coming to the hospital after the baby’s born?”
    “No.” I wanted nothing to do with Dad anymore.
    “Please understand, Oliver. I can’t lie to that baby. I can’t look into that baby’s eyes and be a fraud for yet another person. I can’t lie anymore. Celia is going to need you after I—” he cleared his throat. “After I leave her. I’d really appreciate if you…”
    “She’d understand. She’d try to, anyway. She loves you. I see it in her eyes every damn time you’re together! If she’s the one, what the fuck are you doing?”
    Dad smiled. “You’re wrong. She wouldn’t understand.”
    “You won’t know until you tell her.”
    Dad studied me, her gaze dark and intense. She hugged me. Cried a little.
    Guess she knew it could be our last hug. The last-ever hug of her life.
    “I love you, Oliver,” she said, and yet again, I could not say it back.
    I wonder what was going through Dad’s mind when he pulled into the street. Maybe something like this:
    He had made it fifty-six years as a man. He could make it another fifty-six as a man.
    Or: He was